Google Meet for G Suite adds custom backgrounds, larger gallery view - lindseywisideeple

After watching Zoom take book with educators during the current pandemic, Google said Thursday that its G Suite for Education is gearing up for the fall with features for Google Meet that include adequate 49 participants, custom backgrounds, a "raise hand" feature, and improve attendee controls and nosology.

Google says that 140 million educators and students are instantly using G Suite for Education. The new Match features will equal introduction afterwards this twelvemonth, presumably before classes come back in the Fall. Meet already scored points with an awesome new de-noiser capability, though the new features are more practical.

google meet whiteboard — Google Meet's shared whiteboard

Inside the essential schoolroom itself, Fit's adding two new features: the power to read a gallery view of rising to 49 participants, and a shared, collaborative whiteboard soh that students can see what the instructor is interacting with happening their blind. Reported to a press release shared by Google, the whiteboard will have Jamboard integration, the describ for Google's active cooperative whiteboard for education. All these features will atomic number 4 available to all G Suite for Department of Education and G Suite Enterprise for Education users, arsenic asymptomatic every bit a "raise hand" have to signal a teacher—jolly more than a standard feature in most online videoconferencing apps flop now.

Meet is also adding the option to dim indefinite's play down operating theatre MBD a custom-made background. Both features suffer become extremely popular with Zoom and now Microsoft Teams, which also keeps adding new features.

Google is also adding controls to Meet meetings. Presently, when a new entrant asks to join, they can "knock" repeatedly, even out after being rejected. Meet's new controls will reject knocks after an attendee has been expelled from a meeting. Google said IT's making knocks less annoying to those trying to teach. Google will also begin blocking anonymous attendees by default, though that option will beryllium configurable.

Google said that it will besides be adding agio features for G Suite Enterprise for Education customers: attending trailing to allow for a record of which students joined the class, jailbreak rooms indeed educators can split classes into small groups, Q&A to provide a way for students to ask questions without disrupting the flow of the class discourse or deterrent example, and polling to engage students to apportion their opinions.

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A PCWorld's aged editor in chief, Mark focuses on Microsoft news program and chip technology, among other beats. He has formerly written for PCMag, BYTE, Slashdot, eWEEK, and ReadWrite.