Soon, Google Meet will receive a host of new features aimed at making classroom life smarter and more intuitive for teachers and students.
The first is an addition to the video conferencing service that will automatically transcribe lectures into a Google Doc, making it much easier for teachers and speakers to share past sessions.
Available on Google Workspace for Education Plus and Teaching and Learning Upgrade plans, the company says the change will save space compared to a full recording and could make it easier for students to quickly find certain sections or areas to focus on.
Google Meet in schools
Elsewhere, Google Meet sessions on Workplace for Education can now host polls and Q&A sessions, which were previously limited to business users, and use picture-in-picture to manage class presentations, keeping all students in cash.
Public events such as school assemblies and award presentations can now also be streamed live on YouTube, giving parents, relatives and friends an easier way to attend big occasions or helping to get more people involved in board meetings.
Google has also released a new education-focused app for Chrome OS, with the new Screencast service giving teachers the chance to create a video library of past lessons shared via Google Drive.
These videos can be edited, customized and transcribed using Screencast, and they also support pen input, allowing students (and teachers) to draw or annotate videos.
The screencast will be available starting with version M103 of Chrome OS, with the company doing some final testing and testing before launch.
The news comes shortly after the company announced that it would bring Google Meet and its more consumer-focused Duo platform together into a single platform.
The move will provide users with “a single, integrated solution for video calling and meetings” as Duo will be renamed to Google Meet in late 2022.