If you know you are going to miss a lesson in advance, please call, text, or email me in advance INSTEAD Of using TeacherZone. The good news for me is that I have a lot of students right now so my availablity is pretty full, which means it might be hard for you to find a time to reschedule your lesson for. I do have more availability than what is shown in TZ, but on a case-by-case basis, so get in touch and I'll help you reschedule. Please send in some dates and times that work best for you when you let me know. I hope that by doing this that the process is much easier for everyone.
To get started, please make a TeacherZone account if you haven't done so already. Marshall Music adopted TeacherZone as their main lessons platform in August 2020. TeacherZone is very fully featured, but as of right now we will only be using it as a lesson payment and scheduling platform, and we will be using Google products for lessons mainly, such as Meet. A non-school (Gmail) account is required.
A note for parents/students 18+: If you would like to use TeacherZone for it's built in messaging, practice tracking and assignments, secure communications and monitoring, and Google Meets lessons, please let me know and we shall use it. By default, I use Google products because I started using online tools such as this website for almost a year before the start of COVID-19, but I am fully comfortable and ok with using TeacherZone if that is your preference.
Turn off Wi-Fi on as many devices in your household as possible, and avoid using internet on ethernet devices such as desktops and smart TVs
The internet service that you pay for has a set upload and download speed available for your connection, which is the total amount of data that can go through your router at once from all internet devices on your network. If many devices are using your network, then your router spreads that total bandwidth across all of your devices, which ends up making your speeds seem like way less than what you pay for. You do not need that high of an upload and download speed for 1 device to do a video call, but it's still a good idea to give your router as few devices to deal with as possible.
Allow your device's processor to run as fast as it can
If your device is somewhat older and slower, this can make a massive difference to your experience. Almost every device these days has a way to change the processor performance, and by default most devices are trying to save battery, however this can be changed. How you go about enabling maximum processor power varies from device to device, so ask me about how to do this and we can go over it together.
Plug your device into a charger
Save yourself the trouble of running out of battery during a lesson! I've been surprised at how many people have forgotten to charge before we start
Hard-set your video send and receive resolutions to 360p inside of Google Meet
The ability to change video resolutions is one of the 2 big reasons as to why I choose Google Meet as my primary video meeting service for lessons (the other being that most schools used Meet for online schooling during the pandemic). The reason why we should hard set our video resolutions instead of leaving them on Auto is because the Auto mode uses more processing power by constantly analyzing your internet speed and adjusting the video resolution accordingly, instead of just focusing on the video itself. I will always be in 360p, and so should you!
Close out all other open apps on your mobile device, and close extra browser tabs in your browser
The more apps or tabs that are open on your device, the more processing power is being sucked away from Google Meet. If your device is slower, or your internet connection is slow, this can make major quality differences in the video.
Feel free to download!
Feel free to download!
Feel free to download