What's new for Google for the new school year?

Time 20/02/2022 By myhoneybakedfeedback

Teachers, students and families now have access to solutions that make education more effective and even more fun, that bring children closer to school and more.

Google Workspace for Education, the package of teachers and their students, was one of the tools that supported the changes that the Romanian school has gone through since the beginning of the pandemic.

Currently, in Romania, 5028 schools from almost 2500 localities use Google Classroom, which represents approximately 80% of the schools in Romania. The number of schools using Google Classroom has increased almost 20fold since the beginning of the pandemic, in the spring of 2020. Data is provided by Edu Apps, Google's partner in Romania for Google Workspace for Education.

At the beginning of this school year, Google Classroom comes with a number of improvements. Starting this fall, teachers will be able to give homework to different classes more easily, and students will have access to the Classroom Android application in offline mode, which means that they will be able to do homework on the phone, even if they are offline.

Google Meet in the Classroom will bring some security changes. One of them is the "waiting room", where all the students in a class will stay until the teacher comes, when they enter that class online. In addition, those who are not on the list of students in a particular class will be able to participate in the online class only after receiving permission from the teacher, so that there are no uninvited participants in the class.

Children and parents and teachers have a Google platform dedicated to online safety: Internet Heroes. Here, children, but also their parents, can learn together, in an interactive way, how to surf the internet safely.

Through games and other fun tools, children learn the basics of being a good digital citizen: how to protect their passwords, how to be kind on the internet, how to care about what they share on social media, how to ask for answers. . In its second year of existence, the Internet Heroes platform comes at the beginning of the 2021 school year with new games and lessons, a design optimized for digital and distance learning and a "hub" for families, parents become children's partners in exploring the online environment .

Adults will find here how to talk to children about technology, activities they can do together, games, etc. Teachers can use the Internet Heroes games and lessons at school, with the platform offering approximately 30 courses that can be used in the classroom to help students explore the Internet safely.

Tools and tips to improve learning and education

Jambord - a virtual whiteboard that teachers have access to and where students can stick virtual stickers, upload images and comment in real time.

Augmented reality can be a tool to spice up the learning process, to make it more interesting. Basically, students can see on the phone, in 3D, or even in the space of the room in which they are, certain things that are taught to them at school. Augmented terrestrial animals, aquatic animals, birds, dinosaurs, human body systems (digestive, circulatory, nervous, endocrine, respiratory, lymphatic, etc.), cellular structures (mitochondria, plant cell, cell nucleus or prokaryote) or terms are available in augmented reality. biology (red blood cells, eukaryotes or monocotyledons).

The augmented reality items are the ones that show "View in 3D" after searching on Google. More on how to learn better at home with 3D models and augmented reality here.

Lens - Students can take a picture of an equation or problem, and the Lens service gives them quick access to helpful results, such as step-by-step problem-solving guides and detailed explanations to better understand key concepts. An alternative to Google Lens is the Socratic app.

Family Link - this application helps parents to monitor their children when they are online and set rules for the use of the digital environment for them. Parents can also add a school account to their child's device - in addition to the child's personal account, which sets out online leisure rules - where they can define what happens when the child uses the device for school.

For example, if you have one hour a day to use your device for fun, for example, when you log out of your school account - for online classes or homework, there is no time limit and you only have access to certain applications and platforms.

Computer - The pre-installed smartphone or tablet that Google provides to you by searching for "computer" can solve many math problems.