Help with GOOGLE MEETS for teachers

 The full Google Meet update hasn't taken effect as of this post, but at least the Host Controls have, so no more worrying about who's getting into your Meets. The new toggle switch even keeps out phone callers, which had been one way folks were suffering "incursions". Here's 85 seconds on it, as a quick overview.

Here is a quick two minutes on how to view your class while you Present your screen on a Google Meet, without any extensions and without joining the Meet a second time. For a solution that's slightly quicker during a Meet, try the Dualless Chrome extension in the video to the right.

The Dualless Chrome extension is a great tool that sizes two windows for you automatically so that you can see  both your Meet and the content you are presenting to your students. 

 Here's a great tool for backing up what goes on in Google Meets. Tactiq Transcriptions uses the Closed Captions from any Google Meet and turns everything anyone says into a transcript of the entire audio portion of the Meet. It's like having a personal stenographer next to you in every session! Super cool tool for keeping a record of what gets said by whom, and when, in every Google Meet. Saves to your Google Drive, so it's easy to find.

If you've downloaded the Tactiq.io extension and have used it for a while with the Auto-save feature turned on, eventually it will tell you that you are "out of credits", meaning that it will not auto-save unless you pay for the full version, Not to worry: here's how to manually record a copy of the spoken text of a Google Meet at the end of every Meet.

 This is a review/how-to manual of just the Breakout Room piece of the "Google Meet Attendees & Breakout Rooms" Chrome extension, and how to make it work for you in your virtual classroom, for comparison with the Hudektech Breakout Rooms Chrome extension, reviewed in a separate video. You should load the Hudektech extension either way, since it adds a button to each Meet which lets you turn off the audio, which is necessary any time you are doing Breakout Rooms, so you can listen to each Meet separately.

 This is a brief how-to for figuring out the Hudektech Breakout Rooms Chrome extension, which has a couple of additional features compared to the "Google Meet Attendees & Breakout Rooms" extension, which brings a couple of added complexities, as well. Use this to compare the two and decide which might be right for you. 

 This is an in-depth look at the Hudektech Breakout Rooms Chrome extension reviewed previously.

0:00 Intro

0:34 Turning On The Extension

1:10 Overview

1:27 Setting Up Courses

2:57 Setting Up Main & Breakout Rooms

6:12 Setup Before Class

7:33 Syncing Your Rooms

10:52 Pre-Assigning Students To Rooms

12:55 Students Join The Main Room

14:48 Ad Hoc Assignment Of Students To Rooms

21:01 Students Join Breakout Rooms

21:50 Using The Slider Tool

25:46 Timer Function 

Some people have noticed that there is a different set of print menu options with the new NHPS copiers, so if you are having trouble finding the hole punch or staple features, here is a quick two minutes on what to do.

Screencastify Submit is a free feature of Screencastify, which allows you to create assignments for students to create videos using just a single click - no installation of software or admin authorization on the device is required! 

Here is 91 seconds on how to set your Keyboard to International English on Windows 10

 PowerTeacher Pro allows you to not only set up categories of work and set grade weights as you choose, but also makes it easy to apply that grade weighting across marking periods and across classes all at once, saving lots of time and trouble. 

Because we can't mark "Tardy" in PowerSchool for attendance, now that Remote Present (RP) and Remote Absent (RA) are the only two options we are to use, here's a quick two minutes on how to add a Tardy Comment in the attendance field for the day, in case we get an "RT" option later and can update the data. Even if we don't, it's still better to have a record in PowerSchool 

While we are in Remote Learning mode, all attendance must be marked either "RP" or "RA", for Remote Present and Remote Absent, respectively. Though there is no way to set the default setting so that "RP" is automatically entered, there is a slightly quicker way to mark each student without having to click each student's pull-down menu in attendance. This quick video shows you how to do it.

Here's a condensed version of the content offered in the Screencastify Beginner and Intermediate PL sessions from over the summer in "just" 27 minutes, as well as where to find certain pieces of it:

0-2:15 Loading it onto Chrome

2:16-4:00 Starting the Recording

4:01-6:41 Recording Tools - Cursor and Drawing Tools

6:42-8:33 End-of-recording

8:34-12:41 Editing Clips together and deleting sections of Clips

12:41-14:49 Crop Tool

14:50-17:55 Zoom Tool

17:56-20:54 Informational Text Overlay Tool

20:55-23:44 Saving Your Video

23:45-25:57 Uploading to YouTube

25:58-26:53 Posting to Google Classroom

 Here is a way to save yourself from having to type every single student ID@nhps.net account into Google Classroom, by bringing them over from PowerSchool using Excel. 

Whether it's entering overrides or creating an assignment for the final grade, here is how to enter student grades into PowerSchool at the end of a marking period.