This week Google is in London at BETT, the world’s biggest educational technology exhibition. At the event, companies from all around the world show off their latest and greatest innovations for educational technology.
Google is using this opportunity to showcase new updates for Google Workspace for Education. These updates include new features for Google Classroom, Docs, Accessibility, Chromebooks, AI, and more!
Although I have never been to BETT yet (definitely a goal for the future!) I wanted to share these new updates with you. The big new update that caught my eye is "Class Tools" which is a classroom management solution for teachers and students to use on Chromebooks.
See below for the details on this new Class Tools feature, as well as an overview of what else Google announced at BETT.
๐ ️ Class Tools Overview
Class Tools is an upcoming feature for Chromebooks to help teachers with classroom management and to help students with learning. This includes features such as:
- Pushing content out to student devices
- Sharing your screen to students
- Viewing student screens
- Enabling live captions and translation of what you are saying in class
- And more!
This could be a very helpful tool to assist teachers with managing classroom use of Chromebooks, while making it easier to engage students in learning activities, while also helping support students with captions, translations, and requests for help.
As a point of reference, Class Tools has some similarities with existing products such as Securly, GoGuardian, Hapara, Dyknow Classroom, LanSchool, and other tools that schools often use to help manage Chromebooks in classrooms.
To use Class Tools, schools will need to have managed Chromebooks and the Google Workspace for Education Plus tier. That is a paid tier of Google Workspace that provides many additional features for schools. If Class Tools can help replace some of the other products mentioned above, it may make Education Plus a more affordable and attractive option for schools.
At the moment, Class Tools is listed by Google as "Early Access" so it is still in beta testing, but you can fill out this interest form to be notified when Class Tools is available.
๐ฆ Starting a Session
- When teachers start a session they will set a time limit for the Class Tools session.
- Default durations for sessions include 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes, 1 hour, and 2 hour long classes.
๐ Joining a Session
- Students can join the Class tools with a join code or teachers can add the students to Class tools from their class rosters in Google Classroom.
- If using a join code, the code will be six letters and can be displayed in large text on the teacher's screen for students to see.
๐ Sharing Content
- Teachers can add content to the Class tools session for the students to access.
- The content can be made available to specific student groups including:
- Student who joined via a join code
- Students added from a specific Google Classroom
- Or all students in the Class tools session
- Content can be added from sources including:
- Google Classroom assignments and attachments such as YouTube videos and documents
- Open tabs from the teacher's device
- When sharing content, the teacher has the option to "Lock Class tools to student devices".
- This likely means that students will not be able to close out of the content when locked.
- If a teacher chooses to do so, the student will get a message that reads "Your teacher has pinned the Class workbook to your screen."
- After adding content the teacher can limit how the student can navigate within the content.
- This can help keep students on the content you have assigned, rather than browsing to unrelated sites. The options to limit navigation include:
- Just this page
- Anywhere on this site
- One link away from this page
- Anywhere on this site and one link away
- The teacher can also remove previously added content from students as needed.
๐ฅ️ Screen Sharing and Viewing
- The teacher has the option to share their screen to the student devices.
- The teacher has the option to view student screens.
- When a teacher views a student screen, the student is notified that the teacher is viewing their screen.
✋ Raising a Hand
- Students can click a "Raise hand" button in Class tools to request help from the teacher.
- The teacher is notified of this by a raised hand icon next to the student name in Class tools.
๐ฌ Captions and Translations
- Teachers can enable an option for captions, which will show what the teacher is saying live in class.
- The teacher can choose to show the captions on their own screen.
- The teacher can also enable the option for captions to be shown on the students' screens.
- If enabled the students can choose to turn captions on or off.
- The teacher and the students can also change the language of the captions as needed.
- This can help support students whose primary language is different from the teacher.
๐ฐ Other BETT Announcements
Google shared many other announcements at BETT, including a wide range of recently released features for Gemini, Drive, Classroom, Chromebooks and more. See below for resources to explore all of these announcements.
BETT Product Guide
- Here is a detailed list of all 46 features and tools announced at BETT with descriptions, requirements, and availability - PDF link
Google Blog Posts
- Here are the posts Google shared for BETT with more details on these features:
- New Google education tools for 2025 - Blog post link
- New Google for Education features for more personalized learning - Blog post link
- 11 ways Google AI can help educators and students in 2025 - Blog post link
- New controls to keep students and educators safer online - Blog post link
- Class tools: a streamlined way for educators to manage Chromebooks - Blog post link
What updates and announcements are you most excited about? Feel free to reach out and let me know your thoughts and questions.
Post by Eric Curts
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