School’s in Session: Tips for Hosting a Hangout for the Classroom

School’s kicked into full swing, so it’s perfect timing that we were just referred to this article from one of our readers, “32 Tips for Hosting a Successful Hangout with Your Students”. Google Hangouts have been leveraged in a wide diversity of fields, from business to technology, as well as education!
Hangouts are a perfect tool teachers can begin to implement into their lesson plans to refresh their approach and engage students differently. Educators and students both benefit from integrated scratchpads for quick note taking, direct links for sharing research and other resources, screen sharing to collaborate over the same assignment or project, and instant uploads for when it’s complete.
Here’s a few choice tips that are essential to holding a successful Hangout for students:

• • Do a dry run!
    Never hosted a Hangout before? Many features of Hangouts are intuitive, but you never know – go through some practice before you go for the real thing.

• • Monitor the comments.
    One of the best things about Hangouts are the ability to speak face to face, virtually – but you can also use the chat, messaging or commenting features to lecture and have students ask questions without interrupting the flow of the lesson

• • Take advantage of those integrated features!
    Share Docs, screenshots, work in groups over a communal scratchpad – play around and test them out!

• • Record it.
    Use the Hangout on Air function, and your G+ Hangouts can instantly be recorded to YouTube for easy reference – whether it’s used as a study tool for students, or to evaluate yourself how successful your lesson was, and what you can change for the future.

• • Direct the Hangout, but don’t control it.
    Hangouts allow you to be creative with interaction – allowing students to give input and interact with one another lends to an enriched learning experience for everyone.

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To learn more about what SADA does with Google Apps and Education, read some of our case studies. Or check out out SADA’s YouTube account, and be on the lookout for our recorded webinar with Junipero Serra High School!