If you’re a teacher thinking about using Google Meet, then this post is for you. My name is Charlie; I’ve been an English teacher for over 12 years and am currently a director of studies at a language school in Spain. I wanted to make this Google Meet tutorial because it’s changed a lot over the last few years. If you’re thinking about using it, then this is going to help you ensure that you have a smooth online classroom experience.
How to get set up on Google Meet
The first thing is getting set up on Google Meet, which is really easy. All you need is a Google account, which most people do have nowadays. If you have an email address that ends in @gmail.com, then you have a Google account. I’ll only be talking about the free version, so the version that’s open to everyone.
How to find Google Meet and start a meeting
Where do you find Google Meet? The first place to look is in the apps launcher, just in the top right-hand corner, and we look for the icon called “Meet.” Alternatively, directly from your browser, all you need to do is visit meet.google.com. There is a third way of launching Google Meet meetings, and this is from your Google Calendar, but I’m going to show you that later when we talk about scheduling meetings.
How to schedule a Google Meet meeting
At the homepage for Google Meet, we have a new meeting option or enter a code or link. The blue button is for hosts like you and me as the teacher, and entering a code or link is for your students. So once you’ve provided them with the code or the link, this is where your students are going to input that data. If we want to start a meeting, we’re going to have three options. We can either create a link that’s going to start a meeting for later. We can start a meeting right or we can go into Google Calendar and make a meeting for a later date. The third and final option is to schedule in Google Calendar, and this is one I use a lot.
How Google Calendar works with Google Meet
Imagine you’re scheduling a private class with Sarah; we can change the times, we can change the date, and we can also specify whether this class repeats or not. A lot of my classes I schedule online, they do repeat, and sometimes I just need to use the custom feature. So I go to custom and I tell Google Meet or Google Calendar, in this case, when the classes take place and with what frequency. So for example, does it repeat every day, every week, every month, etc.? Which days and when do the classes end?
To share the link, all I do is click on this copy conference info button, and send this to my students. And if I go to save, it’s now going to appear on my Google Calendar right here. I can launch the meeting directly from here just by clicking this blue button.
If you’d like to learn how Google Meet compares to other video software like Zoom, then why don’t you go check out my post here.
With all Google applications, they’re usually interconnected, so this works really well with Google Meet and Google Calendar. If you’ve got numerous classes set up on Google Calendar, when you go on to Meet, you’re going to have all your classes ready to go just by clicking on them here and by joining them like this.
How to join a Google Meet meeting
So how do you get your students to join your meeting? Well, we just saw three ways we can start the meeting and where we can find the link to the meeting. Once the students have pasted this link directly into their browser, they’re just going to press enter, and it’s going to ask for permission to use their camera or microphone. You’re going to need to say allow; otherwise, obviously, you can’t hear them, and the student also is going to need to include their name. Let’s call this person Sarah.
Once a student has input the link into their browser and asked to join, the host will get a message telling the host someone wants to join the call. you’ve got two options; you can either deny them entry or admit them. If you deny them entry, the student can still try again later.
How to mute & remove attendees
Once the student has joined the meeting, there are a couple of things you can do as the host to control what your students can and can’t do. The first thing is to mute your students. To do this, we just click on the “show everyone icon” on the bottom right-hand corner and click on the “volume” icon. We click on this, and it’s going to ask us if we’d like to mute this student for everyone on this call. You as the host can only mute students; if the students would like to unmute themselves, they can. They have the freedom to do that.
A second option is to remove the student from the call. To do this, we just click on the three dots and click remove from the call. And there are two things we can obviously do additionally; we can file a report against a student, or we can block them from gaining entry again. Usually, this is not necessary, especially if a student would like to re-enter because of technical problems. I would just click on remove.
If you do teach online and you’d like to learn the basics, then I have a post on the basics of teaching online just right here.
How to share your screen on Google Meet
Once you’re in your class and you have all your students in the meeting and you’d like to share something with them, then all we need to do is go to “present”. When we click on this, we’ve got three options. Each of the options is going from smaller to bigger. For example, a tab is the smallest thing you can share with your students, whereas your entire screen, or obviously, that is everything that you can see on your screen. I tend to switch between tabs and windows. For example, if we click on Tab, then we’re going to get a selection of all the tabs. If you’re sharing audio, make sure that you’ve got this selected; otherwise, the students won’t be able to hear it.
If we go to share a window, then we’ve got all the windows that are open on your computer. And when you go to the entire screen, if you’re using more than one screen, then you should have the option of a second screen here. If you are going to share your screen and you’re going to be switching between multiple tabs, then I would recommend choosing the option window. If you choose tabs and you decide to change from one tab to another, then the students will not see that change, and they will only see the initial tab that you shared.
How to use the Whiteboard on Google Meet
When you’re teaching an online class, if you’re not sharing your screen, then you’re probably using an online whiteboard. Google Meet has two options. Google has its own Jamboard, which is their own whiteboard, or they have a third-party one integrated into Google Meet called Miro. To use the Jamboard, we’re just going to go and click on activities in the bottom right-hand corner. You’ll see a square, triangle, and a circle, and we’ll go to whiteboarding. This is the Jamboard. Once we click on this, this will start a new whiteboard, and it will launch a Jamboard in front of the host’s screen. If we go to the student’s screen for a moment, you’ll see that in the chat function, a link has been sent to the student. if the student does not have a Google account, they will not be able to collaborate or see this whiteboard.
Recently Google announced it will be discontinuing the Jamboard. So, make sure you have an alternative ready.
If you’d like to use the third-party whiteboard, then we’re going to click on activities again and we’re going to drop down to the bottom, which is called Miro whiteboard. It’s going to ask us if we’d like to make an account or create a board without registration. I usually just click on create a board directly. And it’s also got the Google Meet videos on the side, so it’s integrated into the software. All we need to do is go back to the host view and start collaboration. Once you’ve done that, the student’s view will get an invitation to join the Miro board. Now again, if the student does not have a Google account, they will not be able to collaborate on this whiteboard.
If you teach adults online one to one, then you’re probably going to be interested in how to plan a lesson from start to finish, which is right here.
How to chat & raise hands
To interact with your students in the classroom, you’ve obviously got the audio and video features, but you’ve also got the chat function. And the students have an option called “raise their hand,” which is when students would like to draw your attention to them. So for chatting with your students, all we need to do is click on the chat function at the bottom right-hand corner next to activities, and we can start writing a message to everyone in Google Meet. You can only send messages to the whole class, not individual students.
On the student’s screen, if they would like to get your attention as the teacher, then they would just need to click on “raise their hand.” Once they click this, and if we go to the teacher’s screen, then we can see here that there is a notification saying that one student has raised their hand. Let’s take a look at how we can change our background on Google Meets or add effects or filters.
How to change background on Google Meet
As the teacher, you might be interested in covering what’s behind you, and the students themselves might be also interested in not showing what’s behind them to the class and also using the effects and filters, particularly if you’ve got shy students in the classroom.
So to access this, just click on these three dots right here and click on “apply visual effects.” The first thing we’re going to have is just to blur the background. Or we can add different backgrounds; there are a lot of different options. And this is probably what’s going to be most interesting for your students, is to change their appearance completely in the call. For example, if we click on “dog,” we’ve now got my complete head covered as a dog. Woof, woof! If we go to our student’s view, they can then see me as a dog, and they can also choose the same filters as well.
How to record a meeting on Google Meet
If you have students that are absent for a class online and you’d like them to watch the class back, then there is an option to record the Google Meets meeting. Currently, the free Google Meet version does not have the option built-in to record the meeting itself, so you’re going to have to use an extension. Let me show you how to get access to those extensions.
All we need to do is find “extensions.” Go to the three dots right in Google Chrome, go to more tools, and then go to extensions. We’re going to go right down to the bottom to the open Chrome Web Store. TLDV looks like a good option for recording my meetings. I’m going to add this to Chrome, and with the extension installed, when I start a new meeting, I’ll have this option here to record and highlight my meeting. Now that I’m on the website for the extension, I can see that I’ve recorded my meeting, and I can create a link to share with my students.
How to change your name on Google Meet
Before your students join a meeting, you probably saw that they had an option to change their name. If you, as the teacher, would like to also change your name that appears in your Google Meeting, you’re going to have to go to your Google account settings. This is accessed by going to your Google profile in the top right-hand corner, going to manage your Google account, click on personal info, and go to your name.
Thank you for reading this tutorial on Google Meet and I hope your next class is as smooth as possible.
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