Posted by Ben Schrom, PM Google Apps for Education

(Cross-posted on the Google for Work Blog)

In a little over two years, Drive has become the cloud storage and sharing solution for more than 190 million people worldwide who use it regularly at home, work and school. For many of the 30 million students and educators using Google Apps for Education, Drive has even replaced their bookbags. Why lug around piles of paper or overstuffed binders when every type of document or file can be retrieved from the nearest Chromebook, tablet, smartphone or browser?

Earlier this year, we introduced Drive for Work—a premium version of Google Apps for Work—and now we’re bringing that same power to schools. Today we’re announcing Drive for Education, an infinitely large, ultra-secure and entirely free bookbag for the 21st century.
Drive for Education will be available to all Google Apps for Education customers at no charge and will include:
  • Unlimited storage: No more worrying about how much space you have left or about which user needs more gigabytes. Drive for Education supports individual files up to 5TB in size and will be available in coming weeks. 
  • Vault: Google Apps Vault, our solution for search and discovery for compliance needs, will be coming free to all Apps for Education users by the end of the year. 
  • Enhanced Auditing: Reporting and auditing tools and an Audit API easily let you see the activity of a file, are also on the way. 
All of this comes with the same world-class security that protects all Drive users. Every file uploaded to Google Drive is encrypted, not only from your device to Google and in transit between Google data centers, but also at rest on Google servers. As always, the data that schools and students put into our systems is theirs. Classroom, which recently launched to Google Apps for Education users, makes using Drive in school even better by automatically organizing all Classroom assignments into Drive folders. And Google Apps for Education remains free to nonprofit educational institutions with no ads or ads-related scanning.

We want educators and students who use Google Apps for Education to be able to focus on the learning experience—not the technology that supports 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.

Repost from http://googleforeducation.blogspot.com/2014/09/announcing-drive-for-education-21st.html