Google Gives Students Unlimited Storage Space in the Cloud
Google
is
giving the 30 million students and teachers who already use Google Apps for
Education unlimited storage — and it's offering the same deal to
anyone whose
school wants to sign up for it.
Similar
to
its Drive for Work that it charges $10 a month for, Google is creating
Drive
for Education — only it will be free to nonprofit educational
institutions, and
there are no ads.
"Why
lug
around piles of paper or overstuffed binders," Google Apps for Education
Product Manager Ben Schrom asked, "when every type of document or file
can be
retrieved from the nearest Chromebook, tablet, smartphone or browser?"
Along
with
the unlimited cloud-based storage for students, teachers and
administrators — which will be rolled out over the next few weeks —
before the
end of the year, the company will also offer Google Apps Vault, a compliance-focused
tool for
administrators that will allow them to search through files within the
school's
domain.
The
archiving
and discovery tool had been available to schools at a cost, but now
it will be free.
Previously,
students
using Google Apps for Education got 30GB of free storage space, enough
for most, but now, along with the unlimited storage space, users can upload individual files up to 5TB in size.
The
launch
of the new Drive for Education comes on the heels of the August
introduction of Classroom,
which helps teachers digitally manage their classes.
Schrom
said
Classroom and Drive for Education "are very complementary."
"Every
file
that you use in Classroom is shared in Drive," he said. "So, by bulking
Drive up, it only improves Classroom."
About the Author
Michael Hart is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer and the former executive editor of THE Journal.