Google Meet will soon receive a number of new features aimed at making classroom life smarter and more intuitive for teachers and pupils alike.
First up is an addition to the video conferencing service that will automatically transcribe lessons into a Google Doc, making it much easier for teachers and lecturers to share past sessions.
Available on Google Workspace for Education Plus and Teaching and Learning Upgrade plans, the company says the move will save space compared to a full recording, and can 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 enterprise users, and use picture-in-picture to manage class presentations whilst keeping all the class pupils in sight.
Public events such as school assemblies and prize givings can also now be livestreamed on YouTube, giving parents, relatives and friends an easier way to be part of the big occasions, or helping involve more people in board meetings.
Google has also launched a new education-focused app to Chrome OS, with the new Screencast service giving teachers the chance to build up a video library of past lessons shared via Google Drive.
These videos can be edited, customized and given transcription using Screencast, and also support stylus input, allowing students (and teachers) to draw or annotate videos.
Screencast will be available from Chrome OS version M103, with the company doing some final tests and trials before launching.
The news comes shortly after the company announced it would be bringing Google Meet together with its more consumer-focused Duo platform into one single platform.
The move will provide users with "a single, integrated solution for both video calling and meetings", as Duo is renamed to Google Meet later in 2022.
