15 Updates to Make Google BETTer

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, Slides, Meet, Chromebooks, Security, and more!

Although I have never been to BETT yet (definitely a goal for the future!) I wanted to share all of these new updates with you. See below for my rundown of everything new that Google is announcing. For each item I give the gist of what is new as well as how these updates can make teaching and learning BETTer.

Get the Most out of Google Meet

I recently had the privilege to present a session for Google's series of "Did You Know?" webinars. These are a collection of 8 sessions covering a wide range of Google tools for schools.

You can learn more about the entire "Did You Know?" series in my earlier blog post here: Free Google Webinars - "Did You Know" Series

For my third session I presented the following webinar:

Better engage students and save time with new Google Meet features

Description: New features in Google Meet can save educators time and increase students engagement. In this session we will explore options including breakout rooms, polls, Q&A, translated captions, recording, attendance tracking, live streaming, and more, as well as see new features coming soon to Google Meet.

See below to watch the recorded webinar, as well as access the session slideshow and resources.

40 Google for Education Updates for Summer 2021

Summer is a nice time to take a break and relax, but Google has instead been busy working on new updates and features for schools. 

On June 22nd Google hosted their "Anywhere School 2021" event (http://goo.gle/tas21) where they covered loads of announcements concerning 40 updates for Google Classroom, Google Meet, Chrome and Chromebooks, and Google Workspace tools in general.

In case you missed it, or are just trying to review through everything that was shared, see below for a list of all 40 updates that were shared at the event.

New Google Meet Layout Coming in May 2021

Google Meet has gone through a lot of changes over the past year as Google responded to the needs of educators, students, and other users. Thankfully Google has continued to listen to our needs and have just announced a new round of updates.

To keep you and your students from getting caught off guard, see below for a short 5-minute video where I run through a live demo of the new layout, as well as written details about these changes.

Updated Timeline - For schools on the "Rapid Release" schedule, these new features will start rolling out on May 24, 2021 but may take up to 15 days to reach everyone. For schools on the "Scheduled Release" schedule the start date will be June 1, 2021, and again may take up to 15 days to roll out to all users.

Preset Google Meet Breakout Rooms in Calendar

Breakout rooms are a great feature in Google Meet, allowing you to take all of your meeting participants and split them up into smaller Meets where they can work on group projects, have small group discussions, and such.

One challenge though has been the time needed to set up the rooms, especially if you want to manually assign your attendees to specific rooms. In the past this had to be done during the actual live meeting, which can take up time and be distracting when you are trying to work with your students. 

Thankfully Google has now added an option to set up the breakout rooms ahead of time using Google Calendar. 

See below for detailed directions on how to use this feature, as well as a short 6-minute video that demonstrates all the steps.

Google Meet Attendance Template (Enterprise Version)

The Enterprise version of Google Meet has a built in option to collect attendance for any session as long as you have five or more participants. 

Unfortunately you get a separate attendance report for each meeting, and teachers may prefer to be able to put the entire year together to be able to track attendance for any day and any student. 

To help with this I have created a Google Sheets template you can use to track and summarize the attendance data for the entire year.

See below for a short 6-minute video explaining how to access the attendance reports from Google Meet, and then how to use my template to compile, track, and summarize the attendance data for the entire school year.

Note: The attendance feature is only available for people who are using the Enterprise version of the Google suite of tools. If your school does not pay for the Google tools, but instead uses the free version, you will not have the attendance feature, as well as other Enterprise features. I do have a separate video where I cover an alternate way to collect and track attendance in Meet if you are using the free version which you can see here: Google Meet Attendance Template (Non-Enterprise Version)

Google Meet Attendance Template (Non-Enterprise Version)

Google Meet does have a built-in feature to collect attendance but that is only available for people who are using the Enterprise version of G Suite, which means schools that pay for the Google tools. 

Note: If your school does use the Enterprise version, then be sure to check out my other post that explains how to use the built-in attendance feature here: Google Meet Attendance Template (Enterprise Version)

However, if your school uses the free version of the Google tools, then the attendance feature will not be available for you. So to help with this, I came up with a possible workaround to collect attendance during a Google Meet, and to track attendance over time.

So what is this workaround? For this option we are going to use a template I created that includes a Google Form for the students to submit their attendance, and a Google Sheet to collect the attendance, and then a pivot table to track and summarize the attendance over time.

See below for a short 7-minue video explaining how to use this option to collect and track attendance, as well as a link to get your own copy of the templates.

How to Save the Chat and Captions Transcript in Google Meet

Google Meet is a powerful video conference tool, with many features including live closed captions and a panel for chat messages. What would be great though would be an easy way to save all of the captions and the chat messages from the meeting.

This would be especially valuable for teachers to have a detailed record of student participation in the session, including everything said or typed, and by whom, and at what time.

Unfortunately Google Meet does not have a built in option to save the live captions, and the only way to save the chat messages is to record the video of the meeting as well.

Thankfully there is an excellent and free extension called Meet Transcript that does all of this and a little more.

To help explain how to use this tool I have recorded a short 6-minute video on how you can save the transcript for the chat and live captions in Google Meet. See below for the video, as well as a detailed explanation of the process.

Translating Google Meet Menus, Chat, and Captions Live

Google Meet has done a great job connecting people from across town or around the world. However what if the person you are connecting with speaks a different language?

It turns out that Google Meet has a built in option to translate in real time the Google Meet menus, the chat conversations, and the live closed captions. This can be especially helpful for students who do not speak English as their primary language.

To help explain this feature I have recorded a short 5-minute video on how you and your students can translate content in Google Meet. See below for the video, as well as a detailed explanation of the process.

Google Meet Q&A Feature

The Q&A feature in Google Meet is a great way for your attendees to be able to submit questions and vote on which questions are most important to them. It also allows you an easy way to keep track of the questions, see what is most popular, and then check off the questions as you work through them in your session.

Note: The official Q&A feature is only available for people who are using the Enterprise version of the Google suite of tools. If your school does not pay for the Google tools, but instead uses the free version, you will not have the Q&A tool, as well as other Enterprise features. I do have a separate video where I cover alternate ways to do Q&A in Meet if you are using the free version which you can see here: 3 Q&A Alternatives for Google Meet

However, for those who have the Enterprise version of Google Meet, I have put together a short 6-minute video on how to use the official Q&A feature. See below for the video.

3 Google Meet Q&A Alternatives

Google Meet has an awesome built-in feature for Q&A, but unfortunately that is only available for people who are using the Enterprise version of G Suite, which means schools that pay for the Google tools. If your school uses the Enterprise version, then be sure to check out my other post and video that explains how to use the official Q&A feature here: Google Meet Q&A Feature

However, if your school uses the free version of the Google tools, then the Q&A feature will not be available for you. So to help with this, I put together a quick 8-minute video to explain a workaround that will let you sort of do your own Q&A in Meet. Since these are just workarounds, they are not perfect, and are not the only way this could be done, but they are good options. These are just my suggestions for alternative ways to do Q&A in Meet, but please feel free to share your workarounds in the comments.

See below for the video and related resource links.

Google Meet Breakout Rooms

Breakout Rooms are an awesome feature of Google Meet that allow you to take all of your meeting participants and split them up into smaller Meets where they can work on group projects, have small group discussions, and such.

Note: The official Breakout Rooms feature is only available for people who are using the Enterprise version of the Google suite of tools. If your school does not pay for the Google tools, but instead uses the free version, you will not have the breakout rooms tool, as well as other Enterprise features. I do have a separate video where I cover an alternate way to do breakout rooms in Meet if you are using the free version which you can see here: Breakout Room Alternatives for Google Meet

However, for those who have the Enterprise version of Google Meet, I have put together a short 5-minute video on how to use the official Breakout Rooms feature. See below for the video.

Breakout Room Alternatives for Google Meet

Google Meet has an awesome built-in feature for Breakout Rooms, but unfortunately that is only available for people who are using the Enterprise version of G Suite, which means schools that pay for the Google tools. If your school uses the Enterprise version, then be sure to check out my other post and video that explains how to use the official Breakout Rooms feature here: Google Meet Breakout Rooms

However, if your school uses the free version of the Google tools, then the Breakout Rooms feature will not be available for you. So to help with this, I put together a quick 7-minute video to explain a workaround that will let you sort of make your own breakout rooms. Since this is just a workaround, it is not perfect, and it is not the only way this could be done, but it is a good option. This is just my suggestion for an alternative way to do Breakout Rooms, but please feel free to share your workarounds in the comments.

See below for the video and related resource links.