Tinkering with Technology
  • Home
  • Tech Blog
  • Classroom Resources
    • Adobe Page and Adobe Video
    • Emaze
    • GoFormative.com
    • Google Hangouts
    • Smore
    • Thinglink
  • Contact
  • About Me

Google Hangouts on Air for School Announcements

9/26/2015

1 Comment

 
Picture
Google Hangouts is an awesome, free way to video chat with lots of people. We use it with my husband's family, which is pretty big,  so that we can all catch up at once from lots of different places. However, Google has been expanding this feature, and they now have Google Hangouts on Air, which actually RECORDS the video that is made. 

Thanks to this recording feature, schools can now use Hangouts to broadcast their daily announcements. In RCPS, we're already using Google Apps, so it's really easy to setup Hangouts in a way that will work for our schools. Molly Highland at JFHMS started doing this last year with the morning announcements, and it's been a huge success that continues to grow. We helped MVES set this up, and they're now using it to show announcements. Several other schools are doing it as well.

Here's how it works. If you want to start using Hangouts on Air with a specific community, it's a good idea to create a Google Plus community and invite everyone who would normally watch the videos (important note: you'll have to be logged in to your Google account for the links from this section to work for you). At a school, you'll want to create a community that includes all of the faculty and staff who might want to watch the announcements. Anyone in the community can see the videos on their Google Plus homepage (when they are upcoming--they don't stay there forever) and on the Community page under the events tab. They will also receive an email when each new video is made, so they can just click on the title of the video in the email and play it from there. 

For step-by-step instructions about setting up a community and recording for the first time, see this guide. 

For more instructions about how to VIEW the Hangouts on Air, see this instruction sheet.

Once you've created your community, you are ready to record a Hangout on Air. Just make sure when you create your Hangout on Air that you've selected the appropriate audience (so you don't accidentally show your video to the whole world! Or, in RCPS, to the whole RCPS world...). Recording is simple--just hit "Start Broadcast" and listen for the ding that indicates that it's ready to record. Then hit stop when you've finished. When you want to check it, hit the play button to watch it again.

As a random note (that was very frustrating and required quite a bit of tedious work), we discovered (the hard way, after hours and hours of experimenting) that, at least in Rockingham County's Google system, the videos only consistently play IN Google Plus if they are longer than 40 seconds or so. They will always play on YouTube with a link, but they will play automatically in Google Plus on the homepage and through the email invite as long as they are a bit longer. With the Moment of Silence and the Pledge, you'll never have trouble with a video being too short, but if you're just doing test videos, make sure that you record a little longer than you feel is necessary in order to get them to play appropriately. 

There are lots of interesting features available to you--you can add multiple cameras, show what's on your screen, use the silly hats and face decorations (like on regular hangouts), and many other neat features. Once you get things going, you might find that the students are ready to try all kinds of fancy filming!

If you're in RCPS, please contact us, your ITRTs, to help you get set up with Hangouts on Air!

1 Comment
Sally McWilliams
7/21/2016 06:58:14 am

We are a very small school for children with learning differences. I would love to have them participate in broadcasting. Any help would be much appreciated.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Ashley Dickson-Ellison is an Instructional Technology Resource Teacher working in Rockingham County, Virginia. This site focuses on utilizing technology in the classroom to invigorate students and enrich the educational experience.

    Archives

    February 2018
    April 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    April 2015

    Categories

    All
    Adobe Slate
    Adobe Voice
    Angkor Wat
    Annotations
    Bell Ringers
    Chrome Extensions
    Coding
    Comics
    Decluttering
    Google Apps
    IPad
    Mobile App
    Padlet
    Research
    Tech TNT
    Thinglink
    Time Management
    VSTE

    RSS Feed

© K. Ashley Dickson-Ellison 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without written permission from this blog’s author is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Proudly powered by Weebly