Using Google Meet for teaching with MS Edge

In an earlier post, I said that Google Meet seems to use a lot of systems resources. Accordingly, the PC fan often comes on during a session, and at the fastest speed, so is quite noisy. Well, from around the world wide web, it seems like this is a major problem, even for high-end machines. The screen is jittery, the mouse drags its feet around the screen and there are those annoying screen freezes of two or three seconds. Of course, for machines with fans, the noise is too distracting, and fan-less machines can become overheated. 

Salvation. I have just found out (from a forum) that the best way to use Google Meet is not to use the Google Chrome browser. As a Windows devotee, I would use Microsoft Edge, but Safari and Opera are also good. I ran Google Meet in Edge and found it to be an excellent experience. I hosted an online class with full video, shared Libre Office WP screens (with scrolling), shared HTML pages, shared video, used the whiteboard and sent messages. The fan did not come on once and everything was smooth and responsive. I did check out the Windows resource monitor a couple of times during the session and found that CPU usage did not exceed 70%, and was mostly around 40%.

I am sure those master programmers at Google will correct the situation soon but we no longer need to wait for them to do it.

Setting up my laptop for Zoom

My portable PC for online teaching is no longer portable. It is on its own little table. It never moves.

I have plugged into it the following;

A Sony webcam - plugged into a USB port

A four-port USB hub, with a USB mouse, keyboard and speaker power connection. I also plug in a USB drive if needed for a lesson

A 4Mb USB drive configured as "readyboost". I have read varying reports about whether this is useful, but when connecting to Zoom it seems to help.

A high resolution 22" monitor. This is a lifesaver.

A pair of speakers plugged into the jack port.

A LAN connection - RJ45.

A 64Gb SD card which holds all my live data files.

Actually, my laptop is acting like a Zoom server for the various peripherals I need to conduct a lesson. 

This seems quite reasonable to me. What do you think?

A spilt screen application - NotePad++

As an English teacher, it is often a requirement to show two documents together on the same screen.  When conducting a reading exercise you might want to have the reading text on the left and the questions on the right. An ideal application for this is NotePad++. This is free software, downloadable from many sites. It is easy to use, but you will need to spend five or ten minutes exploring the features initially

For presentations, you need to have it operating in text mode.  This is how you can use it with a split-screen, with both sides scrolling independently. 

   

What web cam should we use?

All systems now come with a camera and built-in microphone, but maybe the one that comes with a particular system is not good enough - especially the in-built microphone - for online teaching. One can use a headset, but I don't like to. 

My system does not have a good microphone and the camera gives a bit of a grainy image, so I use a USB webcam -  a Sony BRU-200. Like me, it is a bit old, and works well, like me, but unlike me, is not available anymore. Some reviewers have said that it was too expensive for the specification - but then how much do you pay for quality?

I could be wrong, but I don't think that Sony sells webcams anymore.  I would be interested to know from readers what web-cam they use.

Computer hardware and software issues

I use an early generation I3 HP laptop with 4Mb memory for online teaching. It is an excellent system and very productive, despite being seven years old. I do not plan to replace it until the issue of Windows 11 compliant systems is finalised. I do not intend to switch to Windows 11 yet, but, of course, do not want to be caught out with an operating system not supported, whenever that happens (2023?).

Incidentally, my backup PC is even older. It is a 2009 Acer laptop using an Intel Centrino. It works.  The disk access is slow, so I have all the files I use with students on an SD card. When I use it the online students have not noticed any difference except for the occasional sound blip.

For the online teacher - Google Meet or Zoom? Surprisingly, Google Meet seems to use twice the amount of systems resources as Zoom on my system. Meet occupies 540Mb of internal memory, whereas Zoom occupies 256Mb. CPU utilisation, with any users, is 33% on Meet and 14% on Zoom. The problem for Meet users that this presents is that the CPU fan is in continuous operating mode during Meet classes. Accordingly, in Meet the system is less responsive and adds a few decibels of noise. 

  

Background music during an online session - online muzak

There are periods in my lessons when I want students to do some work on their own for a short time. For example, read a couple of pages from a book, and then, perhaps after five minutes, discuss what has been read. I have found that it is a good idea to put on some background music during this period. Being online with nothing happening seems like a non-online-teaching thing. When the music stops it is time to start the discussion.

The choice of music is problematic. There is an issue of copyright and paying the rights owner, I think, although I am not sure. If there is a legal issue then it is dependant on the country the teacher is based in. The "fair use" of someone else's music might be in play here.

Back to the choice of music issue. Obviously, it should not be something students will actually listen to - so, online teaching muzak is a good term to identify it.  My first criteria is that there must not be any vocals - obviously. That would be too distracting. A good strategy is to look at the free midi files, which do not have a vocal track, and which also overcome any copyright issue. I like to have these midi versions ready to play;

"Pictures at an Exhibition - all of the pictures " by Mussorgsky.
"Rock With You" - Michael Jackson
"Enigma Variations" Elgar
"Scarborough Fair" - anonymous
"Piano Concerto in A Minor" - Grieg

The best ever is "Rock with You"  Rock with you

Make sure your music player is looping back to the beginning.

Good not-listening!

Pre-loading an image onto Zoom whiteboard

It is not possible, which is a shame. It is something I would like to do. It does not involve a lot of programming by the Zoom people. I am waiting. In the meantime, I share MS Paint instead with the class. Not quite the same thing - I know.

False information about online teaching

In the world of online teaching, a lot of things are discussed on the Internet. Good or bad practice, buy this computer, use this addon, Zoom will save/destroy the world of education, etc. 

Some of the content is purely marketing and easily identifiable, at least by teachers. Maybe it has some value. 

A second type is disguised marketing content.  Or more precisely, articles written by people who are paid by a product or service provider. They are normally about 400 words long, with some pictures. The article seems to be objective and complete. Perhaps we all have to be slightly cynical when we open up a web page.  Unfortunately, this is something we have to live with.

The third type we need to be wary of is the article written by a supposed "expert" - who is not. They are often academics and only have experience in a limited and unrealistic higher education environment. They have to write on the subject, it is part of their job description - they are Professor Brightfellow of Elitebridge University.

Zoom or Google Meet - which is the best?

I use both. They are different but in many ways operate in a similar way. Other platforms, such as Microsoft Team, are also good, but I do not use them, so any information I could give would be via a third party. 

In this blog, I will mainly focus on personal experience using these two platforms for classroom-type teaching. They work really well for classes. I do not think they are entirely suitable for webinars - but this blog is not about webinars. 

Zoom is not available in Syria, but I understand that Google Meet can be used in Syria from personal accounts. Being based in the Middle East, this is an important issue for me. Correct me if I am wrong, or out-of-date.