ARYABHATTA ACADEMY PUNE

GOOGLE OPEN ITS G SUITE FOR EDUCATION TO HOME-SCHOOL CO-OPS

Google today announced that it is changing the eligibility guidelines of its free G Suite for Education service to include home-school co-ops. Parents and teachers who run home-school co-ops will be able to sign up for it in the coming weeks.

G Suite for Educations includes all of Google’s usual online productivity tools and then layers a number of education-specific services like Classroom on top of that. Google Classroom, it’s worth noting, was already available to any G Suite user, but to subscribe to G Suite for Education, you needed to be affiliated with a school or school district. Now, home-school co-ops will be able to verify their status and get access to G Suite for Education, too.

“Through technology, home-school co-op teachers can set and change assignments on the fly, students can work together even if geographically separated, and everyone has a common format for collaboration,” writes Darren Jones of the Home School Legal Defense Association, in today’s announcement. “It’s because of this potential that I’ve been working closely with Google this year to make sure that home-school co-ops have the same access as other schools to G Suite for Education.”

Google has piloted this program with a number of co-ops in recent months and given that these groups function a bit like traditional schools, with some being more formal than others, I can see how access to a shared and integrated set of tools would be useful there.

THE LOGITECH CRAYON IS GREAT, BUT IT'S LIMITED TO THE EDUCATION MARKET

We just got a look at the new iPad accessories Logitech announced today: the $49 Crayon and the $99 Rugged Case. They are really nice, but they are not for you. Both accessories are specifically designed to sell to the education market and will not hit general retail.

Let’s start with the Crayon because it’s fascinating. It’s half the price of the Apple Pencil and works a little bit differently. It does not need to be paired via Bluetooth. Instead, any Crayon can work with any iPad. Apple says that’s so a teacher can walk around with it and use it with student devices. Since it doesn’t pair via Bluetooth, it can’t do pressure sensitivity. However, everything else works the same. It can measure angle, handle palm-rejection, and it’s just as precise.

It charges via Lightning, with a little rubber grommet on top to cover the hole. It also has another feature the Apple Pencil lacks: an honest-to-god on / off button. That means it’s not just a passive stylus; 9to5Mac says it uses a “special wireless frequency.”

It seems as though the Crayon will only work with the most recent generation of iPads, not the iPad Pro or older iPads. It should last about eight hours on a charge, according to Logitech.

Apple says this is the first (and so far, the only) MFI-approved third-party stylus for the iPad. And using it for just a minute or two, it came so close to being as good as an Apple Pencil that I was pretty bummed that it won’t be made available to the general market.