Google Education is gearing up and growing its G-suite for two groups: guardians and graduates. How? The company announced two new features earlier this week at its free online conference Education on Air.
First up, for parents and guardians, Google is making it easier to get involved and stay on top of student performance. Specifically, the company has removed the need for guardians to have a Google account in order to receive email summaries of student progress in Google Classroom, which can provide information like a student’s missing work, classroom activity or upcoming assignments.
“The daily update is really helpful,” Anders Rian, a parent who receives Classroom email summaries for his son, said in the announcement. “Not only in following up on my son's homework, but also in having a dialogue with him around what he learns.”
And for graduates—whether from high school or college—Google is trying to make the exciting yet overwhelming transition out of school a little less stressful by reducing risks around data loss. Early next year, the company will launch a feature that will allow graduating students to more easily transfer emails, resumes, projects and other files from their G Suite for Education account into another Google account before their domain ends.
Administrators don’t have to wait until next year to protect their students, however. Adjustments can be made now to migration permission settings to enable students to transfer copies of emails and other documents from their school-affiliated Google Drive to another account. (Here’s another tip: Schools with Takeout, a backup service that lets users take their data out of Google, already enabled have this feature by default.)
