Make Google Meet better with these 5 Chrome extensions
Hey friends welcome to another Post. In this post you're gonna learn about five Chrome extensions that will make your Google week experience even better.
Now Google meet and zoom and other video conferencing
tools have become a central focal point in the classrooms of teachers around
the world. Due to the coronavirus school
shutdown and the question of meet vs. zoom comes up all the time. I probably
answer that question one to three times every day, but honestly the reality is
it doesn't matter it's kind of like Coke versus Pepsi, Ford versus Chevy.
Pick the
platform that works best for you now if you're teaching with Chrome books
Google classroom. If you're a G suite
for education school it makes sense to use Google meet. It's integrated with
all of those other products so in this Post I'm going to be highlighting five
Chrome extensions that will help your meet experience be even better.
Now Zoom is
a pretty cool platform they have some nice features and a lot of teachers are
disappointed that zoom doesn't have some of those features. These chrome
extensions will give you some of those same features and functionality.
Grid View Extension
Alright
let's dive in now the first extension that I like to share with you is called
grid view. Now Zoom has a feature that allows you to see all of the
participants in a virtual meeting at the same time Google meet does not. Now a recent update to Google meet has added
something in that is helpful if you go
down to the three dots in the bottom right corner of your screen and click on
change layout you will see this new tile layout and that is definitely an
improvement the tiled layout will allow you to see up to 16 people in your meet
session at the same time if you have less than 16 students it's a great option
you don't really even need extension it's built right in but most teachers have
more than 16 students and you'll still run into the same issue where some
participants won't be displayed there's a wonderful
Chrome extension called grid view that will allow you to see an unlimited
number of participants at the same time and I know this and I have tested this
I was in a session about a week ago that had more than 200 people in it.
I was using
grid view and it works beautifully it's a little crazy the picture gets smaller
and smaller but it does work so here is the grid view extension you just need
to have it installed it's free and when it's installed you'll get this little
checkerboard icon within Google meet now. If you see the little line through
the checkerboard that means that grid View is disabled. so I'm gonna go ahead
and click on grid view that will turn it on and now all of my participants will
be tiled now grid view does offer a couple of really cool bonus features as
well if I put my mouse over the grid view extension you'll see the drop down. So
for those who don't have video I can hide them I can highlight the speaker so
whoever's talking is going to be more prominent.
A lot of teachers do want to be able to see
their video feed even while they're observing their students and so you can
make that happen as well and then this last one is pretty slick I've used it a
few times. If you need to take a screenshot of your video perhaps for
attendance or documentation purposes, you can enable that which just makes it
easier to take a screenshot and you can even hide the participants name if you
like as well so it's a great extension.
I'd highly recommend it I do like the tiled
view that Google has rolled out but grid view still has an important place okay
so that's option one that solves a major complaint with meet which is being
able to see everyone on your screen now.
One quick
note about grid view it's great for the teacher but I actually don't typically recommend
that students install grid view because if you are presenting a lesson to them
they don't need to see everyone in the class they want to see your screen
primarily. So most of the time I recommend grid view for teachers.
You really
don't need it unless you're presenting ad as a whole group. When I do a virtual
session for teachers a lot of them have grid-view installed. I actually have
them turn it off when I'm presenting so they can see my screen more clearly all
right.
Nod Extension
Second extension
I'd like to share with you is not no this is a really good one for students
they're gonna love this it really adds a lot of function to Google classroom
nod allows students and participants to provide reactions throughout your video
so when you have the Nod extension installed over in the top left corner of
your screen you're gonna get these emoji icons.
So if I put
my mouse over the thumbs up you can see all the different emojis that are there
so if my teacher tells a really funny joke I can click the lol and that will be
displayed on the screen for everyone else to see as well I also really like the
hand race feature which is really helpful for large groups.
If someone
has a question they can click the hand raise icon that will stay on the screen
it identifies the person and as the presenter. I can then say oh hey John has a
question stop and allow John to unmute his mic and then speak to the rest of
the class the only way that you can use the not extension is if everyone has it
installed.
So in order to see the reaction icons you must
have the extension. It's important you have that extension installed prior to
joining your meeting or less or you have to refresh you exit and then rejoin the
session for it to for to load. It's really fun it adds kind of been like
Facebook or Instagram live video reactions to your session allows your students
to say engage you to get some feedback while you're presenting to them
Meet Attendance Extension
Number 3 Extension
is called meet attendance. If it is important for you to take attendance during
your sessions this is a perfect extension. It is a little funky to use I'm
going to try to walk you through it the meet attendance extension only needs to
be installed by the teacher. The teacher is gonna be the one taking the
attendance and you're actually going to go to the people tab in your meet
session. So this is where it will list all of the participants when you have
the meet attendance extension installed you're gonna see this bonus icon right
in the middle this clipboard.
Okay, putting your mouse over that clipboard will
bring up a series of options now it does work well but it is a little bit
cryptic because it doesn't actually explain what any of these icons do so I'll
do my best to explain it for you the first thing you're gonna want to do is
click this first icon on the left and that will create a new Google spreadsheet.
So your attendance is going to be taken in Google sheets that will create a new spreadsheet for you it may prompt you to log into your Google account the first time you use it. If you ever want to view that spreadsheet simply click they meet attendance icon right up at the top. Here now right now meet attendance is off and that's what this first toggle switch is this is the on/off button.
Okay, so if I'm gonna turn it on and it'll
record and it will show you the total number of people in your session
currently. If I want to view the attendance I'll go ahead and click the meet
attendance icon that will open up the Google sheet and it automatically records
the names of everyone currently logged into the meet session now.
This is
designed to be very passive it just works and so anytime you view the
attendance you view the people in the session it will record who is there so I
don't know if you could catch that but if I click off on the screen here and
then I go and view the participants again. You're gonna see the meet attendance icon very
briefly turns red that tells you that it's working and then if I look at my
attendance sheet every time I do that it adds a new row and so you could take
attendance at the beginning middle and end of the session to see who was there
the entire time who dropped off over time it's a little funky it has some rough
edges but it does the job once you kind of use it for a little bit you
understand how it works.
It will make sense now again just to round off
the different settings. If you want to create a new sheet for attendance for
each session you would click that one the second button will create a new sheet
within your workbook so it'll just take the attendance on different sheets this
is the on/off toggle switch and then this third the last one on here is the
scroll switch and I guess this is how it's coded.
So if you
have a very big meeting with dozens and dozens of people it actually has to
scroll all the way down on the screen to capture everyone's name. So you're
gonna want to leave that last switch over on the right leave that on at all
times.
If you don't want to take attendance
throughout the session you would take it the first time just go down here turn
it off and then maybe turn back on at the end to record attendance at the end
of your session there is a video in the Chrome Web Store that kind of walks you
through meets.
Meet Attendance Extension Download
Push to Talk Extension
The next
extension I'd like to share with you is interesting and I think this one will
be particularly helpful to elementary teachers muting and unmuting the
microphone is a challenge.
It's a
challenge for adults and it's a challenge for elementary students as well the
fourth extension I'd like to share with you is called push-to-talk and it
allows you to use the spacebar to mute and unmute your mic so the push-to-talk
extension must be installed for all everyone in the meeting.
So students
teachers alike you'll see this fun little monkey icon right here that's the
extension there is one trick that you have to know for this to work well okay.
So people are going to join the meeting and then they must first manually mute
themselves so you join the meeting and then you are going to need to go down
here and the only click the mute button once you have done that you can use the
spacebar to mute and unmute.
So if I
press space you'll notice that the mic icon turns white again and I let go and
it turns red again so it's a really simple way to mute and unmute your mic as
long as you remember that first time you have to manually mute yourself you
will need to teach your students now how to press and release that mute button
but it works really well. it's a simple way for short responses from your
students
Push to Talk Extension Download
Dualless window splitter Extension
A very
common question that I receive is when I am presenting how do I still see my
students so I still want to watch their video screens and also share my
presentation or whatever it is that I want to share now the way that I do it is
by using this second monitor. So
typically I will put I will keep the meet session on my computer and then
whatever website or presentation I'm sharing I will put on this second monitor
and I only share this one. If you only
have one monitor then you can utilize a Chrome extension called Dualless.
So
essentially if you are dual monitor less this is the extension for you. If I
want to share this screen right here and I also want to keep an eye on my student
video feeds here is the dual less Chrome extension and this is a window
splitter.
It also give
me a variety of options how do I want to split my screen you can see 50/50
60/40 70/30. I still have my video feeds over on the left now when I click on
the present button I'm going to present typically a window and I will simply
select the window that has the presentation the PowerPoint the Google slide the
website that I wish to share.
So, if I'm going to click on share now my
students can see what's over here on the right side of my screen but I can
still keep an eye on them and see what's happening on the left side of my
screen. Now anything that I do here over on the Left I mean I can open a new
tab I can open up an email open up my calendar students won't be able to see
any of that because I'm only sharing what's posted over on this side.
It's a very
helpful very useful strategy for kind of hiding some things and displaying
other things the challenge with this is you have limited screen real estate. So
if you have a smaller device it's just not a very big window to work with if
you're gonna be doing this frequently I would recommend investing in a second
monitor so that you can do the same thing you just have a lot more screen space
to work with so that's my fifth extension again that's called dual les which
allows you to mirror or split your windows so you can see more than one thing
at the same time
Dualless window splitter Extension Download
Now there
are some additional issues with Google meet that I do not have solutions for
unfortunately we're still working on those so things like the ability to change
your background automatically mute participants those are still issues that
need to be resolved if you have a suggestion if you have any tools that will
let you accomplish those things in Google meet I would love to hear about them in
comments section.
Thanks for reading this post, see you next time you