Your Google Meet experience is set to change; here is what new features are likely to offer

Google Meet has allowed people to communicate effectively, both voice and video, in these dark, coronavirus-hit times. It is a simple and very effective tool to use and this has allowed Google Meet to become one of the most popular video conferencing platforms in the world. Google Meet has not only helped people coordinate with their colleagues while working from home it has also made it easier for school and college-going kids to study without having to attend physical classes. Now, a massive update has been rolled out for Google Meet that is aimed at helping both students and teachers make ‘studying-from-home’ stress free.

Google Meet security

Google Meet’s latest update makes video calls much more secure for students and teachers. Google said that every teacher and co-teacher in a Classroom will now be able to become a host in a meeting, which will enable multiple teachers to share the load of managing a class. The company also said that once a teacher is present, students who are on the Classroom roster will be automatically admitted to the meeting. Students will be placed into a “waiting room” and won't be able to see or communicate with other participants until a teacher is present. Additionally, a student who is not on the Classroom roster will have to “ask to join” and only the teacher can allow them into the meeting. Clearly, Google has been studying keenly what has been happening in video classrooms and is looking to make the experience more effective for teachers and more fulfilling for students.

For meetings started from Meet or Calendar

Google in a blog also mentioned a bunch of new features for meetings started from Meet or Calendar. The company said that when a host ends breakout rooms, participants will get a warning and then will be forced back into the main meeting. Hosts can match the breakout room safety settings with the safety settings from the main meeting. Also, to prevent distractions, hosts will be able to turn off everyone’s video at once with a “video lock.”

Google also said that it is adding important meeting safety controls, such as the ability to end meetings for everyone on the call and mute everyone at once, for hosts using tablets and mobile phones.

All of these features will arrive on Google Meet in the coming months.

For admins

Google has also announced a bunch of new features for admins. In its blog post, Google said that it is adding settings to the Admin Console ‘so school leaders can set policies for who can join their school’s Meet video calls and whether people from their school can join video calls from other schools.’ Google also said that admins will also soon have a new setting to control whether Quick access is enabled by default, and another setting to control whether people can use the chat in meetings. Google has already started rolling out these changes to the Google Classroom admins.

And in the coming weeks, Google will enable admins with Education Standard and Education Plus to end any meeting in their organisation directly from the investigation tool. Doing so will also turn off Quick Access automatically so nobody can rejoin the meeting without the host present.

And others...

Google’s updated list of features doesn’t end there. Google said that soon teachers will be able to choose co-hosts in meetings, and all meeting hosts will have access to safety controls. And in the coming months, it will be rolling out support for multiple hosts on Google Meet. Additionally, users will be able to pin multiple tiles to customise what they want to focus on and use closed captions during live streams.

Google Meet live translations

Another major feature coming to Google Meet is live translations. Google said that later this year, Meet will offer live translated captions. “With live translations enabled, you can listen to someone speaking one language and see real-time captions in another language. We expect this will be especially helpful in multilingual classrooms or when meeting with parents who speak a different language,” Google wrote in its blog post.

Google Meet public live streaming to YouTube

Lastly, Google said that users will soon be able to host public live streams streamed right to YouTube so anyone outside of your institution can attend, ideal for school board meetings, school events and more. Public live streaming will be rolling 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.