Google Workspace is an online productivity tool suite consisting of numerous applications from Google such as Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drive, Forms, Gmail, Meet, Calendar, and others. One of the main advantages of the applications is the enhanced capability for collaboration within user teams in a variety of settings.
Google Workspace for Education is a set of Google tools focused on students and teachers. Google’s basic office applications increase productivity, ease communication, and foster collaboration between and among students and teachers, as well as help them organize their work. For instance, Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drive can be used for group work assignments. Classroom is a course management application unique to the education editions.
Google Workspace for Education allows teachers to choose from a variety of tools depending on the needs of the learning process.
For both individual and group work assignments, students can use Docs as a word processor, and Sheets and Slides as numerical calculation and presentation management tools respectively. The simultaneous editing feature, which is present in each tool, helps students to organize their group work, especially when they – for any reason – must participate remotely. Drive is a file sharing platform syncing automatically with the three office applications, where students can share files with each other and with their teacher.
Teachers can use Forms as an assessment design and implementation tool. Some examples of different assessment formats are short answer questions, multiple-choice questions, and essay questions. Teachers can also make the assessment experience interactive and engaging by designing game-like assessment questions, such as digital escape rooms.
For easy communication among and between students and teachers, teachers can use Gmail and Meet. Gmail is an e-mail manager, providing for asynchronous communication with students. Meet is an online meeting tool, providing for live interactions, such as online class sessions and office hours.
Teachers can use Classroom for course content, organization, and assessments. Classroom is a course management application that includes the curation of content, grading assignments, communication with students, and generation of originality reports. Teachers can integrate other Google tools into this platform to add more features to the classroom learning environment.
For better maintenance and organization of tasks, teachers can use Calendar, Keep, and Task. Calendar assists teachers with scheduling classes and meetings with students and colleagues. Keep helps teachers take reflective notes about their teaching and students. Task allows teachers to make a list of things to do with an assigned timeline.
There are also no ads utilized in Google Workspace, and student data is not utilized for targeted advertisements. It is also mentioned that schools own the data and Google strives to protect the data through secure servers and services.
The accessibility portion of the site claims that Google Workspace for Education was created with accessibility in mind. Teachers can utilize a range of built-in accessibility features for students with disabilities such as screen readers, closed captioning, and voice typing.
The Control Access to Google Services by Age feature is unique to the Google Workspace for Education editions. Examples of Google services available for students are Google Search, YouTube, Google Maps, etc. For the students under the age of 18, the system sets default limitations to the capability of certain services. Select services are restricted to the users above the age of 18. Some of these features are customizable for schools, others cannot be changed until a student reaches the age of 18.