Google Classroom updates with the possibility of making video calls directly with Hangouts Meet. Here's what's changed
The toolkit available to teachers and students to carry out distance learning at its best, and above all in a safer way, has been enriched: Google Classroom now allows you to integrate Hangouts Meet video calls directly from the teaching session.
Previously, both tools were available to teachers and students, but they weren't integrated and there wasn't much possibility for teachers to control the video call. And this led to several inconveniences that, however, should now have been solved thanks to the possibility of controlling the entry of new people within the video call. Google, therefore, is gradually refining its teleducation platform based on the existing G Suite cloud platform.
Hangouts Meet inside Google Classroom: how it works
Hangouts Meet is Google's video calling system, heir to the ill-fated Google Hangouts. The teacher, now, can create directly from the settings of Google Classroom a link to invite pupils to join the video call. At this point the link becomes available on the class cover, so that the kids can join the call with a simple click. Initially, however, only teachers enter the Hangout.
New Hangouts Meet security features
Along with the integration between Hangouts Meet and Google Classroom, teachers now also have a few more features to reduce the risk of distance learning tools being used for other purposes, without the necessary control from teachers. At the end of the lesson, for example, the teacher can now click on the "reset" feature that renders the link to connect to the video call of the lesson itself ineffective. This is to avoid that students, after the lesson is over, re-enter the same call without the teacher being present (and knowing it). But that's not all: in Google Classroom settings you can now prevent students from creating video calls.
The Google suite for schools
Google Classroom was already a pretty effective platform for distance learning and, after these changes, it's even more so. It's clear that Google is investing a lot to make Classroom more and more credible as a distance learning tool, and this is the right time to show the world that it's possible to do school differently than in the past, as long as the right tools are available.