Google Meet getting tile pairings, PDF image to text in Chrome, and more for education

At the ISTE 2023 conference, Google today announced a slate of education features across Chrome, Meet (including tile pairings), Workspace, and Classroom. 

Chrome is adding the ability to convert PDFs that are basically images into text. This OCR capability will be especially useful for screen readers and goes hand-in-hand with the upcoming Reading Mode. Both will begin rolling out over the coming months. 

Much of the web’s content is inaccessible for those who have difficulty reading — in fact, based on internal Google analysis, there are more than 360 billion PDFs that are inaccessible for people who are blind or have low vision and rely on screen readers.

The Google for Education App Hub was also announced today to find Google Classroom add-ons, School Information System (SIS) integrations, and app licensing. The last aspect is meant to simplify license management where schools buy apps directly from developers and then distribute to students/teachers. Google is partnering with Concepts, ExplainEverything, Figma, LumaFusion, Squid, WeVideo, and Adobe Express. 

What’s more, Adobe Express for Education is free to K12 schools and districts and available on Chromebooks across the US. Interested administrators can learn more and apply here.

Elsewhere, Google Meet is getting the ability to pair a tile with “someone else’s so if one of you speaks, you’re both highlighted.” Intended use cases include co-presenting and making meetings “more inclusive when using voice or sign-language interpreters.”

Google is also letting Education Plus subscribers host meetings up to 1,000 attendees. 

…for example, 500 contributors and 500 viewers. Whereas contributors can fully participate in meetings, viewers can interact with polls and Q&A but can’t share audio or video, helping reduce meeting distractions and giving the meeting host more control.

That tier, along with the Teaching and Learning Upgrade, is getting the ability to add interactive questions to assigned YouTube videos in Google Classroom.  It’s meant to “help students check their understanding as they watch,” and can be done manually or be suggested by AI.