South African schools that aren’t yet embracing Google Workspace for Education Plus are missing out on the opportunity to gain cost-effective, enterprise-grade security and a wealth of administrative, teaching and learning capabilities.

This is according to Hendry Freeman, owner of Infintec – a Digicloud Education Partner and Google for Education Partner of the Year for 2024.

Freeman said Infintec is increasingly focusing on Google Workspace for Education as one of its key product offerings because it addresses major pain points in education today – including teacher frustration around time spent on admin, and the high cost of software for education.

“I understand the education environment better than most, since I come from that space and still teach a class daily. I speak to teachers so I understand what the pain points are,” he said.

The challenges include time-consuming admin that doesn’t deliver valuable analytics and insights. “A lot of the burnout we see among teachers is due to them having to spend hours and hours doing admin work that is little more than a box-ticking exercise.”

Google Workspace for Education Plus – the ultimate Google Workspace for Education edition – addresses the challenge.

“Classroom in Education Plus has additional functionality such as class analytics or domain-wide analytics. With Classroom Analytics, Apps Script and AppSheet, a lot of automation can be built to take on those repetitive admin tasks,” he said.

Collaboration

“For example, when a teacher coaches sport, they can do away with the clipboard and attendance sheets, using an app on their phone to keep tabs on how many children attended practice, how many games they played and what the results were, and at the end of the season use this data to determine who gets colours for sport. This saves countless hours and mitigates any mistakes that could have occurred when doing it manually.”

For collaboration, Google Drive and Gmail offer a range of features that make teachers’ lives easier, like scheduling an e-mail to parents to be sent at 8am.

Freeman highlighted Google Workspace for Education Plus’s enterprise-grade security features. “Schools are coming under attack by cybercriminals, and we’ve seen situations where schools get attacked with ransomware and actually have to go and restore the data if they have the data backed up. And every now and again you hear of a school losing absolutely everything and having to recreate their data by literally going from laptop to laptop to get the data back again,” he said.

Google Workspace for Education Plus provides a robust suite of security measures, including AI-powered protection against spam, phishing and malware.

Classroom for Google Education Plus also includes unlimited plagiarism checking – allowing schools to avoid the cost of third-party tools, while offering better results. “Other tools check for plagiarism by having visibility to the content on the internet, but Google goes one step further by having visibility inside the school’s Google Drive as well. So, it’s not just checking plagiarism on the internet, it’s also checking for plagiarism across the school.”

Freeman highlighted the benefits of Classroom with Education Plus having add-ons integrated with Classroom, including Kahoot!, Pear Deck and Edpuzzle, to elevate teaching. “A teacher doesn’t have to go to three or four sites to make an assignment – they can do everything from within Google Classroom. They also have access to tools like Practice Sets that help them create smart quizzes to assess learner progress, Google Vids for easy video creation, and Read Along – a speech-based reading tutor app.

All-in-one ecosystem

“In terms of features for collaboration, administrative tasks, teaching and learning, and security, Google Workspace for Education Plus is phenomenal – and it’s all-in-one ecosystem and priced from as little as R5.50 per learner per month,” Freeman said.

“Although we at Infintec have traditionally focused on enterprise solutions, education is becoming more of a priority for us because we have a passion for supporting education. We believe all schools, no matter their background or the resources they have, should have access to the best tools – like Google Workspace for Education Plus – to enhance teaching and learning.”