by | Jun 20, 2024 | News
What's changing
Last yearIn 2006, we introduced interactive questions for YouTube videos in Google Classroom. Since then, educators have been able to turn a passive watching experience into an engaging one, while improving students' understanding of a subject.
The current process to create interactive questions requires an educator to manually choose a timestamp, come up with questions, and insert correct answers and distractors. To improve upon this experience and save educators time, we're introducing AI-suggested questions that educators can easily attach to the video based on its content.
Before assigning the interactive video activity, Educators will be able to edit the suggested questions ahead of attaching the YouTube video to the assignment.
Who's impacted
Admins and end users
Why you'd use it
This update helps educators add interactive questions to YouTube videos more quickly and efficiently.
Additional details
Even when using the suggestions feature, educators can still edit, remove or create their own interactive questions. Note that suggested questions are only available for certain videos in English.
Getting started
This feature is available now.
Availability
Available for Google Workspace:
Education Plus and the Teaching & Learning Upgrade
Resources
by | Jun 20, 2024 | News
What's changing
In 2019, we launched Read Along as an Android reading app to help young readers have fun while learning to read. Read Along has an in-app reading buddy who guides readers along as they read aloud, offering assistance when they struggle, and rewarding them with stars when they're successful.
Today, we are excited to introduce Read Along in Google Classroom, a new feature that helps students build their independent reading skills by enabling teachers to assign differentiated reading activities, based on Lexile® measure, grade level, or phonics skills. With this feature, a digital reading buddy, Diya, gives students real-time assistance and pronunciation support, with the help of AI. Read Along offers engaging and inspiring reading assignments, while providing educators with insights on students' reading progress over time, including their accuracy, speed, and comprehension.
Educators can also:
Access 800+ fiction and non-fiction books in the Read Along library within Classroom, including texts from publishers like
Heggerty and
ReadWorks. Each book is categorised by Lexile® level, grade level, or phonics skills and some have comprehension questions. Personalise the experience for each learner by assigning books with the right difficulty level based on a student's reading abilities. Check for understanding by assigning books with comprehension questions. Read Along in Classroom will be available globally, so students around the world can practice their reading skills in English.
Who's impacted
Admins and end users
Why you'd use it
Read Along in Classroom provides fun and engaging reading assignments for students, while also enabling educators to track performance and more easily identify students who need extra support. Some key highlights include the ability to:
Help boost reading skills with activities for each student based on their reading level or phonics skills. Provide instant help for students, with the help of AI-powered reading buddy, Diya to give students in-the-moment assistance on correct pronunciation and more. Get important insights about your students' progress including their accuracy, speed, and comprehension. Support English language learners in building their reading skills, with additional support in Spanish
Additional details
Read Along is now a Workspace Service for Google Workspace for Education customers. Admins will now find this service listed under Workspace Services in Admin Console. Read Along in Classroom will be available to all Google Workspace for Education users with their school issued account and will be governed by the
Workspace for Education Terms of Service, with data collection and use being governed by the
Google Workspace for Education Privacy Notice.
Getting started
This feature is available now.
Availability
Available for Google Workspace:
Education Plus and the Teaching & Learning Upgrade
Resources
by | Jun 18, 2024 | News
What's changing
Today, we're excited to introduce a new feature that will enable teachers to visually illustrate concepts being assessed in practice sets. Now, teachers can import images, like graphs, charts or photos, into practice sets using files from Google Drive or directly from their computer.
In addition to image editing capabilities within practice sets, this update will be extended to the Forms conversion workflows so if a teacher imports a Form into a practice set any images you have in the Forms will also import.
Who's impacted
Admins and end users
Why you'd use it
Including visuals in practice sets will provide students with more engaging assignments.
Getting started
Rollout pace
Availability
Available for Google Workspace:
Education Plus and the Teaching & Learning Upgrade
Resources
by | Jun 15, 2024 | News
1 New update
Unless otherwise indicated, the features below are available to all Google Workspace customers, and are fully launched or in the process of rolling out. Rollouts should take no more than 15 business days to complete if launching to both Rapid and Scheduled Release at the same time. If not, each stage of rollout should take no more than 15 business days to complete.
Make a space discoverable to a target audience using the Google Chat API
The announcements below were published on the Workspace Updates blog earlier this week. Please refer to the original blog posts for complete details.
Stay on top of shared Drive files with automatic digest emails
If you haven't been active on Drive for 7 days and have multiple shared files that are unviewed, we'll send you a reminder email that summarises the files. | Learn more about
automatic digest emails for Drive files. Adding audit logs to Gemini for Google Workspace activity
We're introducing the ability for admins to see new audit logs in Google Drive for activity triggered by Gemini for Google Workspace. | Learn more about
audit logs for Gemini. Google Meet add-ons are now available on Android devices
We're expanding access to Google Meet add-ons, now to Android devices, so you can find, install, and use third and first-party applications right from within the Meet app. | Learn more about
Meet add-ons. Updated design for meeting controls in Google Meet
Google Meet is gradually improving and modernising the in-call experience with the Material 3 Design System. This week, we are announcing the first update, which is specific to the lower bar of in-call controls in Meet. | Learn more about
updated designs for meeting controls in Google Meet.Google Classroom now supports grade category and co-teacher imports from SIS partners
Google Meet now supports high definition video for meeting recording and devices
Full HD video content is now available for recorded meetings and sending full HD video is now available on all computers with 1080p cameras. Learn more about
new video support in Meet.
Rapid Release Domains:
Scheduled Release Domains:
Rapid and Scheduled Release Domains:
For a recap of announcements in the past six months, check out What's new in Google Workspace (recent releases).
by | Jun 4, 2024 | News
This announcement was part of Google Cloud Next '24. Visit the Workspace Blog to learn more about the next wave of innovations in Workspace, including enhancements to Gemini for Google Workspace.
What's changing
In order to provide greater visibility into spreadsheet changes most relevant to your workflow and help enable more efficient team communication, we're introducing conditional notifications.
These allow you to create rules in spreadsheets that send email notifications when certain criteria are met. When a specific change is made, such as a column value change or a specific range of cell changes, you will receive an email notification with alerts of what occurred in the spreadsheet and who made the update. You also have the option to configure the notifications for others by inputting their email addresses during the notification setup.
Who's impacted
End users
Why it matters
Conditional notifications keep you and your stakeholders up to date on recent changes within a spreadsheet. You can set rules to notify you (or others) when:
Tasks have changed status or owner in a project tracker Certain items reach a certain number of stock in an inventory tracker A number drops below a certain value in a forecast analysis
Getting started
Admins: There is no admin control for this feature. End users: If you own or have edit-access to a Sheet, you can set notifications when: A range of cells changes value A range of cells matches a particular condition To set conditional notifications, open your spreadsheet, go to Tools > Conditional notifications > Add rule. You can also right-click directly on a spreadsheet and select Conditional notifications. Note: The rules are assigned default names automatically. However, you can update the name of the rule by utilising the text editor. Visit the Help Centre to learn how to use
conditional notifications.Rollout pace
Availability
Available for Google Workspace:
Business Standard, Plus Enterprise Starter, Standard, Plus Education Plus Enterprise Essentials
Resources
