Google announced that it is launching Drive for Education, which is a variation of the earlier released Drive for Work, but this time geared for students and teachers.
The announcement for the service, which will be released in the coming weeks, was made in a post written up by product manager of Apps for Education Ben Schrom and found on the Google for Education official blog.
Schrom wrote that Google's Drive service is the choice for cloud storage and sharing services for over 190 million users all over the world, being used in a variety of functions across the home, the office, and the school.
In addition, for the 30 million teachers and students that have been using Apps for Education, the usage of Drive has replaced the bulky bookbags that was once commonplace in schools. As both students and teachers can access all the files and documents needed in class through a smartphone, tablet or Chromebook, the need for lugging around bags has become much less.
The Drive for Work service introduced earlier this year is a premium model of Apps for Work users that provides them with unlimited storage and additional security controls for a monthly fee of $10 per user. Google is now looking to emulate that service for Apps for Education users with Drive for Education.
Drive for Education is a modern, digital bookbag that has infinite space and high security, and will be made available at no extra charge for all Apps for Education users.
Drive for Education features unlimited storage, eliminating the need to worry whether there is enough space in the Drive or if a certain user would need more storage. The service is also capable of supporting files that are as big as 5TB.
In addition, all Apps for Education users will gain free access to Google Apps Vault, which will make it easier to search for compliance requirements, once the service is launched by the end of 2014. Also upcoming are tools for reports and audits, along with an Audit API that will allow users to monitor the activities done on a specific file.
All the features come with the same top-security as protection for all users of Drive. Every uploaded file to the Drive receives encryption across all servers of Google.
After all the additional features and upgrades, Apps for Education will remain free and ads-free for all non-profit educational institutions.
Schrom wrote that Google wants both students and teachers that use Apps for Education to focus their efforts on learning, and not on the technology that is meant to support it.
"With Drive for Education, users can put an end to worries about storage limits and more easily maintain a safe, effective and compliant learning environment," Schrom wrote.
