How to Keep Students from Starting or Recording a Meet

Google Hangouts Meet is a great tool for remote teaching and learning, but understandably schools may want to limit how students can use this tool. Certainly there are many other apps that students can use to connect with friends, and that is wonderful for them to do so.

However, when being used through school, it is common for schools to not want students to start their own Meets or record a Meet. Thankfully Google has settings that can manage these concerns.

To help with this, I have recorded a short 5-minute video that explains all the settings in the Admin Console that need adjusted to keep students from starting a Meet or recording a Meet.

Note: This video is for the tech administrators. If you are a teacher, I have a separate video on how you can keep students from joining a Meet without you, or rejoining a Meet after you have left, which you can find in my blog post "How to Keep Students from Joining or Rejoining a Google Meet without You".

See below for this quick help video...

Hipster Google - Google Tools You Probably Never Heard Of

Google is well know for certain tools and services - Search, Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Slides, Sheets, Maps, Chrome, and such. These are all powerful and useful tools that are transforming teaching and learning in schools around the world.

However, in addition to those tools, Google has also created a wide range of services, apps, extensions, features, and other tools that are not as well known. Even though these tools may not be as popular or as widely known, they are still very useful in school settings.

These are the "Hipster Google" tools.

In our culture, one of the defining characteristics of the hipster movement is to appreciate things that are not mainstream, to use services that are not well known, or to embrace something before it becomes popular among the masses. With that thought in mind, I have collected a list of tools from Google that the average person may not know about yet.

Of course with any such list, there will be some tools that you do know, but hopefully you will pick up a few new ideas and resources from the bunch. And of course simply by sharing this blog post I am potentially making these tools more well known.

Below you will find my 1-hour recorded webinar covering each of the tools, as well as the session slideshow, and a write-up for each tool with a description and related links. So, jump on them now while it is still cool to say you used these before they were popular!

2016 Google Predictions

Over the course of 2015 we saw hundreds of updates roll out for users of Google products and services, giving us new tools and features to improve teaching and learning in our schools.

With 2016 just a few days away it is now time to predict what changes we hope to see in the new year. Below are my eight predictions for Google in 2016.

(Note: You can also see the video of these predictions in the recorded session of our December Google User Meeting here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ku8-RnWIJ9E You can skip ahead to the 1 hour 22 minute mark to jump straight to the predictions section.)