Over the past year, video conferencing became essential for teaching, learning and staying connected. Whether you’re still teaching remotely, in a hybrid setting or have returned to in-person instruction, Meet provides an easy, reliable and secure way for your school community to connect. Today, we’re announcing new features to Meet to continue supporting the evolving needs of school communities.
Secure by design
Meetings initiated from Google Classroom will soon be safer and more secure by design, with these updates coming in the next few months:
- Every teacher and co-teacher in a Classroom class will be meeting hosts in Meet by default, so multiple teachers can share the load of managing a class.
- 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.
- Anyone who’s not on the Classroom roster will have to “ask to join” and only the teacher(s) can allow them into the meeting.
All meetings, including those started from Meet or Calendar, will get the following additional security updates in the coming months:
- 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.
- To quickly prevent distractions, hosts will be able to turn off everyone’s video at once with “video lock.”
- For hosts using tablets and mobile phones, we’re adding important meeting safety controls, like the ability to end meetings for everyone on the call and mute everyone at once.
