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Tag: google meet

  • Lockdown Learning: Teaching Small Groups or Whole Class via Google Meet

    Lockdown Learning: Teaching Small Groups or Whole Class via Google Meet

    Today as I headed out on my weekly Wednesday run, I was reflecting on the first day of Term Two, which we had to teach remotely from home.

    Largely, it was me sitting on the laptop answering questions like “What do we do now?” and “I’ve finished it!” and “I’m stuck”. that students messaged in. After that, it was checking to see that my scheduled activities were sent out correctly and checking to see who had commented on it (and what they had commented).

    And that’s the point. I felt like I was just handing out activities, and watching the kids do them from afar.

    It wasn’t exactly “teaching”.

    Sure, I’d put out a welcome video, a video of me doing a mini reading strategy (of which was quite good because unlike in class, there wasn’t any calling out or interruptions!), and the like… but it wasn’t interacting or connecting with my students.

    So as I was thinking about how I could do it, I suddenly realised what I’d come across during a Board Meeting last week.

    Google Meeting “Present” Mode

    In Google Meet (which has been turned on for all educators during the lockdown), you can set up a video conference for anyone with the link. It only works really in Google Chrome. This sets up a multiscreen layout of everyone’s webcam as we’ve become accustomed to seeing in the likes of Zoom etc.

    However, Google Meet also has a Presenter Mode. This allows for someone to present to the others what is on their screen.
    For instance,  I could have open a document, or even Microsoft Whiteboard or an online version such as Miro, or even Microsoft OneNote. As you present your screen, you don’t have to worry about the camera side of things, as your camera is replaced by a live feed of your screen. However, your microphone will still work, allowing you to explain things that are happening on your screen.

    In this way, you could show students a document, or if you have a touchscreen (or are particularly dexterous with your trackpad) draw and write just like you would on a whiteboard or modelling book. I currently have both an iPad Pro with Apple Pencil and Microsoft Surface Pro with Apple Pen that both work well for this purpose.

    This saves you wrangling your camera around to try and focus on a piece of paper and work out how to position yourself so your hand doesn’t get in the way.

    Here’s how you do it.

    Set Up a Google Meet

    Head to meet.google.com and click on the “Join or start a meeting” button. Follow the steps through. It’s pretty straight forward.

    Meeting Created

    Google will go through and check your microphone and camera is working. If it’s your first time, you’ll have to click on “Allow” to let the browser use your microphone and camera. Click on “Join now”.

    Get the Link

    Once you join the meeting, this window will give you the joining info to invite others. Click on “Copy joining info” and post it on your Google Classroom, Seesaw, or whatever platform you’re using to reach your class.

    This will then allow your students to join your “Meeting” lesson.

    Up and Running

    Once you’re up and running, checked that everyone is joined and connected and you’ve introduced the lesson, you will need to click on “Present now” to switch to showing your screen. It might be a good idea to mute student’s until you’re ready to answer questions. This prevents them from “calling out”!

    Then click on either “A window” if you’re using Whiteboard or OneNote or some application to write in, or sometime’s its easier just to click on “Your entire screen”.

    Share your Screen

    Click on the application you want to screen. This image isn’t a great example of it, as I only have one application open. But maybe I have another tab in Chrome Browser that I want to show the students.

    Click on “Share” which will show up blue once you click on the application you want to share.

    This will then replace your “camera” with a video feed of your screen. Students can see your cursor and your screen. Don’t worry about looking down the camera though, because they can’t see you. However, you can still talk to them about what you’re doing on the screen, and thus, teach a lesson just as you would on a whiteboard, or in a modelling book – just with less calling out due to the muted microphones and less eye contact due to the turned off camera!

    Taking it Further

    Obviously if you have a touchscreen device with a stylus, this becomes even more powerful as you can write down what you’re teaching, or showing, or modelling for the students. You can then un-mute students for a question time, just as you might in a small group. Answer them as you like while still modelling on the screen. Once you’ve covered all that, you can come out of Presenter mode and return to your standard Google Meeting and close out the lesson.

    Disclaimer

    Please note: Other software might also have presenter mode and so the same can be achieved using that. I can only talk from my experience. I am not being paid to represent Google products!

    Secondly and most importantly, I did not write this to set any expectations on teachers during this incredibly trying, unknown, and stressful time. I do not share this to overwhelm teachers who feel like this is what everyone should be doing, or that they’re inferior if you don’t do this. Please do not feel that way. There are no judgements here.
    Quite simply, the reason I decided to write this was not to show off, or set a standard for which everyone must strive for, but as a solution to a problem I was having as a teacher in not being able to teach the students in my class. I was looking for ways where I can teach new concepts, or be informative for students, rather than just pushing activities at them, and this came to me as a viable option. That is all. I’d like to assume that there are other teachers out there who reflected on their day and were having the same concern about this issue. Hopefully this might solve that problem for you.

    I hope that you are able to take from this idea what you need and can apply it in a way that works for you. Try it yourself on two different devices. Set one device up as a “student” joining your “teacher” device if you need. See how it works. Get familiar with it and that will give you enough confidence to take it and run with it.

    Enjoy. And stay safe.

  • Lockdown Learning – How much is too much?

    It seems that not a day goes by without some company out there offering free access to their product until July. Don’t get me wrong, I know that for the most part they’re doing this in all good faith.

    But the reality is, the market is getting saturated at the moment as teachers, parents, and children all prepare for this thing called remote learning.

    No doubt, many of these tools, programmes, and software will all help provide learning opportunities for your students while they’re stuck at home.

    But maybe we need to just take a step back and think about this for a bit.

    Step back

    The world faces a pandemic, of the likes none of us have seen before. The Spanish plague at the end of WWI is listed as the last time this happened. Everyone is affected by it, and everyone reacts in different ways. For most, being cooped up inside is stressful enough in itself, let alone the threat of a virus. Students and children are no different. And yet, for some reason, we’re expecting that while they’re at home, they focus on furthering their education?

    At this stage, we are on lockdown for four weeks. Many of us know this will be a minimum, with many of us thinking it will likely be 6 weeks, if not more. Yet we are putting pressure on teachers to get their whole class online, prepare a programme, and develop competence in a range of different software, apps, or systems, many of which we’ve never used before. All this compounds the stress teachers are feeling at the moment to do the “right thing”.

    Then you have the education elite, specialists, and experts, who are all asking the big questions like whether your plans for online learning and remote tasks in the digital realm align with the latest pedagogy and add any educational benefits to our learners. Suddenly, I’m not so certain of myself, my abilities as a teacher in these times, despite the fact I’m one of the more technologically inept teachers out there. The reality remains though, that these are very big questions for what will hopefully be a very short amount of time. If (God forbid) this lockdown heads into several months, then we can begin to contemplate those questions further.

    Routine

    I know that for many people, routine is important. It’s why much of my class programme follows a regular schedule when we’re at school. And during this time where there is so much uncertainty, providing my students with that same routine becomes even more important.

    So where does this leave me?

    How Much is Too Much

    Well. I return to the question at the top. How much is too much?
    Let’s face it; students are not in our care for the six hours we usually have. It is unreasonable to expect that we get six hours of “work” out of them. Therefore, we shouldn’t be providing six hours of work. Less is more.

    We don’t need to go out and use every and any software and system out there. Keep it simple. Less is more. In the four days I had with my class between the closure of schools on Tuesday 24 March through to Friday 27 March where “School Holidays” were brought forward to, I managed to continue with a basic programme with my class, of which 10 students regularly participated in. During that time I made the learning work using five main apps. Five. That’s it. Less is more.

    1. Google Classroom: Everything went through this. I scheduled material to be released at different times of the day so that students didn’t rush ahead and get everything done in an hour and then be mucking around for the rest of the day.
    2. Google Docs: Students are already used to how this work. I turned chat back on for everyone, and this allowed us to collaborate on a topic brainstorm that we continued from the Monday. Add to this, I put our a daily advanced organiser or “Day Overview” for the students which had the times and activities they had to do that day. This also helped me to schedule things on Google Classroom at the right times.
    3. Youtube: I pre-recorded a series of videos, from reading chapters of our class story to mini-lessons around Reading strategies. I did not dabble in any live streaming, and didn’t really see the need to.
    4. GoNoodle: These are a bunch of videos that I’d already been using in class for various uses. In this remote learning phase, I used GoNoodle for fitness activities, and for mindfulness sessions.
    5. Google Meet: This is a video conferencing software which Google has made available to all educators during this time. This is really the only one I hadn’t used before, but works quite well, along the same lines as Zoom which has become popular lately. We used this once on Friday to touch base with each other. We are also having a Board meeting with it this week!

    That’s it. That’s all I used, and all I felt I needed to use. Three of these apps, the students had already had experience with. Google Classroom was relatively easy to pick up, as was Google Meet.

    New Apps, New Opportunities

    But could signing up for all these flash apps and programmes make it better? Video conferencing, collaborative whiteboards and presentation productions all sound brilliant. They could add another level of connection with our students that we’ve yet to experience, and maybe they will make this whole teaching from home thing a lot easier for teachers. They might enrich the learning, and make better use of the wide world of technology that we currently have at our disposal. What if they have the answer to our problems we’re running into with delivering remote learning? What if they revolutionise how we teach? What if there’s something they do that we hadn’t considered before. We don’t know what we don’t know.

    Or maybe they will just complicate something which at its very essence, needs to be as straightforward as possible. For two reasons. One: because it needs to be realistic and manageable for teachers in order for it to be sustainable if this lockdown lasts longer than 4 weeks. And two: because it needs to remain accessible for students who may not have much experience using these new apps, and may not have much ICT support at home if things go wrong. As it was, the hardest things my students struggled with were those apps that we hadn’t used in class much – Google Classroom, and Google Meet.

    Final Thoughts

    So if you’re at home, getting bombarded with emails of various systems who are now offering their latest product at free costs for the next two months, or you see posts from educational experts imploring you to consider the learning benefits and pedagogy behind your learning. You don’t actually need all the bells and whistles just because they’ve been made free to use. Remember: Be brave. Do less. It’s a mantra I use when teaching in my actual classroom, and I stick by it when thinking about this remote learning. Make it sustainable for you – this means set up a system that you’re comfortable with and works for you (not you working for it!). Make it accessible for your students – this means using apps and software that students can not only access, but are familiar with so that there is less stress around getting it working or not knowing what to do. Stick with what you know. Stick with what your students know.

    Less is more.

    Stay safe.