We were not sure
what would happen to us. We did not know
what would happen to our pupils and our staff members. We feared that our students
would fall behind. Hello. It was up to us teachers
to find a new way. We're going to work out
the volume of this spring roll. Good morning and welcome
to our whole-school assembly. Let's get some learning on. I consist of 95% water. I am really happy to see so many people. Hi. Ciao bambini. COVID has driven us
to innovate, disrupt, evolve. Good work today, students! Technology can level
the playing field for children. It opens up so many avenues that they otherwise
would not have been exposed to. It's hope. I'm so proud of you.
Well done. Hi everyone, and welcome to Learning with Google. We've been working
on some really exciting things that we can't wait to show you. Learning has always been core to our mission of organizing
the world's information and making it
universally accessible and useful. The two are deeply connected. Learning is what makes
information useful, and what enables people
to apply knowledge to make things better for themselves,
their families, and their communities. I know that first-hand. Growing up, my parents and teachers instilled in me a deep curiosity
about the world. It's what put me on a path
to bring technology to more people, and what inspired me
to help build Chromebooks a decade ago. I never imagined
they would be used to help students connect to virtual classrooms
in a pandemic. It's been a hard year, to say the least. Yet each day, you show up
and tirelessly support your students, just as you always have. On behalf of all of us at Google,
let me say thank you for all you do, under some really
difficult circumstances. I'm proud that we've been able
to help in small ways: a 150 million students, educators,
and school leaders globally are now using Google Classroom, up from 40 million a year ago. And we've seen teachers come together
on YouTube to support each other, as you worked to keep students
motivated and classrooms safe. The need to learn, and teach,
from anywhere won't end, even when the pandemic does. We have an incredible opportunity to reimagine learning
for what comes next. That's why last year we made
Learning & Education a formal focus area, building on our long-term work. I asked Ben Gomes, one of the original architects
of Google Search, to lead this broader effort, and Avni Shah,
a 17-year veteran of Google, to lead our Google for Education team. Our goal is to bring the best of Google
to help you solve important challenges in Learning & Education today. That's what Learning with Google
is all about: the educators, leaders,
and partners around the world, who are building a better future
for your students and kids everywhere. Thank you for learning with us, and for letting us learn from you. Now please sit back
and enjoy the rest of the event! The response to the crisis
was initially complex because when the first wave
of the coronavirus began, it was an unknown phenomenon. The decision to close schools
was extremely difficult, but we knew that with an unknown virus, our top priority had to be
to save lives. When the pandemic started,
the schools were not ready to face such a complex issue. We immediately set up the Task Force for Educational Emergency
of the Ministry of Education, and we took steps
to make a public call for support. Some platforms responded,
and from there, together with the telecom companies, we created our distance-learning
solutions from scratch. The Ministry of Education contacted us
and asked how Google could help. Our response was an immediate activation in order to make
the Google for Education tools available to all Italian schools. There was an initial phase
of bewilderment, because many were new to these tools and had to learn from the beginning. Before the pandemic, the use
of technological tools was quite rare. So we worked with many partners
to try and support teachers. The desire to provide concrete support to ensure
that distance learning could start encouraged all of us
to work day and night in order to meet the needs of schools. We activated a Call Centre and provided the service
to Italian schools. I need information related to Classroom. There are no skills
that cannot be learned. We have the tools today
to stay in touch, to understand and work
in a different way. We helped teachers to use digital
as a tool to empower their teaching. In a moment of crisis like this,
everyone teamed up, and the telecom companies
and platforms helped us give schools answers,
which has been greatly appreciated. We equipped ourselves
so we could offer our users devices purchased with funds
made available by the Italian state. Teachers in Italy
and around the world have understood that technology can be
a big help in their daily work. Digital was fundamental
and so were Google's tools, because they allowed us
to stay in touch, continue studying,
and continue being productive. All families, teachers and students
know what integrated digital education is. I think we've made great progress. The Italian school, post-coronavirus,
will be an enriched school. Digital teaching in the classroom
can be achieved, and we'll have to speak the language
of the twenty-first century, which is what our students need. Hello everyone, and thank you so much
for being with us today. From whatever part of the world
you're tuning in from, we're really grateful you could join us. I'm Ben Gomes, and I lead Google's Learning
and Education initiatives globally. I joined Google 21 years ago, and I've spent most
of my career working on Search, which is where Google's mission began. But last year, I took on a new role. And some people asked me, "Why education? Is there a connection
to Search, and why now?" The answer for me
is both personal and professional. On a personal level, my own education
gave me access to opportunities, and it played a central role
in shaping my interest and even the person I am today. There were teachers who inspired
my early curiosity, to a chemistry teacher in high school
who inspired a love of science, in not just me, but a generation
of students in my school. On a professional level,
and from the perspective of Search, one of the main reasons
we see people come to Google is with the intent to learn. Whether it's for information
in the moment, or really anything
they're curious about. Beyond Search,
people might also come to YouTube to watch a video
to learn to meditate, say, or to earn their IT certificate
with Grow with Google. Learning now starts with information, which is the core
of what Google deals with, but then requires us to internalize
and apply that information. And when we learn something new
in this way, we absorb information
to actually change in some way, who we are and what we're capable of. In this process, nothing can replace
the power of a good teacher, but technology allows us
to provide more tools, more resources to help teaching and, hopefully,
to enable more learning. No matter our backgrounds, everyone can and should have access
to great learning experiences. And the goal is to help people
transform themselves to realize their own full potential. Timing-wise, I stepped into this role
at a really critical time when the learning landscape was
undergoing its largest disruption ever. COVID continues to blur the lines
between home and classroom, and it takes everyone, teachers,
parents, extended families, working together
to just get through the school day. This daily challenge is also compounded by unequal access
to devices and connectivity, and also the digital skills needed
to use all these tools. We focused our work across Google where we thought
we could add the most value, whether that was learning for school,
learning for work or learning for life. From the perspective
of learning for schools, we listened to feedback from thousands
of educators around the world to create and improve upon
our existing solutions for learning in schools. Like G Suite for Education,
Classroom, Chromebooks and Google Cloud. And today, you'll hear a lot more
about our efforts there. From the perspective
of learning for work, as millions of people around the world look to grow
or pivot their skills and careers, and even their businesses, we expanded our training
and certifications to Grow with Google to help support them. And from the perspective
of lifelong learning, we hope that products
like Search and YouTube continue to help and inspire people
to learn more and to follow their curiosity
wherever it may lead. Other products,
like Google Arts & Culture, put the treasures, the stories from thousands of cultural institutes
around the world within the reach of anyone,
anywhere with a smartphone. The world is becoming much more digital, so we've also continued
to develop programs to expose young people
to computer science and to help them
to become good digital citizens. Now, learning takes place
in a large ecosystem, and Google has long believed
in the power of non-profits to have great impact. Google.org has donated more
than 250 million dollars towards education since 2005. And they recently announced a new ten-million-dollar
distance-learning fund to support teachers and students, particularly those
from underserved communities. Google Cloud set aside
20 million dollars for university researchers
working on COVID-19, and they also hosted public data sets to ensure the world
had the latest statistics from which to learn. As you can see, this has really been,
and will continue to be a company-wide effort. Because Learning & Education
is not a new direction for us, it has always been a big aspect
of what we do at Google. With our mission of organizing
the world's information, making it universally accessible
and useful. With these investments, we're trying to bring
the best information in the world to the learning
or education task at hand. Now, this has never been
more important than it is today. Like information in the 90s, learning is undergoing
a massive transformation today. To make more learning possible, we want to use advances in technology
to help meet your evolving needs. That's not an easy task
and it won't be solved quickly, but to take an analogy from Search: some queries
can become long-term quests. But the end result
can be really amazing. What if everyone in the world
were able to feel like they were
on the frontier of knowledge based on their interests,
their capabilities? What if it were possible to bring
the best of technology to help everyone in the world
learn anything in the world? Now, pushing that vision forward
presents an amazing potential future, but that vision starts
with educators everywhere. And we want to use technology so that together, we can achieve
that vision with you. Throughout the course
of our time together today, you'll hear about new product launches, learn how we're building products
to serve all types of learners. And you'll also get a sneak preview
of how we apply AI and machine learning in an assistive way to improve learning outcomes
for all types of students. We're excited to continue partnering
with you on this journey to bring quality-learning experiences
to people around the world, to help everyone
reach their full potential. Thank you for joining us today. Our Community in Vicksburg
Warren School District, it is one unlike any other. We come everyday, you know, dedicated to make a difference
in the lives of children. When you are talking
about Curriculum Instruction in the
school district, that is the backbone
of a school district, so you have to be able to
execute by any means necessary, you have to be able
to get your job done. And our district is 100% free
and reduced lunch. That does not limit
their potential or reduce our commitment
to serving them. In Vicksburg Warren School
District, every kid has a device. From Pre-K,
all the way to 12th grade, and that is their device.
That is their learning tool. -You guys can go ahead and start
on your daily paragraph... When they told me I could have
my Chromebook for the first time,
I was like WOW. Just WOW. I never had
my own computer before. That was so new to me. Equity is the core of our
teaching and learning process because we do everything that we
can to make sure every child gets individualized instruction
based upon their needs. When you have a small group that
you are working with a teacher, and a child needs
additional learning, more in remediation,
some intervention, you can do that via technology
in a small group. It makes life a lot easier. On our Google Chromebooks,
we take assessments, we take virtual field trips,
we create presentations, we do it to
complete assignments. - I’m really happy to see
so many people on the... Hiiii!!! Google for Education definitely
saves me a ton of time. I create my assignments,
set up a Google Meet, create my instructional video,
and I post it on there. It’s incredibly user friendly. -Okay, excellent I want every child here to leave
equipped to do whatever their mission
is, that’s my vision -Okay this one right up here?
Yes... When I accomplish
something at school, it makes me feel powerful Technology can level the playing
field for children. It opens up so many avenues that they otherwise
would not have been exposed to. It gives them a chance,
it’s hope! Hi, I’m Avni Shah and I lead
the Google for Education team. A year ago, we got a call from the Italian
Minister of Education who was looking to get every
student in the country using G Suite for Education
in a matter of days. I don’t think
I’ll ever forget that call. Soon after, things got
a little closer to home when my daughter’s school closed and moved to 100% distance
learning over a weekend. As the world shifted
beneath our feet, as homes became classrooms, and as teachers found new ways
to connect with students, everyone in
the education community has stepped up in a big way. So I wanted to start
by saying “thank you”. You, the education community,
continue to inspire us with your creativity,
resilience and commitment to advancing learning
for your students, both in and out
of the physical classroom. Sundar and Ben mentioned
our ongoing commitment to Learning and Education. In 2020, we further cemented
this commitment. People from across Google
joined forces to bring
the best of our technology to supercharge schools
and universities and the people
who run them. On the
Google for Education team, we had the unique privilege
of seeing how education was being impacted
daily around the world. And while technology alone
wasn’t the answer, we knew it could help. So our first responsibility
was making sure that all of our services
stayed up and running - despite the increased usage
and new demand - so that teaching
and learning could keep going. Next, we turned our attention
to how we could give people the choice and flexibility
they needed to be successful
in this new reality. To support schools with hybrid
learning, we listened to school leaders
and released dozens of their most-requested features
across our products: from smart compose, autocorrect
and built-in citations, to 20 new features
in Google Meet alone. To make it even easier
for schools to integrate G Suite for Education into their
Learning Management System, we launched
Google Assignments. And with countries
around the world impacted by school closures,
we quickly made Classroom available
in 10 additional languages, To support teachers as they
adjusted and adapted to virtual teaching
and learning, we launched Teach from Anywhere
in partnership with UNESCO and local partners,
and expanded our Teacher Center, making free product guides
and training available across all of our tools
in more than 150 countries. We also released guardian
guides to support families with detailed tutorials
on our tools because we heard it was feeling
tough to get a grasp on all the tools
your kids were using for school. And to help students we added
new accessibility features to G Suite and Chromebooks, like live captions in
Google Meet and Google Slides and made our speech-based
literacy app Read Along available in more
languages to support literacy across 180 countries. While this past year
brought so much change, in some ways a lot also stayed
the same for us. Our aim has always been
about being assistive: providing the technology
and tools that are most helpful for you
and your students, based on your ever-evolving
needs and challenges. This approach has become even more important
during this unique time, but has always been -
and will continue to be - what informs our work. As we think about being helpful,
underscoring everything we do are our commitments
to enable every leader, empower every educator,
and equip every student; while continuing
to evolve every day. We want to enable every leader
to bring innovation to their schools
and universities at scale, with the peace of mind that they
are investing in secure products that are flexible
to their unique needs. We work each day to empower
every educator, from pre-K teachers
to university lecturers, by giving them simple,
assistive tools so that they can focus
on what they do best, which is helping their students
reach their full potential. We strive to equip
every student with the tools and skills
they need to be successful, by focusing on inclusivity
and accessibility, so we can meet students
wherever they are. And finally, we work
to evolve every day by continuing to listen
and learn from you - the experts - and ensuring that as technology
advances and improves, it’s reflected in the tools we
build for teaching and learning. These are interconnected and the best solutions
really embody all of them. We have found that when we
enable leaders to bring secure, flexible products to their
schools and universities, educators are empowered
to help students reach their full potential, and students are equipped with
the skills they need to advance. So how do we bring this to life? By applying the best of Google’s
technology to education in order to be as helpful
and assistive as possible. And as technology advances
and your needs evolve, so too do our offerings. In fact, even the definition of
“assistive” - or “helpful” - has flexed over time,
and will continue to change. For example, a few years ago Assistive looked like
saving you time by reducing administrative
tasks with Classroom or helping you work together
in real time in Docs. But today being Assistive
also means helping students to learn to read or understand
complex math concepts, to turn in their best
original work, or even create new ways
to stay connected and engaged in
virtual classroom environments. Looking ahead,
given the new role technology
is playing in education, there’s a new frontier
of challenges to solve and innovation
to be had. We have the opportunity
to apply the latest in Google's
assistive technologies, powered by artificial
intelligence and machine learning,
to make new things possible and raise the bar on what it
means to be assistive. This might be diagnosing
where at-risk students are struggling in real-time,
to providing virtual assistants that help you build lesson plans
and grade student work, to making smart recommendations
and differentiated lessons tailored to the individual
needs of specific students. And of course, doing all this
in a way that respects the trust you’ve placed in us
to protect your privacy and the privacy
of your students. These are ambitious goals,
and there are many challenges yet to be solved
and work to be done. But we’re excited about
what this future holds, and excited to share with you
today the latest progress that we’ve made
along our journey: Shantanu will kick off our time
together by sharing the next
evolution of G Suite, which will offer more choice
and control to customers than ever before. Next you’ll hear from Melanie
about new features to streamline and simplify your experience
with our products, including Classroom,
Forms and Docs. Jenn will then share all the
latest updates on Google Meet. After that, Andy will talk about what’s new with
Chrome and Chromebook devices. Laura will then share more on
how we’re building accessibility into our EDU offerings since we want our products
to work for everyone. Finally, we’ll close out
the day Laura H. who will share more on
how we’re working to bring the best of Google’s assistive
technology to education and how we can work together
to redefine what’s possible for educators,
leaders and students. As we continue to listen
first and move fast, we want you to know that
we’re here for the long-haul, committed to providing
a reliable set of services that best serve your needs. This past year went from being
a scramble to adopt and adapt, born out of unexpected
and adverse circumstances, to being an opportunity to reimagine
what education could be. Our team has been blown away
by the ways that you, leaders and educators,
have used our products to make a lasting difference
in the lives of your students, their families
and even your countries, especially as you continue
to undergo daily shifts and big unknowns. Throughout
our time together today, we’ll be sharing
several stories from around the world of people putting our products
to use in innovative ways, because it’s not the technology
itself that’s remarkable - it’s what you do
with it that excites us. Thank you for your partnership as we continue to forge
ahead in our mission: to bring the best of Google
technology to education, to help improve
learning outcomes for all. We’re proud of the progress
we’ve made together so far, and we look forward
to sharing what’s new today, and where we’re headed tomorrow. The school
is 23 years old. We have a population
of 1,900 pupils. So everything's been going
great, until COVID 19 happened. The schools
were closed in March. I got worried as a teacher. We were so sad because
it was just an abrupt decision. All the work that
they have been working on would possibly have to stall. We were very worried. I have bills,
I have a family, and we depend on this job. Fear of the
unknown, fear of the future. How are we going to
meet our obligations? How are we going to survive? We felt
helpless and desperate. We saw a situation where
our learners will slip away. When we were exposed to
that Google Classroom, it felt this is what we needed. We soon realized
that we needed more control over our offering. So we signed up for
G Suite for Education. The teacher is there. The teacher is explaining the
concepts just like in school. Parents appreciated it, and they decided
to chip in financially. We have been
able to keep going. We have been able to
sustain our staff members. We have been able
to get pupils that are not originally from our
school to join our classrooms. This helped even the
community around us to continue learning
despite the restrictions and schools shutting down. I can confidently
say, as a teacher, our students are ready
for the final exams. Whatever transformation COVID
has forced us to go through is welcomed, because the
transformation is here to stay. This place of
education has changed. We cannot ignore the strides
that we have made during this period. In Swahili, there is
this expression that says-- After hardship, comes rebirth. We have been able
to grasp the opportunity and grow digitally in a way
that we never got to do before. And Google for Education
has been the silver lining. And it has helped us
remain relevant in very uncertain times. Hi, I'm Shantanu,
the Product and Design lead at Google for Education. Each day, my team and I
try to figure out how to make our products and features
more helpful to you. As education was turned
on its head this past year, our team has been amazed by your
creativity and resourcefulness, and we’ve been humbled by how many of you
turned to G Suite for Education to keep learning going during
these challenging times. As you've used our tools
in new ways, we’ve heard your feedback
loud and clear: you need our tools
to be more flexible to give you more options
to meet your evolving and expanding needs. In response, we’ve accelerated
our product development. And in the last year alone, we've added dozens of new
features to our free edition and more than 25 features
to our premium edition. Today, we’re going to share
even more updates that will give education
institutions more control and flexibility
to support learning. But first, let’s take
a quick look back. This might surprise you, but G Suite for Education has
been around for over a decade. And some of you have been here
with us for the whole ride! We now have more than
170 million students and educators worldwide
using our tools. What started as a way to help
schools and universities operate more efficiently
has become about so much more. For example, Maine
High School District 207, located near Chicago’s
O’Hare airport, has more than 6,000 students, and they speak
60 different languages. They started with Google Apps more than a decade ago
to kickstart collaboration among students and teachers
with Gmail and Docs. Over the years, they’ve adopted
more and more of our tools, including Google Classroom,
to help teachers save time. Now that they’ve upgraded to G Suite Enterprise
for Education, District 207 relies
on our enhanced Google Meet features
to make distance learning as engaging
as possible. We’ve grown and evolved
with many of you over the years, and today, we are bringing you the next evolution
of G Suite for Education, now called
Google Workspace for Education. This new name aligns with the
new Google Workspace product announced in October
and reflects our commitment to bringing the best
of Google to education. What it means for all of you
is simple: more options, more flexibility
and more advanced capabilities. We've heard loud and clear
that different schools and organizations
have different needs. Some need more advanced
security offerings, others need to add
to their teaching tools, and some need
all of the above. That’s why we designed
Google Workspace for Education to offer more choice
and control — with more options
to meet organizations' needs. Today, we give schools
two options: a free edition
or an all-in-one upgrade. Starting in April,
we will retain our free edition, which will be renamed,
"Education Fundamentals," and we’ll offer not one,
but three upgrade options so you can select
the exact capabilities you need: Education Plus will offer
all of the functionality currently available in our
existing Enterprise upgrade. And we are
adding Education Standard, with advanced security
and analytics, and a
Teaching and Learning Upgrade with enhanced tools
for instructors. Now, let's dive deeper into what
each of these editions offers. Education Fundamentals
is our free suite of tools and was formerly known
as G Suite for Education. It has always been,
and will always be free, and we will continue
to invest in it by adding new functionality. Education Fundamentals includes
all of the great real-time collaboration tools that many schools
have been using for years, such as Docs, Forms,
Slides, Sheets, and many more. It also includes Google Meet,
Chat, and Gmail, to help schools communicate
with one another, or keep learning happening,
even if it has to be remote. And Google Classroom helps
teachers save time and streamline
class instruction, so they can focus
on what they do best. Plus, you get peace of mind
with built-in security, and easy to use
admin controls. If your school is using
G Suite for Education today, you don’t have to take
any action to transition
to Education Fundamentals. Your school's experience
with our tools will remain the same.
You'll just start seeing the new Google Workspace name
and logos starting today. Now, let’s turn to our
three upgrade options, for those who are looking
for greater choice and control. First up, Education Standard. Education Standard
has all the features in Education Fundamentals, plus advanced security
controls and analytics. It includes Security Center
with dashboards, recommendations,
and an investigation tool, to help you safeguard your
school against digital threats. For example, at Huntley
Community School District 158 which is about halfway
between Chicago and Milwaukee, the students keep their
Chromebooks with them at all times -
even during summer break. That’s around
10,000 devices total - a pretty tough management task. If a student clicks on malware,
or even just forwards an email, it can be a big issue. Using Security Center,
the Huntley CTO can get notified and manage the issue
through a dashboard - all within a few minutes. In fact, the district
has now cut down on its third-party
security auditing suite. Beyond Security Center,
Education Standard also enables you
to better control your entire
learning environment, with enhanced group management, advanced mobile management,
and simple data migration. And you can optimize
your systems and gain more usage insights
with advanced audit options, and log export for Gmail,
Drive, and Classroom. Based on your feedback,
Education Standard will be priced
on total student enrollment rather than the number
of faculty or staff, as the tools enable you
to secure the data and privacy of all users
in your domain. It will be available
later this year at a cost of $3 per student per year. Our next premium option is called the
Teaching and Learning Upgrade. This option puts our most
powerful educational features into the hands
of your instructors. We know how hard it is
to deliver classes remotely, and with this upgrade
you'll have access to our premium Meet features that we’ve built
to help you make distance learning as engaging
and effective as possible. Features like breakout rooms, so teachers can quickly split
the class into small groups and encourage
more participation. Or Q&A and polling, so teachers
can increase interactivity and quickly check
student understanding. The upgrade also includes
attendance tracking, noise cancellation,
and meeting recordings -- so you can be sure
no one misses what happened. In addition to enhanced
Meet capabilities, this upgrade also includes
unlimited originality reports. So you can encourage
academic integrity and detect plagiarism,
from the web, or from your own school-owned
repository of past student work. And coming in the second half
of 2021, teachers will be able to use
new Add-ons in Classroom to seamlessly integrate
their favorite third-party tools and content,
right into Google Classroom. Schools can buy
as few or as many Teaching and Learning licenses
as they need, for whichever instructors
or departments need these
advanced capabilities. The
Teaching and Learning Upgrade will cost $4 per license per month and can be added on
to either the Fundamentals or the Standard editions. The Education Plus edition
is our ultimate upgrade, and gives you everything
we have to turbo charge
your learning environment. It includes all of
the functionality that was previously available in G Suite Enterprise
for Education. This means you get all of the
advanced security and analytics capabilities
in Education Standard, as well as the premium teaching
and learning capabilities from the
Teaching and Learning Upgrade for all of your instructors. Plus a few extra features. For example, you'll be able
to use your own institution-specific
Google Cloud search, to easily find
relevant information across all
of your Google apps, including Gmail, Docs,
Drive, and Calendar. You'll also be able
to reach more people in your school community
with up to 100,000 participants for Google Meet livestreams. And coming later this year,
school administrators will be able to save
instructors’ time by automatically
syncing Google Classroom rosters with your Student
Information System. Like Education Standard,
Education Plus will be priced based on student enrollment. It will be available at a cost of $5 per student per year. If your schools
are already using G Suite Enterprise
for Education today, you don’t have
to take any action. Your experience with our tools
will remain the same, and your pricing contract
won’t change when we release
Education Plus in April. With the changes
we’re announcing today for
Google Workspace for Education — and all the updates we’ll make
in the coming years — we’re reaffirming
our commitment to education. Education Fundamentals, with
our popular productivity and collaboration tools,
has always been - and will always be - free. And we’re now giving you
more choice, more options, and more advanced tools --
exactly what you asked for. To learn more about pricing
for Education Standard, the Teaching and Learning Upgrade
or Education Plus in your country please reach out to your partner manager And remember, no matter
which edition you use, with
Google Workspace for Education, you own your data
and intellectual property. Student work,
recorded Meet lessons, and other content created
by your educational community through their
Google Workspace account is owned and managed by you,
not by Google. Our products can be used
in compliance with all local, national
and international standards. A decade after
we launched G Suite, we’re at 170 million users. I’m not sure how many educators
and students will be using Google
ten years from now, but whatever the number,
we’ll be right there beside you, working to innovate
to best meet your needs. Thank you. Millions of parents and students
are expected to face school shutdowns. Classes will start virtually. It was devastating in the moment. But on Monday,
we woke up and got to work, to make sure this could
also be an opportunity. Medellin has about 11,600 teachers. In collaboration with Google, they became fully trained
in distance learning. We built a help desk with a group of
young programming students to train more than 200 educators, we were able to support teachers we taught them how to use Classroom, how to create their virtual
classrooms, how to use Meet, how to schedule classes and engage
their students through video. G Suite allowed us to adapt
and act faster. Nowadays students don't learn in
the traditional way we are used to. Now they are teaching
themselves new skills. In fact, the roles of teachers
and students are evolving. The teacher has become
a sort of coach. Teachers are our guides.
Teachers provide us with tools. We use the tools to build
and understand new concepts. My challenge at the moment
as a teacher, is to take the technical things we know,
and amidst a crisis, to make them human. For me, innovation means rising up when it becomes necessary
to do things in a new way. Having a Google account
is like having a key that opens the door to access
so many other tools. Sheets, video calls, docs,
quizzes, grading functionalities. Our teacher Diana
has helped us keep going. To move forward
with every project, to understand applications
we didn´t know about before. In an interesting way,
technology is humanizing us We get to live our role as teachers:
defenders of opportunities and dreams. Covid has driven us
to innovate, disrupt, evolve. In our schools,
with our teachers. A world of colors,
an innovative world, a world that´s united. This is my vision
for what education should be. Hi, I'm Melanie, a Program Manager
for Google Classroom. I’ve worked with students
and teachers for the last decade and understand the value technology can bring to
a learning environment, however, I’m also very aware
of the challenges that may exist for teachers when figuring out
how to effectively use the wide variety of tools
available for their instruction. That’s why, our team
spends a lot of time talking with educators
from around the world to understand how we can
continue to improve our tools to better meet their needs,
no matter where they are and what learning environment
they are teaching in. As Avni mentioned earlier, our commitments to
“Empower every educator” and “Enable every leader”
are central to how we build our Google Workspace for Education
products. Over the last year,
as the needs and priorities of schools
and communities changed, Google Classroom has
adapted as well. Classroom is now serving
over 150 million students, educators, and school
leaders globally — up from 40 million a year ago.
That’s just in one year! As the number of people who rely
on our tools have grown, we've been focusing on
how to build a product that truly works for everyone.
And when we say “everyone,” we mean every teacher,
every school leader, every administrator,
every student, and family. We believe that whether
you're using Classroom from rural India
or suburban Indiana, on a laptop or a mobile phone,
in a classroom or from home, our tools should
support your needs so you can focus
on your instruction. We first built Classroom
to simplify and improve teaching
and learning. We wanted to help you build stronger connections
with students through personalized,
real-time feedback, reduce administrative tasks
like photocopying worksheets, and just give you back
more time to focus on the things that made you want to teach
in the first place. We've always seen simplicity as Classroom's
most important feature. It’s easy to use
for every teacher, no matter what their comfort
level is with tech, yet incredibly powerful
and packed with features to meet the needs
of all of our users, including the most
tech-savvy educators. As Classroom's features expand and become the hub of learning
for many schools, more and more of our customers
are treating Classroom as a learning
management system. But we don’t want to be
just another LMS. Instead, we want to redefine
the category entirely by putting our users first. And that's why we'll continue
to listen to your feedback, address your top priorities, and evolve Classroom
into an experience that helps every teacher,
every student, and every school
leader succeed. To that end,
we're thrilled to announce some great new Classroom
features — some that are live today and others that will be
coming later this year. Having tools
that work well together is so important in education. Whether you’re a school leader,
teacher, or student, you’re likely using a number
of different educational tools on a daily basis. The Classroom team
is working hard to connect
all of these together, and we already have
a strong head start. Over the past five years,
hundreds of educational tools have integrated
with our platforms, providing easier access
through Google sign-in, the Classroom share button,
the Classroom API, and our other APIs,
like those for Docs, Drive, Slides, and Forms. What this means for you,
is fewer passwords to remember and an overall
better experience. This year, for schools
that have chosen Classroom as their hub of learning, we are taking this approach
to the next level. Here are three big projects
we're working on: First, we want to improve
how educational content and tools integrate
with Classroom. Wouldn’t it be a lot easier if everything you wanted to use
for teaching was just integrated directly into the Classroom
workflow and interface? With Classroom add-ons, teachers can choose
an add-on from a marketplace, assign it to their students,
and it’ll all just work. Admins will also be able
to automatically push add-ons to specific teachers. We're working hand-in-hand
with our Edtech partners to develop and test
this new workflow, including Adobe Spark, Kahoot, IXL Learning, and Nearpod, and plan to expand the number of
partner integrations later this year. Here’s an example
of what this can look like: Let’s say you’re a 7th grade
math teacher, like I used to be! When that 7th grade teacher is
creating an assignment or post, all the add-ons they have will show up
directly in Classroom and they’ll be able
to easily choose the content they need
from that add-on. When their students
open their assignment, they’ll be able to do so without needing to log
into any other tools. When that 7th grade teacher
is ready to review and grade their student work, Grades for such assignments will automatically be
reflected back in Classroom. Classroom Add-ons
will be available to customers with Education Plus or our Teaching and Learning
Upgrade licenses. Next, let’s talk about
Classroom rosters. Classroom gives teachers
several easy ways to create their rosters,
like a class code or click-to-join
invitation emails. But we’ve heard from admins that they want to help
instructors save time by setting up their classroom
rosters in advance. Well, I’m excited to share.
Later this year, admins using Education Plus
will be able to create classes, and populate and sync rosters
directly to Classroom from any
Student Information System, also known as SIS. We’ll start with K-12 SISs
in the US, with plans to expand to more. To round out our efforts
to make Classroom work better with other tools,
we are continuing to expand the SIS offering for
Classroom’s Grade Export feature which will allow
that 7th grade teacher to easily sync grades from their
Classroom Gradebook to their SIS eliminating the need for them
to keep grades in two places. Grade Export is available now
to eligible Skyward and Infinite Campus customers,
and coming soon for Aspen users. Our team also spends
a lot of time talking to administrators about
their top needs and concerns. Here are two features
that we're working on to help improve
the admin experience. First, we know that admins
often want to better understand how people on their domain
are using Classroom. To make this easier,
starting soon, admins can use Classroom audit
logs in the Admin console. With audit logs, admins can see
who did what on their domain and quickly get to the root
of Classroom-related issues, such as seeing who removed
a student from a class, who archived a specific class
on a certain date, and more. Secondly, coming soon, Admins using Education Standard
or Education Plus will be able to get
deeper insights about Classroom adoption
and engagement, and determine
who might need help. For example,
let's say your school is currently 100% virtual, and you're wondering
which students are able
to consistently access and complete their work
in Classroom? Admins will soon be able to export
Classroom’s logs to BigQuery, where they can
do custom analyses. They’ll be able to use our customizable
Data Studio templates to visualize, monitor,
and analyze usage across activities like
assignments created, submitted, graded, and returned, with filters for date,
instructor, and student. When COVID-19 drove
the sudden shift to remote and hybrid learning, we made dozens
of improvements to Classroom. This year we’re rolling out even
more updates to make it easier to use Classroom in your hybrid
learning environments. We know it can be tough
to figure out which students are actively
engaged during virtual classes. You'll be glad to hear
that later this year we're launching
student engagement tracking inside Classroom. Educators will be able
to see relevant stats to help them understand how students are interacting
with Classroom each day, such as which students
viewed a course or submitted assignments. Lack of internet access
is another central challenge to hybrid learning because home
and mobile internet connections aren't always available
or reliable for many students
around the globe. So we’ll be making the Classroom
mobile apps work offline or with
intermittent connections. Students will be able
to start their work offline, review their assignments,
open Drive attachments, and write assignments
in Google Docs — all without an
internet connection. And they’ll be able to submit
their assignments once they're back online. With remote learning,
we’ve also seen a huge increase in the number of images
uploaded to Classroom — especially by students
taking photos of paper homework. Later this year,
we'll be making it much easier to attach
and submit photos in Classroom. This includes combining photos
into a single document, cropping or rotating photos,
and improving lighting. Next, let's check out
a few features we're adding to simplify
educator workflows. Coming soon,
teachers will be able to customize their Classroom
assignments and posts using Rich text formatting, one of our most highly requested
features from teachers. You’ll be able to bold,
italicize, underline, and add bullets
to assignments. We're also updating how you use
Classroom to grade on Android. We’ve seen more and more
teachers around the world using mobile devices
for giving feedback on the go, and these improvements will make
it much easier for instructors to switch between
student submissions, grade work while viewing an
assignment, and share feedback. Plus we’ve improved
originality reports in Classroom
and Assignments to help students
turn in their best work — while making it easy
for instructors to check for
potential plagiarism. Originality reports is expanding
to 15 languages, more than many other leading
plagiarism detection services. Also, if you use CS First – our free, introductory computer
science curriculum – it’s now better integrated
with Google Classroom. Today, teachers are able
to import student rosters from Google Classroom directly
into a new CS First class, and students can sign in to
CS First using a Google account. We know many of you use our
collaboration tools alongside Classroom,
and based on your feedback, we’d also like to share
some updates coming to Google Forms,
Google Docs, and Jamboard. Google Forms is used
by teachers around the world to administer quizzes, measure
student success, and more. And one of the most
requested features is the ability
to save your progress when filling out a Form. That’s why we’re happy
to announce that when responding
to a Google Form, Quiz, or Quiz assignment
in Classroom, your progress will be
automatically saved as a draft for 30 days,
or until the form is completed. This means you won't have
to start over if you can't complete a form
or quiz in one sitting, if you want to switch
between multiple devices, or if your internet
connection cuts out before your answers
have been submitted. We’ll be testing this feature
soon and expect to roll it out to everyone
in the coming months. You can sign up to be included
in this pilot today by visiting this link. And now in Docs: Last fall we launched
the ability to easily
add citations to Google Docs. Coming soon,
we’ll be making it even easier: Instead of creating
citations manually, you'll be able
to enter a site URL, and we’ll find
the right match. And to help more users around
the world write with confidence, smart compose and autocorrect
is now available in French, Portuguese, German,
and Spanish. And just as you are able to see
revision history in Docs, teachers will soon be able
to track edits and attribute changes
to students in Jamboard as well. Now that we’ve discussed all
of these great feature updates, we also want you to know how
focused we are on your security. We know security and control
is top of mind for many of you, especially with students spending more time online
than ever before. And although we’ve made
dozens of improvements across all of our products
to improve security, we have 4 important updates
we want to highlight and dive a little deeper into. First up: target audiences. This beta feature is great
for large districts and university systems that want to set up easy
file sharing boundaries for individual schools,
departments, and colleges. For example, let’s say
you don't want anyone to share files outside
of the Biology department. You can set up
a target audience that limits link sharing
to that department. So with that simple
configuration, you just reduced the potential
for accidental oversharing. Now, only the folks
in the biology department will know about that
new species you discovered! We’re also launching automated
group membership to provide admins a way
to “set-it-and-forget-it” by taking the manual work out of adding
or removing people from Groups. With this feature, admins will be able
to automate group memberships based on user attributes
such as addresses, locations, organizations,
and relations. So let’s say you want to have a
group for all history teachers. With automated group membership,
you can easily create and maintain this group
based on role. Admins can also set expiration
dates for group memberships so users
are automatically removed after a certain length
of time or date if a user only needs
time-limited access. Next, we’re launching
document approvals. This feature will allow you
to streamline approvals directly within Drive,
Gmail, Docs, and other
Google Workspace editors with a built-in process so
reviewers can approve, reject, or leave feedback. So let’s say you have
an important newsletter going out to
the school community, and your entire leadership team
needs to sign off. With document approvals, you can request
their approval on the doc and clearly see
who has approved and who you need
to follow up with. And finally, we’re always
working to empower admins with advanced,
easy-to-use security tools that help them keep
their organizations safe. That’s why we are integrating
the logs from Chat, Meet, Classroom, Oauth,
Groups, Voice, and Calendar right into the Investigation
tool in the Security Center. This additional visibility
into user actions will help admins
quickly identify and remediate
any problematic behavior. Phew! That was a massive
amount of updates, so thank you
for staying tuned in. Here is a recap of all
the features I just shared. From the updates we’re making to improve how educational
content and tools integrate with Classroom, to the various updates
we’re making to improve security across
all of our products. To learn more about
all these features and more, be sure to check out our
Google Workspace for Education social channels and blogs. Like I said in the beginning, our team is working hard
to listen to you to ensure
we’re improving our tools to better meet your needs,
no matter where you are and what type of learning
environment you’re in. We feel honored
to continue developing Google Workspace for Education
to support the ever-evolving needs of educators
and students everywhere. And along with building
these tools, we believe it's essential
to ensure every educator is supported in using
these resources to achieve
their classroom goals. So, before I go,
I want to remind you that our Teacher Center
has free product guides and training courses for all
the tools we've mentioned today. Next, we’ll share some big
updates coming to Google Meet. Thank you. This journey began
a few years ago, when we came together
to develop a digital strategy to breathe new life
into the way staff work, that teachers teach, and ultimately
the way that children learn. It was really important
for us to think about how are we making sure
we are providing the very best teaching to all of the children
in our schools. We very much wanted
to move forwards with cloud-based technology,
but we had to have an infrastructure
suitable for children but it also had to be useful
for staff as well. What we decided to do
was provide every child with their own Chromebook and we adopted G Suite
for Education and then, before we knew it, the magic really
started to happen. - Ok 3LS, I’d like you to log
into Google Classroom. It’s had a really
transformational impact on the school. Children embrace Google
technology like a duck to water. It was really easy
once you got the hang of it. It was just really fun.
They’re a lot more focused, they find the lessons
a lot more fun and the engagement
just went through the roof. Staff were able
to get going quickly. We were given time to just
try things out for ourselves and I think that was a really
important stage of the process. It’s reduced
my workload massively and I know more
about my children. At no point had we ever thought
that Chromebooks for 1:1 would be a solution
to a global pandemic. But compared to other schools,
our children and staff were used to working
in the cloud. And through the use of Google
Classroom and Google Sites, we were able to switch
learning online and deliver lessons from
day one of the lockdown. - Remember you are figuring out
what the value of the nine is. We worked quickly to ensure
that every family had access to the internet. - Good morning everyone
and welcome to another day of home learning. Being at home
you don’t see anybody. I miss the support
from teachers. You’re distracted
with your siblings and your dog and it's just really,
it's annoying. The children’s wellbeing was
really, really important to us. We communicated with all
of our parents on a daily basis. We arranged Google Meets where
we’d drop in with the children. - Can you think of something
good that has happened because of lockdown? - I am spending more time
with my family. - Great answer Vasu,
thank you for that. Within that first week
Google Meets had happened, children were laughing
together on screen. It was totally surreal. But, while buildings
were physically closed, the school was open. The whole concept
of digital classrooms and digital school is exciting. If we can provide them with
those real, basic digital skills now, we are really preparing them
for their adult lives. Hi, I’m Jennifer Shen, Senior Product Manager
for Google Meet. This year, video conferencing
has become an essential tool for teaching,
learning and staying connected. We’ve been investing heavily
in making Google Meet work even better for you. Our priority for Meet
is to create engaging learning experiences
that are safe by default. Let's start with how Meet is
launching a number of controls over the course
of the next month to help educators
moderate during class. Teachers will have the option
to "End meeting for all", so they have complete control, and can prevent students
from staying on a call after the teacher has left —
including in breakout rooms. To make it easier to teach
without interruption, educators will be able to easily
mute all participants at once, and decide whether students
can unmute themselves or not. For educators who are teaching
using tablets or mobile phones, they will also soon be able
to control who can join, use the chat,
or share their screen, directly from their iOS
or Android devices. Later this year, we are also
making it easier for teachers to manage access
to their virtual classrooms. By August, when calls
are started in Classroom, students won’t be able
to join before the teacher. Meet will know who’s on
the Classroom roster, so only students and teachers in
the class will be able to join, unless the teacher
allows others in. Every teacher and co-teacher
in the class will be a host
of the meeting by default, so if there are
multiple teachers, they’ll be able to share the
load of managing who can join, controlling who can chat
or share their screen, and more. Meetings that aren’t
started from Classroom will also support
multiple hosts, making it easier to partner
with co-teachers, paraeducators, and other people
helping facilitate the class. In addition to giving educators
more control in meetings, we know that school admins also want greater
visibility and control to manage meetings
across their entire domain. So we're also rolling out
new capabilities for admins, including greater control
over who can join video calls. Admins will soon have settings for whether people
outside of their school — such as an external speaker — can join school-hosted
video calls. They will be able to configure
whether users in their school can join calls hosted by people
outside of the school as well. For example, to facilitate student-to-student
connections across districts or professional development
opportunities for educators. And both of these settings
will be easily configurable by group
or organizational unit. Meet logs data is now available
directly from the Admin Console, so admins can better understand
how people are using Meet at their school, and have
greater visibility and control to ensure digital citizenship
standards are being upheld. We’re also making a few
additional improvements for educators
with Education Plus or Education Standard licenses. Admins can now see
Meet logs data in the Investigation tool, and just as teachers
can end meetings for all participants,
later this year, admins will be able to end
any meeting within their school. We know that in addition
to being safe and secure, Meet also needs to be
engaging and inclusive for students and educators. Over the past 6 months, we've launched features
like breakout rooms, hand raising,
digital whiteboards, live captions
in additional languages and customized backgrounds,
to help educators bring some of the magic
of the in-classroom experience to the virtual classroom,
and keep students engaged. Students will soon be able
to more easily engage and express themselves
with emoji reactions in Meet. They’ll be able to pick
skin tones for their emoji to best represent
their identity, and react in class
in a lightweight, non-disruptive way. And of course,
teachers and admins will have full control over
when reactions can be used. And because unreliable internet
connections can make remote teaching and
learning more challenging — especially when
streaming video — we've improved Meet
to work better if your device
has low bandwidth. We’ve also made
significant improvements to the performance
of Meet on Chromebooks. These include audio
and video optimizations, better performance
while multitasking, reliability improvements
and more. Altogether, these updates
will substantially improve the meeting experience
on Chromebooks, including those with
limited system resources or remaining usable life. We’re also making a few
additional improvements for educators
with Education Plus or our Teaching and Learning
Upgrade licenses. First, we know how important
breakout rooms are, so we’ll be rolling out updates
to make them even better, like the ability
to set them up ahead of time in Google Calendar. This will make it easier
for teachers to prep
for differentiated learning, be thoughtful
about group dynamics, and avoid losing
valuable time configuring breakout rooms
during class. And to help students
who weren’t able to attend class stay up to date,
later this year, educators will be able to
receive meeting transcripts. They can easily share
transcripts with students, review what was
discussed during class, or maintain a record
for future reference. While many of these improvements
were born out of a need to help students
and educators continue learning and teaching
during the pandemic, we're excited about
how Meet will continue to support school communities
in the longer-term. Whether by expanding professional development
opportunities, enabling students to access
specialized content and courses from beyond their school,
livestreaming events, or facilitating live-translated
parent-teacher conferences — Meet will continue to connect,
build, and foster school communities
well into the future. Up until now,
computers and other devices haven’t been used actively
in classrooms in Japan. We’ve decided to change direction. We are making it possible
for children to use devices for learning
in the classroom, for self-directed learning,
and for online classes. GIGA Global Innovation Gateway
for All The GIGA School Plan is designed
to prepare a gateway for all learners. Every student will be provided
with their own device, so that we can further progress
each child’s learning, individually. Since adopting Chromebooks, we’ve been using Google Classroom,
Sheets, Slides and Forms. We’ve transitioned to
student-centered learning which is more exciting
for the children. It’s an environment now where
students can learn on their own, discovering the best solutions
while working together. Google for Education
is rated highly in various categories including collaborative learning,
cost, and security. About half of Japan’s
local governments and boards of education have decided
to adopt Google for Education, because it best fits the ideal
learning environment outlined in the GIGA School Plan. This year schools are preparing
for the latest educational environment as each child starts using
their own Chromebook. With Google for Education,
student-centered, collaborative and deep learning
will spread rapidly throughout Japan. We want to achieve
individually optimized learning that is based on the student’s
interests and what they want to learn. I hope to take that challenge beyond the limits
of subject and grade level. Hi, I’m Andy Russell, Product Manager for the
Education and Family teams on Chrome OS, and IT specialist for a couple
of rowdy elementary schoolers on Chromebooks at home. This time last year, Chromebooks
were amazing classroom tools for researching
and writing reports, building websites
and creating videos. A lot has changed
since then. For many many kids in distance
learning around the world, Chromebooks are no longer
a tool you take off the cart and use in school, they’re how you actually
go to school. This is a profound shift -
and I’m guessing that, when we’ve all returned to class
in some new normal, the way that you and your
students use computers will be forever changed. Avni talked earlier about
empowering every educator, equipping every student,
enabling every leader, and evolving every day.
Today, I’d like to share how we’re doing that
with Chromebooks - and the changes
that we believe aren’t just
short-term Covid-adjustments, but long-term shifts
in how computers are used in-school
and at-home. Let’s start with
empowering educators. We’ve seen a tremendous
evolution of Chromebooks over the past couple years -
from great devices for students to the best computer
for most teachers. They’re portable, but powerful -
like a tablet, but with all the
features and functionality of a desktop computer - enabling teachers to break free
from their desks and roam the classroom to connect with students
one-on-one. That’s why our team
is working hard to build software tools perfect for teachers
right into the operating system, and we’re starting
with Screencasting. For years, teachers have been
recording lessons for students to watch for help
on their homework and study for tests. But this past year,
screencasting has gone from niche, to common,
to downright critical, which is why we’re building
a screen recording tool right into ChromeOS, so teachers and students can
record lessons and reports in real-time, in the classroom,
and also at home. Our screen recording tool
will launch with Chrome 89 in March,
but that’s just the start. Going forward,
we’re looking closely at how Machine Learning tools
built directly into ChromeOS - and only ChromeOS -
can make instructional content more engaging and accessible
with real-time translation, searchable transcripts,
and telestrator tools to bring out
the sportscaster in all of us. This is how we see
the future of learning - powered by assistive
technologies that amplify teachers’ voices, make school materials
more engaging for students, and help all of us - teachers,
students, and parents alike to get the best answer to
any question, anytime, anywhere. We expect these advanced
screencasting tools, paired with
Chromebooks for educators and a new casting tool
for students and teachers, to not only transform
teaching in the classroom, but to create a huge library
of instructional videos custom-tailored
to study in-school and at-home. Next, let’s talk about how
we’re equipping every student. Well, to start, we’re providing
students with lots of options with about 40 new Chromebooks - many of which are convertibles
with stylus, touchscreen, and dual-cameras
for students to take notes, edit videos, create podcasts,
draw, publish digital books, and record screencasts
everyday in-school and at-home. Every new Chromebook
is ready for Video Conferencing right out of the box,
with hardware specs to deliver exceptional
Google Meet and Zoom experiences and, this year, we’ll also
have a few more devices with built-in LTE modems
called Always Connected devices to help
support students without access
to the internet at home as well as schools
in countries with strong mobile
broadband networks. Now, hardware is only as good
as the software that runs on it, so to equip every student, we need great apps,
extensions, and web tools too. In the past, it’s been hard
to find software designed for the classroom that
meets regulatory requirements and works seamlessly
on your device. And buying
and deploying seat licenses for those tools
has been even harder. That’s why we built
the Chromebook App Hub - a single destination
for teachers and admins
to find the best tools designed for the classroom
and optimized for Chromebooks. Every app, site,
and extension has resources and lesson plans
for classroom use and a Data Policy section
for you to assess compliance. With all these great apps, it’s important that we enable
school leaders to purchase and manage apps at scale. On the App Hub, you’ll learn
about our App Licensing program that enables schools
to purchase seat licenses to select tools
that can be one-click deployed and monitored
using Google Admin console. We launched the program
last year for schools to purchase licenses
through our hardware partners, and enable them
for Organizational Units in the School Directory. This year, we’re also making
App Licenses available for sale
through reseller partners, and enabling admins to deploy
licenses not just through OUs, but for Google Groups
as well. You buy a pool of licenses
for WeVideo, and one-click deploy them
to a Google Group of students in the Media Class -
set it and forget it. App Licensing is just
one example of how Google Admin console
and Chrome Education Upgrade make it possible for schools
to centrally manage massive fleets
of Chromebooks remotely. You might have noticed
that we’ve been investing heavily in Google Admin console to make it faster
and easier to use. There are now
over 500 Chrome policies to manage both users
and devices for your domain and some new features
like “Zero Touch Enrollment” that make it easier than ever to deploy and manage Chromebooks
at scale for remote learning. Now, when I say “scale” - I’m talking about districts
like the Chicago Public Schools and the 300,000 Chromebooks they put in students’ hands
thanks to cloud computing. Or the 3 million new Chromebook
users in Japan, just this year alone, thanks to a government-funded
initiative called GIGA, The Global Innovation Gateway
for All. Fun fact: in Japan, Chromebooks
are the #1 device for schools because they’re rated
highly for Collaboration, Security, Account
and Device Management. They’re also the #1 device
globally in K-12 education for the second quarter
in a row. When you’re buying that
many Chromebooks for teachers and students, both shared
and dedicated devices for in-school
and distance learning, it can be overwhelming
to figure out the best devices
for different users. So we're making it easier
to find the right device with tiered options by use case, like running touch-based
early-learning apps, bridging connectivity
gaps at home, and video conferencing
with Google Meet or Zoom. Learn more at this URL. Along with these new devices, you’ll find accessories
like mice, headsets, hard disks,
and drawing tablets - all certified and available through our
Works with Chromebook website. You can find out more here. This year, more than ever,
“enabling leaders” is a big focus for us,
and to Avni’s point earlier, we’re working hard to evolve
with you and your needs. One of those needs -
and believe me, we’re hearing it from parents
and school leaders alike - is to involve parents
and guardians in the learning process and make it easy for them
to monitor their children online
and troubleshoot tech issues. With our Family Link app,
we give parents and guardians many of the same tools to manage their kids'
personal accounts that school admins
have in Google Admin console, so they can do things
like approve apps, and filter web content
that their kids can access. But - until recently - you had to choose
between your school account OR your Family Link account - there was no way to keep an eye
on your kids online and give them access
to schoolwork. We listened and we evolved. Last summer,
we launched a new feature for Family Link users,
enabling them to add a Google Workspace for Education
account. This lets students log into apps
and websites with a school account, while parents set guidelines for
device and app usage at home. Here’s a quick video. With so many kids using
Chromebooks at home, parents and guardians are asking
for ways to supervise them while they're doing
schoolwork online. Some kids are using school
accounts on school Chromebooks and parents want to be able
to turn off YouTube, approve apps,
or block websites. Others have their kids
logged into personal accounts managed with Family Link
on personal Chromebooks and want their kids to be able to
access sites like Google Classroom with their school account. In this video, we’ll show you how your
kids can sign in to websites and apps with a Google School Account while being supervised
by a parent using Family Link. This allows parents to keep
an eye on their kids online by approving apps, setting time
limits, and blocking websites, but also gives students access
to all the tools and information they need for school. If you’re interested in this, and other resources
for families, be sure to check out the Tech Toolkit
for Parents and Guardians. Educators, please
send this to your students; and parents, please check it out
for a deep dive into using Google tools at home. As our homes and classrooms
have merged over the past year, we've all had many roles
to play, sometimes all at once. It's been challenging, but it's also forced us
to think more creatively, to turn obstacles
into opportunities. I hope that today's
announcements showed you how the Chrome OS
Education and Family teams are doing our part
to meet the moment. And as we work to enable
leaders, empower educators, and equip students
for the long-run, we will continue to keep our ear
to the ground and evolve every day
to meet your needs. We’re excited to work with you
on everything to come. When I teach history
I tell my students “As history progresses, one thing
we have learned is how to be more inclusive” Those who used to be
discriminated against now live in a world
with greater equality. But I emphasize
to my students that we must constantly work
to achieve more equality. My name is Chang-dong Ryu and I teach history at
Seoyun Middle School. I am the first blind certified
history teacher in South Korea My goal is to help students
learn from history and to apply the choices,
decisions and activities of historical figures to their own lives as they
navigate difficult moments. We can feel that he always
cares about us. He tells us to feel free
to contact him anytime with any questions There are not many
online platforms or tools for students and teachers
who have visual impairments like mine. The platform I was using before Google Classroom
only enabled me to log on, nothing more. With Google Classroom
as our platform, I can do quite a lot of work
on my own using the built-in screen reader. For example, I can log on,
find my classes, check the comments
left by my students and give them feedback
on their comments. Mr. Ryu helps us
learn effectively online, giving us feedback on our
work and prompt replies to our questions. What I can do best is teach my students the value
that comes with being “different”. That way, when my students meet new
friends and colleagues with visual impairments they will accept them
into their community as equals. Hi everyone, I’m Laura,
the Head of Strategy for Accessibility & Disability
Inclusion at Google. I also happen to be low vision and use a number of assistive
technologies to be productive and independent
in my daily life. At Google, we believe
that building with and for people with disabilities
should be the norm. When we do this, all of our products
are truly better for everyone. We build a wide range
of accessibility features into our products to help make them more usable
by people with disabilities, and others who may find them
beneficial all over the world. We also know that just as every
child learns differently, teachers also teach
in different ways. Let’s dive into
the latest accessibility updates on Chromebooks
and in Google Workspace. Chromebooks have many different
accessibility features built right into settings,
and best of all, when you customize your settings
once, those settings - like high contrast mode, magnification, dictation
and more - follow you, no matter
which Chromebook you sign into, as long as you use
your same Google Account. We’ve made improvements to a number of
accessibility features, such as our built-in
text-to-speech tools: Select-to-Speak and ChromeVox. Select-to-Speak lets you
select items on your screen and hear them read aloud
through spoken feedback. As someone with low vision,
I use this feature all the time. You can also see
word-by-word highlighting as the text is spoken for better
audio and visual connection, which can be really useful for students with learning
and processing challenges. Now, we also offer screen
shading behind
the selected content, which can be particularly
helpful for young learners and people with dyslexia,
as it can promote better focus. And for ChromeVox -
our full-featured screen reader which is often used by people who are more significantly
visually impaired or blind - we’ve added a number
of new functionalities, including improved tutorials, the ability to search the
ChromeVox menus, smooth voice switching, which automatically changes
the screen reader’s voice based on the language
of the text being read, and Smart Sticky Mode,
which enables you to avoid pressing the
Search or Launcher key for each
shortcut for faster navigation. You can also change the color
of your cursor to improve its visibility; you can now choose
from 7 new colors, in addition
to the default black. This is designed to better
support people with low vision, and complements other ways
that Chromebook cursors can be customized, like adjusting their size
for further visibility. And for students with motor
and dexterity challenges who use the keyboard or an
external device for navigation, we’ve just launched
Switch Access on Chromebooks. Switch Access helps make
the interface accessible through the use of a one-
or two-button switch controller. There are also many
accessibility features built directly
into Google Workspace products. Earlier on, we spoke about
live captions in Google Meet, which are great for those
who are deaf or hard of hearing. They’re now available
in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese,
in addition to English. You can also customize
the placement of the captions and the size of the text -
just as you can with live captions
in Google Slides. And in Google Docs, we’ve
launched several improvements to braille support,
such as new keyboard shortcuts, faster typing echo
and screen-reader navigation, improved handling of punctuation
and spaces, and more. And we couldn’t do any of
this alone - there are many popular
accessibility apps and tools being used by students and
schools that integrate
seamlessly with Chromebooks and Google Workspace, including Don Johnston’s new
integration with Google WaveNet to give students
with print disabilities the ability to listen
to text read aloud for better comprehension. CaptiVoice’s
speech-to-text solution allows students to fill in
worksheets and quizzes through dictation, and Cricksoft solutions like
Cricksoft Clicker Communicator enables non-verbal students
to use an augmentative and alternative communication
app on their Chromebooks. All of these can be found
on the Chromebook App Hub, along with information about hundreds of apps’
accessibility policies. The shift from physical
to virtual classrooms can sometimes prove
even more challenging for students
with disabilities. As parents and guardians
look for resources to help support
their children at home, they can check out the
Tech Toolkit along with our
Guide for Guardians of Children with Disabilities for in-depth tutorials
and explanations of the features built into Chromebooks
and Google Workspace. To learn more, visit
edu.google.com/accessibility The future of education
is digital. The number of students
going to college online is rapidly increasing. We needed to create a solution that would enable
working adult students to get the support
they need 24/7. So we created a
virtual assistant, Irving, built on Google Cloud. Irving has had over 700,000
conversations, serving over 89,000 students and handling those conversations
by itself at a rate of 93%. We talk about
digital transformation as a way to remove barriers
for doing all sorts of work, including teaching and learning. As we've been challenged by moving all of our
university business to remote, we quickly started
integrating G Suite. You're creating an ecosystem
where you consider integration, accessibility, personalization. Many different institutions
are using technology to be innovative and to provide
more quality degrees. At Penn State World Campus,
our goal on the team was to provide more efficiency
to the academic advisor so that they could focus
more on student services. And we did that by using
Google Cloud. With our user interface, we are actually able to respond
to students within seconds. It's a little bit
of a eureka moment when we get that point
where we've created some piece of technology that is going to
really impact our students. I really didn't think
that this would be anywhere remotely possible
to obtain a degree, but if you have
that can-do attitude, you can do anything
that you set your mind to. Hi, I’m Laura Holmes, a Product Manager
on Google for Education. If there’s one message
you take with you today, it’s that here at Google we
build our products for everyone. As part of this effort,
and as Avni mentioned earlier, we aim to be assistive: providing the technology
and tools that are the most helpful
for you and your students. Just as your needs change
over time, so does the technology
that serves them. Over the years I’ve heard
from many teachers about how magical it felt
for their students to transition to Google products,
because for the first time these students could collaborate
with one another, no matter where they were. But yesterday’s magic quickly
becomes today’s expectation. Tomorrow, the bar
becomes even higher. So what does this look like
in practice? How do we continually
raise the bar on what it means to be assistive
at the speed of your needs and technology’s ability
to meet them? Let’s first get some perspective
on how rapidly technology has changed
in a short period of time. Remember when you were
tethered to your home or office to make phone calls,
or when a student was sick and their schoolwork had to be
sent home with a friend? When no access
to a physical classroom meant that no instruction
took place? Today, we have: Chromebooks that let you learn
from anywhere. Mobile phones that let you
access information even without
internet connections. Google Classroom to share
and complete assignments. And video conferencing that
lets educators teach remotely and students
learn from home. Most of these technologies
being used regularly today weren’t available
10 years ago. Not only have these technologies
changed the way we teach and learn, they’ve also
made us ask, what’s next? I want to take some time today
to share how we’re already using assistive technology
to enable leaders, empower educators
and equip students, and what an assistive future
could look like. First, let’s refresh ourselves
on what we mean by assistive: assistive technology
is any technology that makes it easier for you
to accomplish a given task, whether you are
an education leader looking at students'
performance trends, an administrator fielding
IT questions, or a child
learning to read. At Google, we power our products
with assistive technologies like artificial intelligence
and machine learning, or AI and ML for short. These technologies quickly
process massive amounts of data and get smarter over time. We use these technologies
with care, and will always do so
in a way that respects the trust you’ve placed in us
to protect your privacy. Now, let’s share some examples
of how we’re applying assistive technologies to save
people time and resources, and help them make more
informed, data-based decisions. First, we’ll focus on how
we’re using assistive technology to enable education leaders. For many education leaders, responding to technical
questions from students and families in their community
can be incredibly time intensive for their IT admin staff. This was especially tough
during the transition to remote
and hybrid learning. Today, through Google Cloud, you can add an
automated virtual assistant to your school
or region’s webpage to answer frequently asked
questions from your community. In Ontario, Canada, the Upper Grand District
School Board turned to this technology
last year when they quickly had to pivot
to online learning. The high volume of incoming
technical support questions overwhelmed the district’s
IT admin staff, and response times lagged. In less than 3 weeks, their team created an
automated virtual assistant to respond
to families’ questions. The virtual assistant handles
about 1,000 queries a day with 92% accuracy and less-than-1-second
response time. This enables parents
and students to get the answers
they need quickly, while also reducing the burden
on administrative staff. Today we’re introducing
another new offering geared towards
education leaders: Google Cloud’s
Student Success Services. It works like this: using artificial intelligence
and machine learning, Student Success Services
extracts and draws meaningful insights
from vast arrays of data. With these insights, we enable
leaders to take decisive action to improve learning outcomes
for educators and students. One powerful example of this
comes from Ivy Tech, a community college system
in Indiana serving over 50,000 students. Using Student Success Services, education leaders can predict
with 80% accuracy whether a student is at risk of
failing a class or dropping out. In the initial pilot, 3,000 students who were
contacted went from at-risk of dropping out, to improving
their grades to a C or better! As we work to equip more
students around the world with the skills
they need to succeed, assistive technologies,
such as machine learning, are the backbone
of everything that we do. These technologies allow us
to deliver the most relevant information
in the shortest amount of time, and in the most
engaging way possible. It starts with
our earliest learners. Many of you may be
familiar with Read Along, our Android app
that encourages children to have fun
while learning to read. It features a virtual
reading buddy named Diya, who helps children by learning and responding to them
in real-time as they read aloud, using Google's advanced
text-to-speech and voice
recognition technologies. Many times, Diya helps students
when they might not have someone else in their life
to help them learn to read. We’ve found that after reading
for just 100 minutes on the app, students have improved
their oral reading fluency by up to 88 percent. As students grow and tackle more
complex learning challenges, our assistive technology
grows with them. Last year, more students
and their families than ever turned to technology
for learning assistance, from searching for explanations,
to watching math tutorials. That’s why we’re
kicking off 2021 with an expansion
of our homework help and learning features
on Google Search. Today, if a student gets stuck
on a math problem, they can type an equation
into the Search bar or take a picture through Lens
in the Google App to find a step-by-step
explanation of how to solve the problem. To reach more students
around the world, we're also making these features
available in up to 70 languages. Through our partnership
with key math providers, we are also increasing
the breadth of topics supported to include subjects
like Geometry and Pre-Calculus. Beyond helping students
find the right answer, we want to ensure that they
understand the process to get there,
to fully master a given topic. For numerous math,
physics and chemistry concepts, students can find results
on Search that provide relevant
explanations, videos and formulas
to assist their learning. We’re thrilled to announce
that we have partnered with education providers like BBC,
Toppr, Chegg and Kahoot to surface sample practice
problems directly in Search. Students can try it out
by searching for a phrase like “linear equation
practice problems.” These tools give students
an opportunity to test their knowledge and continue on to educational
websites for more information. You will see these new features
roll out over the next few weeks. By connecting students
to information from the best educational
resources on the web, we hope to assist them
in their learning and support the amazing work that educators do each
and every day. I mentioned earlier
that yesterday’s magic becomes today’s expectation, and that each day
the bar gets higher. So let’s raise
that bar right now. I invite you
to a not-too-distant future where assistive learning
technologies help teachers do what they love
and help students learn in a way that is best suited
to their needs. Today, we ask our teachers
to do a lot. Let’s look at one task:
creating student assignments. Often, assignments
are aggregated from across many
different sources, including school
curriculum content, physical textbooks and websites
found through Google Search. Finding the right sources
and putting them together in a useful and compelling way
can be time consuming. Now imagine: what if Google
could help make this easier for you? Specifically, what if we could
analyze your existing materials, the web and YouTube content, and quickly evaluate
their quality and relevance
to your teaching goals? In an assistive future,
this becomes possible. Now we’ll turn to the students: Once they have received
an assignment, they may find
they are stuck. In many cases, students do not
have immediate access to a teacher, tutor
or guardian to help them. What if we could use the power of Google’s artificial
intelligence to provide real-time feedback and encouragement
on practice problems? What if we took
this a step further by offering
step-by-step explanations and helpful formulas
along the way? How might this improve
student performance over time and build confidence
in their abilities? Teachers are constantly
looking for ways to improve
student understanding, but unless they are working
alongside that student at every moment, determining
the areas of greatest need can be challenging. In an assistive future,
teachers would have access to class-wide summaries
to understand how many students
needed help on a given topic, or which question
was most difficult for students on an exam. Teachers could even drill down
to the individual-level to get a view
into subject comprehension, or to see if a student made multiple attempts at trying
to solve a problem. In an assistive future,
everyone benefits. As a teacher, you have more time
to focus on what attracted you
to teaching in the first place; to dive deeper
into high-interest topics and conversations, to think creatively about
which lesson plans will resonate
with your students, and to support your students both emotionally
and academically. Your students are more engaged
because they receive 1-on-1 support both in
and out of the classroom. They receive personalized
learning materials and feedback, which improve
their subject comprehension, and give them greater confidence
in their learning abilities. In turn, they are more invested in taking ownership
of their education. Education leaders benefit too: they get a snapshot
of classroom practices, a view into student learning,
and real-time insights to inform how they can best
support their instructors. With
Google Workspace for Education, they can also rest assured that they’re managing
student data safely with Google’s
best-in-class data security and privacy practices. This future is not here—yet. But we’ve created many of the
building blocks to get us there. Already, teachers and students
use assistive technologies like Google Search
and YouTube to find relevant
learning content. And with AI and ML, we're adding
more intelligent features to these tools
all the time. When it comes to building
a better future, we can’t go it alone. That’s why we’ve invested
over $3M so far in Google.org grants for organizations using AI in
education. Organizations like TalkingPoints
and Quill.org are using AI to improve experiences
for educators, students and their families, from breaking down
language barriers to assist
parent-teacher communication, to providing high-need students with feedback
on grammar and syntax to help strengthen
their school work. We’re so excited to work
with all of you to continue rethinking
and raising the bar on what it means
to be assistive, to best serve
the needs of leaders, educators and students. We know that right now is a very
unique time in education, that many leaders and educators
are still in crisis mode. We also know that the needs
of today will be different than the needs of tomorrow. We hear you
and we’re here for you. As we look to the future, we will continue to push
the boundaries of what’s next, and bring the best of
Google technology to education, technology that continues
to evolve each day. We thank you for spending
your time with us today, for dreaming big
in partnership with us, and for showing us
what’s possible when we all work together. Thank you. My name is Azmat Iqbal. I teach English in a
government-aided Urdu High school. Our students come from families that
often struggle to earn daily wages, Some students travel from
distant villages to get to school because these families know
how crucial education is. My mother studied till grade 7. She tells me and my sisters to study
very hard so we can become self reliant. I want to get into
medical college one day, but without the grades
I don’t stand a chance. Growing up with similar hardships, I know how tough it is for our kids
to come to school and stay in school so I do my best
to give them quality education. With the covid crisis, we feared
that our students would fall behind. Our school lacked resources
to provide distance learning, so it was up to us teachers
to find a new way. When the Maharashtra government initiated
the Google for Education training program, I got the opportunity for
hands-on training with Google tools. With these digital tools,
we didn’t need much equipment, just a device and a stable internet connection
to continue learning from home. The other teachers picked up quickly and we started online classes. It wasn’t easy at first as most kids do not
have access to a device at all times, very often 3-4 kids in a family
share one device. So we started making video lessons
and shared these links, so that kids could access
lessons anytime. English is tough to grasp but with sir’s videos
I can replay the lesson till I fully understand. I am following in your footsteps
and I don’t want to fall…. Learning at their own pace at home
has helped our girls in particular. They have overcome their classroom shyness
and speak up with confidence now. Each class also has a link to a test which
helps kids review what they have learnt and helps us assess their learning. We have transitioned to doing all
evaluations and administrative work online. With reduced paperwork, teachers
now have more energy to plan lessons. Parents find it easier
to be involved online. I once read this in a book, “The secret of change is to focus all your energy,
not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” We can’t always
fight our circumstances but we can use opportunities
around us to change them.
