Google Meet

Start a video meeting for education

For details, please visit the Google Support site: https://support.google.com/edu/classroom/answer/9776888

Use captions in a video meeting

We encourage the use of captions to support hearing impaired staff and students. For details, please visit the Google Support site: https://support.google.com/meet/answer/9300310

Best practices:

The Teacher Centre have some video and pdf resources you may be interested in: https://teachercenter.withgoogle.com/first-day-trainings/welcome-to-google-hangouts-meet

Additionally, we strongly recommend the following practices:

Staff have the ability to create meetings, join meetings outside of the school, record, etc. Students only have permission to join existing meetings WITHIN the school & they can't record.

It's important for teachers to go into the settings cog on their Class to enable the link for students. Once students have refreshed the page the link should appear.

• Failing this, students can go to meet.google.com and enter the code. Again, they can only join existing meetings within your domain, and they cannot create their own meetings. This approach may be useful if you want meetings between staff and students outside of Google Classroom.

When the session has come to an end, it is very important that teachers:

1. Disable the link and hide it from students by going into settings, hiding the link from view, and resetting the link with the arrow. This process changes the meeting code so that no one can come back. Although, no one can join without the teacher anyway. (Students can just come back into the class if they're kicked, however, if this process is followed after, say, 10 minutes of the meeting starting, then anyone who leaves (forcibly or otherwise) won't be able to come back as the meeting won't exist once the link has been reset).

2. Wait around and encourage students to leave. The students can stay as long as they like once they are in the session, with or without the teacher and EVEN IF the link has been reset. I think most will disappear quite quickly once the session has ended, but if there are any stragglers they can always be kicked. Essentially, the teacher should be the last to leave. Note: if the link has been reset then students can't invite other students in - you only have to worry about those that remain!

Students can unmute themselves, and they can also broadcast their screen if they wish. However, bad behaviour can always be punished by being kicked from the meeting. Additionally, you could always disable the platform for individuals if it comes to it. The teacher could then make the recording available to students via Drive.

• Broadcasts appear as a separate user, so if there are any issues then the broadcast can be removed while the original user remains.

• Teachers must manually start recording for anything to be saved. They can start recording at any stage.

• On this point, in the same menu there is a Closed Captions setting. If you have any hearing impaired students then it may be worth playing with - it's surprisingly accurate!

In order to achieve successful teaching, teachers should:

• Publicise the session ahead of time.

• Be there a few minutes early to ensure that students can get in. They can't join unless the teacher is already there, and some may assume that the system isn't working and won't come back!

• Make use of screen presentation. They could use this to show a Chrome Tab, a window, or an entire screen (be wary of the woes of doing this on a personal computer(!)).

  • You could use an app to mimic a whiteboard - this would be even better if you have a touch screen laptop with a pen.

  • Failing this, you can always use a tablet device in addition to a PC. Download the Google Meet app and join with the code (or follow it from the classroom app). Teachers could use an iPad as a whiteboard while keeping an eye on everyone on the main computer.

  • Apps that you may find useful: OneNote, Notion.

  • Stylus pens are relatively cheap on Amazon!

• Keep an eye on the chat window for any questions. Encourage students to type questions into the chat if they have any issues.

• If students are struggling to get into the meeting with any form of technical issue, don't dwell on it and keep to time. Record the meeting so that affected students can watch it later. Refer the student to Network Support via the form on Student Hub etc.

  • I'd imagine a lot of students will have group chats etc, if one has a technical issue then a student who is in the meeting may raise it, etc.