How teachers can get the most out of G Suite for Education

G Suite for Education is Google’s software suite designed to include all of Google’s main components in one package that teachers can easily implement in their lessons and classroom management.
From enhancing student activities to managing assignments and faculty meetings more smoothly, G Suite for Education has a lot of potential, but if teachers are not prepared to use it in an optimal way, some of that potential may remain untapped. Let’s explore how teachers can get the most out of what Google has to offer.

Turn your class into a team with G Suite for Education

G Suite for Education includes multiple tools to make school life easier and more exciting, but there is one thing most of the services on offer have in common: G Suite for Education is designed for collaborative work. From editing other students’ Google Docs, spreadsheets and Google Slides presentations, to setting up Team Drives to store the material for group projects, to participating in class-wide discussions on Google Classroom, where everyone can receive teacher feedback and make sure their voices are heard, the main goal of G Suite for Education is to turn your class into an efficient team.
Let it never be said that working from home through technology is an isolating practice that deprives students of the chance to work together: if anything, accessing Google Classroom and other shared tools from outside the school premises and discussing school projects live on Google Hangouts is an excellent way to get them acclimated from an early age to the kind of long-distance collaboration they may be required to engage in at work in their near future.
Equipping each student with a personal Google Calendar and setting time limits so that shared documents can no longer be edited after the due date, moreover, leaves them no excuses to skip assignments or turn in work late and teaches them valuable lessons about responsibility and time management that will stay with them for the rest of their lives.

G Suite for Education benefits: free, safe and secure

Setting up a G Suite for Education account is easy, free, and a guarantee that your information is in good hands. After a 14-day waiting period to verify that your institution qualifies for an account (all not-for-profit, formally accredited educational institutions are eligible, whereas organisations such as public libraries and military academies, which provide educational services without boasting the title of school or university, may be better suited to G Suite for Non-profits), you will be granted access to G Suite for Education’s full range of tools from one easy-to-use admin account that grants you more control than simply equipping each student with a personal Google account.
There is a large amount of overlap between the tools offered by G Suite for Education and a personal Google account, but G Suite for Education is a safer, more suitable option for classroom use.
The availability of the education-specific application Google Classroom is not the only major difference between the two sets of tools: G Suite for Education ensures that all material and software students can access is age-appropriate and not distracting by offering teachers the ability to enable and disable single tools in the suite as they see fit, effectively offering different, custom versions of the suite to different age and class groups in the same institution. This is an easy way to make sure that younger, easily distracted pupils stay on task and are denied access to tools that they cannot yet be trusted to use responsibly.
If you are concerned about privacy, moreover, you may be interested in knowing that while Google does collect information about the usage of G Suite for Education user accounts in order to provide basic services such as Gmail, Docs, Sheets and Slides, the school has a good degree of control about what personal information to share with the provider and Google’s aim is to keep the G Suite for Education experience ad-free and secure, giving faculty members the opportunity to exchange encrypted emails in case they contain sensitive student data.
With a world of tools at your fingertips in one easy solution, G Suite for Education is an excellent way to bring your class into the digital era once and for all.