Google workspace A brief Overview
The future has arrived and organizations continue to learn about the benefits of hybrid work. Of course, educational institutions are no exception. Taking these aspects into account, Google Workspace For Education has positioned itself as the leading tool for collaborative work, innovation, and large-scale connectivity in educational institutions globally. Given the appearance of new tools that have impacted the way teachers, administrators, and managers work in the post-pandemic period, we cannot deny that as soon as we become familiar with an application, there are already three other alternatives that offer similar characteristics.
Remote collaborative work and teaching require various conditions that Google Workspace for Education has managed to bring together in a single space. In this way, all the tools for video streaming, collaborative work, email, file transfer, and file management are nested in the same family. Let’s not forget that Google Workspace for Education is the product of improving G-Suite with a view to this period that we saw as the future, but which has become our present. It has a wide variety of functions and its price is highly competitive.
WHY IS GOOGLE WORKSPACE FOR EDUCATION THE SPEARHEAD?
GMAIL: PERSONALIZED AND SECURE BUSINESS EMAIL
This application has the incredible number of 900 million users who prefer to have a Gmail email account, and around 5 million companies use it. We tell you its advantages:
- Having an email that includes your own domain gives an image of professionalism to your educational institution.
- Not only is it easy to use, but your educational community is probably already familiar with its interface. And let’s not deny it: we all like something we already know.
- All Gmail plans use the same app on your mobile device.
- Enable creating your signature to print the image of your educational institution in all your internal and external communication.
- Being linked to your cloud in Google Drive, it allows you to send large files.
- You will have at your disposal a large storage capacity. Gmail offers 30GB of storage space in your inbox. More than enough storage to store important emails without having to constantly delete emails.
GOOGLE DRIVE: EASY AND SECURE ACCESS TO ALL YOUR CONTENT
No more fears of virus threats in data transfers. This Google Workspace for Education tool allows you to have files available for editing and collaborative work from any device.
- Google Drive stores from 15 GB in its free version, and depending on the plan your institution contracts, it offers you 30 GB, 50 GB or 1TB.
- It allows remote collaborative work with users editing simultaneously for greater and more efficient work.
- It is permanent, and this sets it apart from its competitors, which automatically delete files within a certain period. With Drive this does not happen.
GOOGLE MEET: SECURE VIDEO CALLS
Although other platforms have become popular quickly, the superiority of Google Meet is evident since it was created precisely for education and collaborative work.
- For users with personal Google accounts: A maximum of 100 participants can be present in a video call.
- For users with educational Google Workspace for Education accounts: The maximum number of participants that can join a video call depends on which edition of Google Workspace your organization has.
- In the free version, calls to a single user can last up to 24 hours, and calls with three or more participants can last up to 60 minutes.
GOOGLE CHAT: MESSAGING FOR EVERYONE
This tool helps you collaborate in a more fluid and efficient way from any device, facilitating remote work. In this way you separate your personal and work messaging, maintaining the immediacy and practicality offered by competitors.
- You can have group chats to divide rooms into issues, departments, or projects.
- Advanced chat rooms include guest access and multiple work rooms.
- The Spacesfunction, which is new, centralizes the conversations of the teams, allowing them to form a community and thus foster an organizational culture of teamwork.
- The best: like all Google tools, it is linked to all the previously mentioned applications. You can attach files from your Drive, reference video calls already made in Meet, and be linked to Google Classroom.
Content creation: Presentations, Spreadsheets and Documents
The genius of Google Workspace for Education lies in the fact that the developers of this new version always sought the practicality and functionality of its tools. That is why Presentations, Spreadsheets and Documents present a format and an interface that users identify perfectly.
- Interoperability with Office files: whether to export, upload to the cloud or read, they are made compatible with Microsoft applications.
- It allows remote and simultaneous teaching without excessively consuming resources.
- It features typing assistance with smart wording, grammar suggestions, and auto-spell check.
CENTRALIZED AND LINKED TOOLS
Perhaps the most advantageous feature of using Google Workspace for Education is its linkage between tools. Google Meet is directly linked to Google Classroom and Google Calendar, so the workload for teachers is reduced. Likewise, it will be easier for the student to find all the material that has been generated for a certain subject in one place, without having to change the platform every time they need to review a task, generate a question, write to their teacher or perform a videocall. Gone are the days when teachers, students and administrators juggled going back and forth from one tool to another or uploading videos to platforms so that parents could have a deferred meeting. Google Workspace for Education brings together in one place all the functions that your educational institution might need for this post-pandemic era, which is characterized by hybrid work.
