Google Meet Step-by-Step

Step 1: Launch Google Meet on your laptop: https://meet.google.com/_meet

• Click on Join or Start a Meeting
• Type a name for your Meeting room
• Check your microphone and camera are recording
• Click on Join Now

Step 2: Setup Meet to Record Your Content

• Dismiss the pop-up to add more participants, since you’re just recording by yourself
• Turn on Closed Captions (CC) to have Google auto-generate captions
• Click the 3 dots and select “Record Meeting”
• Click on “Present Now” and select Entire Screen

• A prompt asks you to select the “screen” you want to record, and click Share

Step 3: Present your content

• Open your Presentation or Content (Powerpoint, Google Slides, PDF, etc) and begin your narration

Step 4: Present your content

• Narrate your presentation and try and keep your presentations focused
• When finished, click the 3 dots and select “Stop Recording” and verify the REC dot in the upper left is not present.
• 

 

Step 5: Share your recording

• Google Meet saves your recording in the “Meet Recordings” in your Google Drive
• Click the recording you want to share, right click, and “Turn Link Sharing On”
• Copy that link and post to your class to view

The settings page is very long, so search for the keywords in each Section

Schedule Meeting

• Disable “Join Before Host” so people can’t cause trouble before you arrive.
• Enable “Mute participants upon entry” so it won’t be as chaotic

In Meeting (Basic)

• Enable “Chat”: Creates an option chat channel visible to everyone, where you have questions posted, conversations, etc
• Disable “Private chat”: prevents students from chatting privately in Zoom without teacher seeing it
• Enable “Auto saving chats”: If you have chat enabled, you should auto-save 
• Disable “File Transfer” so there’s no digital virus sharing.
• Enable “Allow host to put attendee on hold” students or non-invited joiners can be put on hold
• Screen sharing: change screen sharing to “Host Only” or if you want to have students share but not override you, Who can start sharing when someone else is sharing? To “Host Only”
• Disable “Allow Removed Participants to Rejoin” so booted attendees can’t slip back in.

• Video: Menko exploring Zoom for the first time
• Video Tutorial

Training Videos from provided by Zoom:

• 30 min get started with Zoom
• Zoom Meetings For Educators (45 mins)
• Zoom Rooms training (60 mins)

Step 1: Sign up using your FUHSD Google Account (enables Pro features for free)

• https://zoom.us/signup and click “Sign in with Google”

Step 2: Download Zoom, Install, and Launch

• Sign into the app again to see your dashboard

Step 3: Schedule your class meetings

“Schedule a New Meeting”

• Name meetings clearly to indicate lectures, discussion sections, office hours, etc.
• If a recurring class session, select “Recurring Meeting” while setting it up
• If creating this meeting for someone else or planning to have a moderator (recommended), add Alternative Hosts.

 

 

Step 4: Start Your Session

 

When it prompts you, allow it to open Zoom.

 

The first time, you might want to test your speaker and microphone before hitting “Join With Computer Audio.”

Step 5: Check your video, sound, and configuration

You’ll see the following bar at the bottom of the screen. This is where you control different functions of the course.

 

• The left icons let you Mute and Start Video to control whether others can see or hear you. We recommend that you start your video to let students see your face.
• Manage Participants lets you see students, and, if necessary, mute them.
• Chat lets students post messages to you and to the course as a whole. It’s especially useful for troubleshooting, so you might want to assign a moderator.

Step 6: Share your slides

You’ll also see Share Screen on this bottom menu. When you launch this, you’ll see options to share your whole desktop, a specific window, or a “whiteboard” you can draw on. (If you don’t see your slides, try making sure they’re open in the background, and try again.) Once you’re presenting, a top menu will appear with more options, including Annotation and the ability to “Stop Share.”

Step 7: Wrap up

When you’re done, use the red “End Meeting” button on the bottom right.

Tips for Videoconferencing

Be prepared: This sounds obvious, but as an instructor, be sure to explore the features of Zoom to become as familiar as possible with the platform prior to your scheduled class.

Breakout rooms: This helpful feature allows you to split the class into pairs or small groups. I used this feature every class to break up the monotony of a full class discussion. Before splitting the class into breakout rooms, make sure students are 1) clear on the task and 2) aware of the time allocated. You can also send class announcements (e.g., Bringing you back in two minutes; Move on to _____ if you haven't already done so). I then popped into different breakout rooms to answer questions and listen to the conversation.

Chat feature: Similar to an in-person class, not all students may feel comfortable speaking out to the entire group. Be mindful that students may be using chat to contribute to the class.

Organization: Depending on the class, there can be a lot of documents to track. To avoid having an excessive number of windows open at once, I created a Google doc that included a list of links for each class. This allowed me to easily copy and paste a link in the chat.

Schedule meetings: Depending on your account, Zoom allows you to schedule meetings ahead of time. If possible, do this. Zoom must be installed in advance — this gives students a chance to test their audio and camera before their scheduled class.

Gallery View vs. Active Speaker: Each person can choose how they want to "see" everyone else in the space. As an instructor, I preferred "Gallery View" so I could see all students at once (this might be tough for larger classes). 

Screen Sharing: Although you can share slides, handouts, or websites in a synchronous format, I DID NOT use this feature because students preferred to see each other's faces. Instead, I posted these as links in the chat (also sent via email and posted in the course LMS). 

Record the class: In anticipation of technical difficulties or absences, record the class so students have this for future reference. Remember that you must tell students explicitly that you are recording.

Accessibility Tips

• When explaining an assignment or making announcements in class, do so in both oral and written format.
• Accompany all images with an image description.
• Include captions in videos and convert audio resources to text.
• Make text in presentations and handouts concise and straightforward.
• All students, including students with disabilities, will benefit if you start each lecture with an outline of material to be covered during that class period.
• Present new or technical vocabulary in written and oral format with visual examples.
• Foster adequate opportunities for questions and answers, including review sessions, check-in questions during lecture, engaging with small groups, individual meetings, and email correspondence.

Zoom has a lot of features and configurable settings for the meetings, but can only be found on Zoom’s website (https://zoom.us/profile/setting), not in the app.  Most of the default settings make sense, but there are some extra features you might be interested in that aren’t accessible by default (e.g. Breakout Rooms), as well as some features you might want to disable (e.g. Virtual Backgrounds so students don’t mess around with putting images behind them).  

For some of the more complicated features/settings you can also view more details on the Zoom’s Video Tutorials help website.

Getting to Settings

Go to Zoom’s website and sign in: https://zoom.us/profile/setting

On the left panel under “Personal” click “Settings” [see screenshot below]

 

Other Settings to Consider (from Erik @ FHS)

Section: Schedule a Meeting

BLUE = my comments regarding the setting/feature

All of the settings in this section are ones that are provided to you when you schedule a meeting and can be tweaked on a per-meeting basis, so you can ignore this section (but if you find yourself always using certain options you could set them here as defaults to save you time later when making meetings)

Section: In Meeting (Basic)

The rest of the settings apply to features inside of the meetings, and I think at least some of them only apply to meetings going forward (they don’t take effect on a meeting already taking place).

Could use this as a timeout for disruptive students and let them back off hold after a cooloff (less severe than “remove” to kick them out the meeting entirely, as they don’t have to go through rejoin process … if you allow rejoin after remove, which is a separate setting I didn’t list).

Could also use it as an alternative to the “waiting room” feature, as a way to have chats with 1 or a few students at a time (putting everyone else on hold, and then cycling through them).

To use: Hover over a person’s video panel and click the “...” or in participants list hover over them and click “more,” then in the dropdown you can pick “put on hold” or “take off hold.” If you’ve got a disruptive student, could use this to give them a brief timeout

Annotations can let you (and your students …) put markup (drawings or text) when you’re sharing a screen (e.g. slides or a worksheet).  It’s on by default, but if abused you could turn off the setting (doesn’t seem to be a way to allow only host to annotate).

Usage: after you (or someone else) has started a screen share, the annotate button gets added to the zoom toolbar (see below).  Clicking on it will get you into annotate mode, and open up a separate Annotate toolbar (see below below)

Annotations toolbar look like this: (note: for “Clear” you can clear ALL annotations, just your own, or all non-host annotations).

 

Can share a blank whiteboard to annotate on instead of sharing your screen.  Whiteboard feature is on by default, but the “auto save” feature is off by default, so you might want to consider turning it on if you use whiteboard feature and would want the whiteboard picture for future reference (it gets saved as a .png file in your local zoom folder).

This adds extra options (beyond just “raise hand”) for participants to give feedback see below … to use them need to go to the participants panel (or the “more” button depending on client).  Only one icon can be active for each user at a time. You can see the icons next to each user on participant list, as well as totals (can also clear them).

 

Section: In Meeting (Advanced)

The Breakout feature is off by default, and if you want to use it need to have it enabled before the meeting.  It allows you to break the meeting into smaller groups that are only chatting/seeing each other, i.e. allowing small group discussions.  You as host can hop in to each group to check in on their chats. When you initiate the breakout, users can choose to join their breakout room (or stay in main), and when inside can choose to leave breakout room (and later rejoin that same one), so could have a designated “question asker” pop out and ask you questions and then rejoin their group to share.  As host you can trigger end of breakout session (it gives them a 60 second warning).

You can assign participants to groups automatically, manually, or pre-assign groups before the meeting. I haven’t fully tried the “pre-assign” breakout groups feature, but it seems like one way you could use it is to recreate table groups you had in the classroom (or you could do that manually mid-meeting but it’d take some time). 

Puts a little clock icon next to participant’s names in the participant panel if the person has not had the Zoom app active and in-focus for more than 30 seconds (while you’re in screen sharing mode).  E.g. can give indication if they’re focusing on another app on their phone or computer (note: doesn’t work for older client versions).

I haven’t tried this feature yet, but I imagine you could use the Waiting Room feature as a way to run Office Hours if you want to do series of 1-1 (or 1-to-few).  Make sure to let your students know ahead of time. Thanks to Erik Shimshock at FHS who provided the bulk of this Zoom tutorial as he was exploring it for use with his math students.

Here are some guides to help school administrators, staff, teachers, students, and parents leverage Zoom for virtual learning:

• Comprehensive Guide to Educating Through Zoom
• Tips and Tricks for Teachers Educating on Zoom
• Tips and Tricks for Administrators and Staff
• Student Tips for Participating in Online Learning
• Education Guide to Getting Started on Zoom

Zoom’s guide for using it as part of Remote Learning

ZOOMBOMBING: DON’T BE A VICTIM

Video: Using the Waiting Room and Locking your Meeting (1 min)

Video: Settings Overview (5 mins)

Take Control of your Zoom Meetings:

Don’t use your Personal Meeting ID (PMI) to host public events.  Your room is an always ongoing meeting, so generate a unique meeting ID for your classes instead

Before You Meet: Set Up Your Meeting preferences

• Disable Screensharing by anyone other than the host
• Turn off File Transfer in the chat
• Enable the Waiting Room feature.  Nobody can enter the meeting from the waiting room without your permission.
• Mute participants upon joining: you can have audio and video muted by default to slow them down.  You can set this as your default, or change it during your meeting (Participants->More, Mute Participants on Entry)
• Chat: Turn it off entirely or Disable Private Chat: ensures all chat is public and not between 2 participants that you can’t see

During Meeting Tips

• Waiting Room: Screen your list and admit your students.  
• Lock your meeting & Prevent Name Changing: After you’ve started click “Participants: at the bottom of your Zoom window. In the Participants pop-up, click the button that says Lock Meeting
• Remove participants: From that Participants menu, you can mouse over a participant’s name, and several options will appear, including Remove. Click that to kick someone out of the meeting. Once you remove them, they cannot rejoin.
• Participant Names: Have them use their full names and not change them during the meeting
• Put everyone on hold: This allows you to pause everyone’s audio and video monetarily.  Click on someone’s video thumbnail and select Start Attendee On Hold to activate this feature. Click Take Off Hold in the Participants list when you’re ready to have them back.●          
• Allow removed participants to rejoin: When you do remove someone, they can’t rejoin the meeting. But you can toggle your settings to allow removed participants to rejoin, in case you boot the wrong person.
• Turn off annotation: You and your attendees can doodle and mark up content together using annotations during screen share. You can disable the annotation feature in your Zoom settings to prevent people from writing all over the screens. 

Waiting Room: Add or Remove Participants

You have the following options when participants are in the Waiting Room.

1. Click Admit All to admit all participants.
2. Click Admit to allow a single participant into the meeting.
3. Click Remove to remove a single participant from the Zoom meeting.

Lock a Meeting & Prevent Name Changes

When you lock your meeting, no additional participants are able to enter your class.

1. While in meeting session, click ‘Participants’ at the bottom of your Zoom window.

2. In the participants’ pop-up box, select (a) More and (b) Lock Meeting. While you’re there, you can also uncheck Allow Participants to rename themselves to prevent name changes.  When the meeting is locked, no new participants can join, even if they have the meeting ID and password.

 

Remove Participants From Class

Follow the instructions to remove a person from a Zoom meeting.

1. Click Manage Participants.

2. In the Participants panel, place your mouse over the name of a person and click More.
   
3. Click Remove                                                                 .