New Zealand Ministry of Education Google for Education Program Announcement
Steve Smith
1. Chrome Education Upgrade Licences
The Ministry of Education and Google have signed a new partnership agreement allowing state and state integrated schools to continue to claim the Ministry-funded Chrome Education Upgrade Licences for eligible Chromebook devices
School-owned, leased and student BYOD Chromebooks are eligible to apply for the Ministry-funded Chrome Education Upgrade (previously Chrome Education licence) under this agreement.
Schools will be able to create a personalised, school-wide experience for each and every device either school owned or BYOD covered by the Chrome Education Upgrade. Through the upgrade, schools will be able to:
Select and Push apps to student devices so they have the right apps they need
Select Wifi networks to connect to
Customise the user experience by automatically loading websites on startup, adding custom bookmarks and blocking URLS and distractions
Centrally manage hundreds of thousands of devices with more than 200 controls
Protect user data with the sandboxing, Verified-Boot,and 128-bit encryption features of Chrome OS
Prevent anyone from un-enrolling their managed Chromebook from the school’s domain,
Minimise lost and stolen devices
Manage student sign-in to prioritise educational use of devices during school hours.
The Chrome Education Upgrade is a perpetual licence that covers the life of the device in the domain it’s enrolled in.
2 - Google Workspace for Education Plus
As a part of the recently signed partnership agreement between The Ministry of Education and Google, state and state integrated schools to are able to upgrade their Google Workspace for Education Fundamentals (the free for Education edition - previously called G Suite for Education) to Google Workspace for Education Plus.
Google Workspace for Education Plus
Google Workspace for Education is a set of Google Education tools and services that are tailored for Schools, Clusters and homeschools to collaborate, streamline instruction, and keep learning safe and secure.
Google Workspace for Education Plus includes all the user friendly features you experience today with additional Security, Teaching and Learning and holistic functionality.
Existing features include tools to aid teaching and learning, such as Google Classroom, Assignments, Google Meet, Google Docs, Google Forms, and Google Chat, and with Workspace for Education plus, you will now also be able to:
Engage learners in new ways with larger meetings, breakout rooms, live streaming, Q&A, polling, attendance tracking, recordings and holistic safety controls.
Use unlimited originality reports and within school matches to help detect plagiarism and encourage original work,
access your institution’s own within domain Cloud Search to discover and share information,
Keep your institution’s data more secure with advanced security, insights, and remediation tools in the event of a data breach.
Solve problems faster with help from a support team of product specialists and local representatives.
See all new updates on the ‘Whats new in Google for Education’ presentation here
A Google partner representative will be in contact shortly to help schools deploy and set up these upgraded editions.
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I have been running drop in Q and A sessions for our schools throughout the year and have opened more spaces during lockdown of course so if you have any questions please book some time with me via the booking links at distancelearningnz/ or get in contact via bit.ly/booknzsteve