Google for Education
The Google for Education umbrella includes a broad suite of products and tools; it does not have a single, central product or interface, so this product profile describes the range of functions students and educators can use.
K–12 students engage with Google for Education through school-issued accounts that school systems enable and manage. These accounts can include access to Google Workspace for Education for creating and sharing documents and Google Classroom for creating, distributing, and providing feedback on work. Also under the Google umbrella is Gemini, Google's large language model. Gemini is an AI chatbot. Gemini has a function called Guided Learning Mode which is a version of Gemini that walks a student through a problem step by step rather than giving the answer. Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM) is a version of Gemini that answers questions, builds summaries, and generates podcast-style audio overviews using only the sources you upload. With Gemini, teachers can also build and assign customized and sharable versions of Gemini built for a specific task, called Gems.
What it looks like in action
What the students do:
Students use Gemini through features a teacher turns on. They work with Gems (i.e., custom versions of Gemini set up for a specific task) a teacher has built or shared. In Guided Learning, they work on a problem with the AI, which asks questions and gives steps rather than the answer. In Gemini Notebook, they upload sources a teacher shares, and ask questions the AI answers only from those sources in text or as a study guide, podcast, video overview, flashcards, or a mind map. Students can also use Gemini to create documents, images, and slides in Workspace.
What the AI does:
Gemini generates its responses in the moment. In an open chat, a student or teacher types a request and Gemini answers questions and produces text, images, and slides, with no restriction on giving direct answers. Running as a Gem—a custom, personalized version of Gemini that remembers a teacher’s specific instructions, roles, and goals for a task across different chats—it follows those guardrails across the conversation. In Guided Learning, Gemini is built to engage in dialogue with students to work through a problem step by step. In Gemini Notebook, it answers only from the sources a teacher or student provides, links each answer to the exact passage it came from, and says when a question falls outside them. For teachers, Gemini takes an input like a standard or a document and drafts lesson plans, quizzes, and materials. Gemini also produces practice exams for standardized tests, including the SAT, ACT, and GRE, returning answer-level feedback that explains why a response was incorrect or close.
What the teacher does:
Teachers give Gemini a starting input, a standard, a learning objective, or a document, and it drafts lesson plans, quizzes, and materials they review, edit, and assign through Google Classroom. They build Gems for students and share them with colleagues. They build classroom activities in Gemini Canvas by describing what they want in plain language. They choose which Gemini experiences students can use, including assigning Guided Learning and holding students in that mode.
What the leaders do:
Leaders adopt Google for Education at the school system or school level and can enable or disable Gemini in Workspace, the Gemini app, and Classroom through the Admin Console, including for specific groups such as certain grade levels.
Reach
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Students
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Teachers
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Schools
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School systems
Use
Recommended use
Google does not recommend an amount of use.
Actual use
TBD—pending data
Reach: Globally, more than 150 million teachers and students use Classroom and Assignments, and more than 170 million use Google Workspace for Education.
Product dimensions
Subject
All subjects
Grade span
K–12 (student AI features are system-controlled)
Curriculum alignment
Standards-only: Gemini generates from a teacher's prompt and standards, but does not reflect a specific curriculum's texts or sequence.
Design scope
Multi-function use
The way AI interacts with students
- Both students and AI asks questions
- Rubric-scored or written feedback (beyond right/wrong)
- AI gives feedback directly to students
Teacher guidance
Offers a range of uses (no specific teacher nudges)
Social vs. solo use
Solo by default—primarily independent, small groups possible
Teacher override
No score to override (AI doesn't assign a score)
Product adoption
Both—teacher-adopted and system-adopted
Dashboard scope
Teacher dashboard available
Dosage recommendations
Does not provide dosage recommendations
Users' take on wins and limitations
There are clear trends in what users (i.e., teachers, students, instructional leaders) see as the wins and limitations of each product. For each trend below, we've included one illustrative quote from our user interviews.
Wins
Google offers a broad range of functionality. Teachers use Gemini across many parts of their work, and no two teachers we interviewed used the same set of features.
"I'll develop Gems for them [students]. If I have a lab, I will create custom visualizations and simulations for them. I’ll also use Gemini for worksheets and assessments, making sure that they're aligned to the standards. And I do encourage them to use it as a study tool."
—Teacher, High School Physics and Computer Science
Because each Gem can be customized to a single assignment, students can get answers about the work in front of them and keep going on their own, while the teacher gives targeted support to more students than they could reach otherwise.
"I'll develop Gems for them, so if I have a lab, instead of them asking me a hundred questions, I have a Gem generated that has the lab inputted into there."
—Teacher, High School Physics and Computer Science
Gemini Notebook converts a teacher's assigned reading into other formats, including a podcast, a video overview, flashcards, or a mind map, so students who may not be reading on grade level or cannot otherwise access the text get the same content the class is working from.
"You can put in the reading text, and it'll create a 12-minute podcast or a seven-minute video, which is extremely helpful especially for some of my ELL [English Language Learners] kids."
—Teacher, High School Social Studies
Limitations
Students can use Gemini on a personal account at home, so an assignment completed outside class doesn't always show a teacher which parts of the work the student did themselves.
"You've got to see more of the [thought] process that students go through to write, and that's got to be a part of your grading process now."
— District Instructional Technology Coach
A Gem is a saved prompt, so its quality depends entirely on what the teacher wrote into it. Nothing in Gemini distinguishes a strong Gem from a weak one, and a Gem copied from a shared collection still needs a teacher to judge whether it does what their students need.
"I could put a pretty basic prompt into a Gem, and it's a Gem, but it's not a high-quality one."
—Technology Integration Specialist
Google for Education has so many features and facets that very few people understand everything available to them.
“I don't really know everything I can do with Google and I’m just using a little pocket that is effective for content right now."
——Teacher, High School Social Studies
Our instructional take
Instructional wins
- Google for Education offers educators a versatile set of tools embedded in the workflow that they are already using. Teachers and school systems can build thoughtful Gems that are instructionally useful in the context of their lesson and content.
- Using tools like Gemini to get to a first draft rubric or presentation can save teachers considerable time, allowing them to spend more time connecting with their students and focusing their attention on students who need the most support.
- Google for Education allows system leaders to build tools that could provide more consistent feedback for students across schools than we typically see with paper-pencil instruction.
- Google for Education lets a school or system build Gems and Gemini Notebooks once and share them, so students working in different classrooms can get the same guidance and feedback on the same task.
Instructional limitations
- When students have access to general-purpose chatbots like Gemini, they often use them in ways that reduce the effort and thinking that they put into the assignment and, in turn, their learning. Students can use Gemini (including the Gemini-powered “AI overviews” that are offered when students ask a question on Google.com) to provide work that makes it look like they have demonstrated mastery while not having learned the material.
- When teachers use tools like Gemini to get to a first draft of a lesson plan, rubric, or presentation, it can reduce the quality of thinking teachers put into their plan for the day, leaving them less ready for the in-the-moment instructional decisions that keep a lesson at the level of the standard.
- Tools like Gemini make it easy for teachers to develop novel materials, which can pull students out of the core curriculum and create gaps in learning.
- Lessons generated for ELA can emphasize comprehension skills in isolation (i.e., instruction that does not include a text) which has not been shown to support learning as opposed to skills in the context of a text.
- Tools that allow for quick differentiation and text releveling can lead to a reduction in the expectations for students if they are not reviewed carefully with attention to expectations for students.
Implementation considerations
- Google for Education requires leaders to be clear with teachers and students about acceptable use and unacceptable use, including what parts of Google they give teachers and students access to on their system account. System leaders have the option of turning off access to Gemini in Workspace, the Gemini app, and Google Classroom through the Admin Console, including for specific groups such as all students in certain grades. Search sits outside those services, so turning Gemini off does not affect the AI overview that answers a question typed into Google.com. There is no administrator control for it, and blocking it requires Chrome device policies and URL filtering.
- Leaders need to think about their guidance and training for educators on what parts of Google Classroom they encourage teachers to use and for what purposes and help all teachers understand those features. Leaders need to think through their expectations for how teachers will review AI-generated feedback and lesson materials before assigning them to students and how they will monitor this.
- If school system leaders build a Gem centrally, they need to invest time for relevant training and quality testing of the feedback. If they delegate Gem building to teachers, they need to train teachers on writing prompts and checking the quality of its feedback, since the Gem is only as good as the prompt inside it. Leaders need to think through guidance about when Gems be used in groups or pairs and when they should be used solo.
Evidence of Impact
Available evidence
Study underway
There is no independent, causal evidence of impact for Gemini in the US.
Google has run two randomized controlled trials of Guided Learning, both outside the United States.
- A preregistered trial across 12 government-supported junior secondary schools in Port Loko District, Sierra Leone, randomized 48 grade 7 and 8 classrooms serving 1,763 students to eight weeks of Guided Learning in math or to standard instruction. Student accounts ran Guided Learning only. Teachers received five to six hours of training, wrote starter prompts in advance, and delivered a four-part lesson structure while students worked in pairs sharing a device. Intent to treat, +0.258 SD, 50th to 60th percentile, 1.2 to 1.7 years of typical progress benchmarked to low- and middle-income countries. Students completing the requested 12 hours, +0.380 SD. Each additional standard deviation of baseline math proficiency increased the treatment effect by +0.195 SD. Across 113,344 messages, 97.4% stayed on topic, skill-seeking accounted for 91.4% of conversations, and Gemini posed scaffolding questions in 76.4% of its messages against direct solutions in 2.1%. Fab AI led the evaluation and Oxford MeasurEd developed and scored the assessments without access to treatment assignment.
- A trial with 165 students ages 13 to 15 across five UK secondary schools tested LearnLM, the model layer behind Guided Learning, on the Eedi mathematics platform. Expert tutors revised each drafted message before it reached students and approved 76.4% with zero or minimal edits. Students supported by LearnLM were 5.5 percentage points more likely to solve novel problems on subsequent topics than students working with human tutors.
Teaching with Gemini: Measuring the impact of Guided Learning on student mathematics progress in Sierra Leone, LearnLM Team, Google and Fab AI (2026); AI tutoring can safely and effectively support students: An exploratory RCT in UK classrooms, LearnLM Team, Google and Eedi, arXiv 2512.23633 (2025); AI in Action Evidence Scan (June 2026)
From the developer
From
Google for Education
The following was written by the team at Google and has been edited for clarity and tone by Instruction Partners.
- Google provides access to the latest models of Gemini with added data protections, including supporting compliance with FERPA, at no cost for schools. This means chats are not human reviewed or used to train AI models.
- Google continues to evolve its products based on feedback from students and educators. For example, Google recently released a new Gemini insights dashboard featuring real-time analytics at both the class and individual student levels for Gemini in Google Classroom.
- Given the importance of professional development, Google is investing in free "snackable and stackable" bite-sized modules, called the Google AI Educator Series, to help educators build baseline AI skills.
Product website: https://edu.google.com/intl/ALL_us/ai/gemini-for-education/
Hear from the developer
Instruction Partners' CEO Emily Freitag spoke with Steven Butschi and Vivek Chachcha from Google to understand what problems they're trying to solve, how the tools work, and what they're still figuring out.