Google is Bringing More AI to Education

At the ISTELive 24 Edtech conference today, Google announced a broad range of new AI initiatives for education. Key among them is the free availability of Gemini for teen students using their Workspace for Education school accounts, and dozens of new AI-powered tools for Chromebooks and Google Workspace for Education. But there’s a lot more.

“Every teacher and student deserves to have access to meaningful educational experiences and AI is helping us make that possible,” Google for Education vice president Shantanu Sinha writes. “As part of our commitment to make AI broadly accessible, we’re providing a variety of tools for educators and learners to use in the classroom.”

Key announcements include:

Gemini for teen students in over 100 countries. In the coming months, Google will bring Gemini in English to teen students in over 100 countries for free. This will include enterprise data protections with IT admin opt-in, and Google will not use data from chats to improve its AI models.

Read Along in Classroom improvements. Part of Google Workspace for Education, Read Along uses AI to help students build their reading skills. Google has started piloting a new Read Along capability that lets teachers generate personalized stories tailored for specific student needs. And it will make Read Along available globally, though it only supports English for now. But Spanish is coming soon as well.

Gemini in Classroom. Google is also bringing Gemini to Google Classroom, now in pilot and powered by Google’s LearnLM language models, which are grounded in educational research. Educators will be able to assign content to different groups of students.

New Chromebook Plus device for education. Last month, Google announced it was bringing Gemini to Chromebook Plus, with prices starting at $350. Today, it is announcing a new Chromebook Plus model for the education market, the CTL Chromebook Plus PX131GXT.

Google Vids. Google Vids is a collaborative video creation app in Google Workspace, and Google is releasing a version without generative AI to Google Workspace for Education Plus later this year. Google Vids with generative AI can be added with a Gemini for Google Workspace add on.

New features across Google’s education offerings. Google also announced a long list of new features across its educational offerings, including integrated Classroom assignment tracking in the Chromebook quick settings panel, Google Meet integration with popular learning management systems (LMS) for Google Workspace for Education customers, 16 new Classroom add-ons with more coming from new partners soon, new student safety features in Google Chat, multi-party approval capabilities in Google Admin, and lots of new accessibility features. These include a new handwriting font for Google Workspace for Education, Read Aloud for Chrome’s reading mode, PDF text extraction in Chrome, augmented image labels in the Files app for ChromeOS, and, coming later this year, the ability to control Chromebook using facial expressions and head movements.