Internet search giant Google has announced new features it is going to add to Google Meet for education customers.
The company is adding features to not only increase the utility of the platform for teachers and students but also making it more secure by giving greater access to admins.
Live Translate supportFor educators with the Teaching and Learning Upgrade or Education Plus, Google will offer live translated captions, later this year.
With the live translations enabled, Google claims that users will be able to listen to someone speaking one language and see real-time captions in another language.
Livestream directly on YouTubeUsers will soon get the option to make Meet calls livestream on YouTube that will enable anyone to attend it.
Google says that this functionality would be ideal for school board meetings, school events and more.
Google said that the public live streaming will be rolled out in beta later this year and will be widely available for customers with the Teaching and Learning Upgrade or Education Plus in early 2022.
Closed captions during live streamsAnother feature Google will add in the coming months is support for closed captions during live streams.
This means they will be able to visually display the audio in a program.
More controls for adminsGoogle said that it will add settings to the Admin console that will enable school authorities to create policies for who can join their school’s video calls.
Further, in the coming weeks, admins with Education Standard and Education Plus will have the option to end any meeting in their organisation directly from the investigation tool.
It will also not allow anyone to rejoin the meeting without the host present.
Security enhancementsWhen it comes to security enhancements, Google will tweak some features that will give more control to teachers.
These include things like permission from teachers to join a meeting for anyone who is not on the Classroom roster, automatic admission of students who are on the Classroom roster to the meeting once the teacher is present, placing of students in the “waiting room” and inability to see or talk to other students until a teacher is present.