Google Hangouts Meet

Google Hangouts Meet is a video conferencing tool similar to Skype or Zoom. It is free and is included in our G Suite for Education account.

Our current settings have this tool turned on for all users, but a Meet can only be initiated by a teacher. Students cannot start a Meet with each other, nor with anyone else using their school Google accounts.

Google Meets is being gradually integrated into Google Classroom. This means that you will eventually be able to show/hide the Meets link within your Google Classroom. Students would just have to click on it to join. Until that integration is added for our school, there are a couple of settings that you, as the teacher, need to set. This will eventually be found in your class settings under the "General" section. There will be a switch to toggle the Meets Link on or off.

1. When you start a Meet, choose a nickname for the Meet, rather than let Google Meet generate a code only. The nickname can be any word you like as long as it isn't used by anyone else at RCS. For example, if two teachers at RCS, created a Meet with the nickname "1st Period", then they would both end up in the same meet.

2. As long as you (the teacher), are the last person to leave the meet, then students will be unable to rejoin the meet with that nickname until you start a new Meet with the same nickname. This feature is due to be added with a week.