hi everyone this is Anna one of your consumer technology specialists at Mid-Continent Public Library today we are going to take a look at the video conferencing software Google meet if you have a Google account and this does include Gmail as part of a Google account you can access the free version of Google me they call it the consumer Edition and with a free account you can hold one-on-one meetings for up to 24 hours if a meeting has three or more people then you're limited to one hour or less
in length and you can have up to a hundred participants per meeting if you're interested in more premium features Google does offer a variety of individual and business plans that give you more flexibility with the Google meet software you can download an app for your mobile device or you can also use Google meet in a web browser and that's what we are going to do today so we are going to navigate to meet dot google.com and you can actually also type it in as google.com meet either of those will
work and you'll just use that page to get logged in and when we get logged in this page is fairly simple it only has a few options to choose from so I can click to schedule a new meeting or I can enter a code or a link to join a meeting or I can click this learn more link to get more information about Google meet and the features of the basic free version versus the premium software I'm going to start by clicking new meeting and when I do I actually do get a few more options so I can create a m
eeting for later I can start an instant meeting or I can schedule a meeting for another time using Google Calendar I'm going to just try all of these so when I click create a meeting for later I do get this pop-up that has a unique meeting room link and I can click the icon of the two like pieces of paper to copy this link and then I can give it to other attendees through an email or text message or however I would like to pass that information on and it does say be sure to save the link so that
you can use it too this is because the next time I click this option I'm going to get a new meeting link so I don't need this now so I'm just going to click the X to close out of the pop-up and then the link that was just copied it is one of the things that I can enter into this text box right here to get a meeting started but I am going to click new meeting again and this time I'm going to choose start an instant meeting and this is going to open up a meeting room in my browser window and as I
said Google meet does also have apps available so that is an option as well when I am in the meeting room the menu bar is located at the bottom of my window and on the left side I can see there is a time and then there is a code and this is the meaning code so if you do nothing it will generate the code on its own if you do schedule a meeting in Google Calendar that code will actually be the title of the meeting and then we have microphone and Camera icons that you can click each one to turn th
ese tools on and off and if you want to view live captions during the meeting you can click this CC icon and that will turn on live captions for you the smiley face icon is for reactions and choosing one of the emojis in the reactions list it's going to Splash that little image on everyone's display and this can be a way to visually show reaction to what is being said during the meeting the icon would be up facing arrow is where I can share my screen so this is how people can give presentations
during meetings and it may only be accessible to certain people like the host of the meeting or the person who scheduled the meeting since I'm the host I can share a web browser tab this would be like a Google Chrome tab I can share an app window so that would be like a PowerPoint presentation or I can share my entire screen and I might do this if I'm demonstrating how to do something and I need to use multiple windows I can allow the attendees to see the entire screen so they'd be able to see m
e switching back and forth between different apps and I also can choose if I want to include audio when I share something so I will demonstrate how to share in a little while the next icon on our menu it's a hand icon and it is for raising your hand and this is a visual cue to whoever is talking or hosting the meaning that you have a comment or a question and it allows you to show that without interrupting the speaker so when you click the raise hand icon everyone in the meeting can see that and
then the speaker or host should acknowledge it and let you know how they want to proceed so if they're giving them presentation they may ask to come back to your question they may ask you to put it in the chat they may let you speak right away it's very personal individualized whatever anyone is comfortable with depending on what type of meeting you're in and then the icon that looks like three stacked dots this is a more options menu and this is where I can change the view settings of my meeti
ng so I can make it a grid View and then I'd be able to see more people on the screen if there's a lot of people attending the meeting you can also access help Pages here and then if I choose settings at the bottom of this menu this gives me access to where I can adjust my audio video caption settings so if I'm having a problem with my camera or microphone I would probably go here first to try to fix it to see if maybe the wrong device is selected and then I can also change the language of the m
eeting here for the live captions so there are a few other languages that I can choose to get those live captions in back on my menu bar the red button with the little phone receiver icon is our leave button and this is how you leave at the end of the meeting so it will remove you from the meaning so you don't want to click it too early there are also a few more icons on the right side of this menu bar the circled eye like eye for information shows our meeting details and it is where I can find
and copy the meeting link so if the meeting started and someone sends you an email or a text and says I can't find the meeting I don't have the link you can copy it right from there in your meeting window and get it sent to that person so they can get logged in so it's just a convenient way to get that link if you need it and then the icon of the two people this is a participants icon and it shows who is at the meeting and what their role is So currently I'm the only one in the meeting and I'm m
arked as a host and then there is the chat bubble icon this accesses the meeting chat and the meeting chat is an additional way attendees can communicate during the meeting and it can be seen by all participants so if you're in a meeting and they're asking you questions or asking you to introduce yourself they might say put that information in the chat and then you would type out your answer rather than using your microphone to speak and then the icon that is like shapes making a pyramid that is
the activities icon and I can see that with my free plan there is a whiteboard available but I would need a premium account to access these other live streaming and recording options and then the padlock icon on the far right is where I can access the host controls so I will only see this if I scheduled the meeting then I am considered the host and I can control what attendees can and can't do during the meeting by adjusting these settings I'm going to click the red leave button and click the r
eturn to home screen button to get back to our home screen and now I am going to click new meeting again and I'm going to choose this time schedule in Google Calendar if you've used Google Calendar at all this is what a regular calendar event looks like so if you're scheduling any kind of event on Google Calendar it looks like this and I can actually schedule a meeting directly from my Google Calendar so if I weren't already at the Google meet page maybe I'm in my email or I'm looking at my cale
ndar I can schedule a Google meet meeting from the calendar and I would get the same form to fill out so I just need to fill in the information about the meeting so the time and I just also want to make sure that there is a web address under this button to join with Google meet and then there is a guest section and I want to add email addresses of anyone that I want to invite to the meeting if those people are in my contacts for my Gmail account the same account that I'm using for the meeting I
may be able to just type their name in and it will pop up but if you want to make certain that you have put the right people in and send to the right email you would want to just type in those email addresses of each person and then I can also choose a couple of pre-meeting guest permissions like allowing them to invite other people to the meeting there may be instances where you want as many people as possible to be at a meeting maybe it's a community meeting this would allow attendees that you
've invited to also invite others and then once I finish filling out the form I'm going to click the blue save button which is up at the top then I'm asked if I want to send an invitation and this would be sent to all the guests that I've put in just now and so I'll say that I do want an invitation to be sent so I'll choose send from the options and this will send an invitation with the meeting information to the email addresses that I put in as guests and it will allow them to respond from the
email and to add it to their calendar so once I have the meeting set up I can join the meeting from the event on my calendar or I can join from the Google meet page on the Google me page I need that meeting ID and then from Google Calendar it should go directly into the meeting for me now that we've looked at the options for our video meeting we're going to join another meeting so that we can see just a couple of these features in action and here we are in our Google meet meeting and Tracy and M
ary are here to help me demonstrate how to do a few things in the meeting so the first thing I'm going to show you is how to turn on live captions so in our menu bar which is at the bottom of our screen the icon that looks like CC in a square that is the captions so we will just click that and it adjusts my screen so that the captions can show up just above our menu bar and it did have a little pop up there saying that the captions are in English so it looks like you can change them to another l
anguage initially if that is something you need to do and then if you need to turn those captions off you would just click that same icon again and that turns them off and the other thing I'm going to show you is how to share your screen so if you are giving a presentation or something you're going to choose this little icon it looks like it's kind of an an upward arrow in a box kind of uh and when you hover over it it does say present now so I will click that and I do have the option to share a
n internet browser tab a window or my entire screen and I am just going to share a window because I do have many things open on my computer and I only want to share the specific presentation that I'm giving so I will find that window and click on it and then choose share in the bottom right corner and I can see that it adjusts the window so we can all see what I'm sharing and I could interact with it on the window on my computer if if it was a presentation to flip through and then when I am done
sharing I will just click at the bottom and it's over our menu bar it says stop sharing so I will click that and that takes us back to the original View and that is how you share your screen so thank you Mary and Tracy this has been an overview of how to use the Google meet video conferencing software thanks for joining that's it for today's video if you liked it make sure you let us know by following our mcpl 360 page on Facebook and our mcplmo Channel on YouTube We Premiere new videos every W
ednesday and Friday at 1pm and if you miss the live event you can always find all of our videos on YouTube on one of our many technology related playlists on our YouTube channel thanks again for watching and we will see you again next time
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