Speaker 1: Zoom or Google Meet? I've been using both for over two years now and in this video, I'm going to tell you which one is the best and why. So, I've been teaching English online for nearly two years now and I've switched between both platforms, Zoom and Meet. I've used it for private classes, so one-to-ones and group classes. In this video, we're going to be comparing the free versions of both of these platforms. Now, I know there are paid versions and those paid versions have a lot more features I'm going to show you today, but that's for another video. I'll start with a quick comparison of the basics and then we'll look into all the features that I like and don't like on both platforms. So, to begin this comparison, first we're going to take a look at the basics of both Zoom and Google Meet. So, we will be looking at the limits on the number of participants you can have in your class or video call. Also, time limits that the platforms have in place. For both group and individual calls and also how safe these calls are for you as a teacher and your students. So, the limit on participants for both of these platforms is set to 100. Now, this is not really a concern for me as a teacher because when in God's name am I ever going to have a hundred students in my class? The maximum I usually have is around 10 or 12, so I don't know really why I compared that. Time limits on Google Meet and Zoom for individual classes, so that's you and the students, are unlimited. So, if you've got a class that you love, then it never has to end. There are time limits on the group calls though. So, with Zoom with three participants, so that's for example one teacher and two students, then that is set to 40 minutes. Google Meet, on the other hand, is set to one hour. In terms of safety, Zoom gives the students a meeting ID and a password. Once they enter those details in, the teacher can actually enable a waiting room on the Zoom website, which means the teacher can either accept or remove a student from the waiting room if they're not sure if the student is actually that person or not. For this to work properly, it's important that you ask the students to use their real names when they're entering the call. Now, with Google Meet, there is not a meeting ID and a password. There's only a meeting ID which is connected to the end of a link. You can give the students either that code or the link, but when the student enters the Google Meet meeting, the teacher can still admit or remove the student if they're not sure if the person that's entering is a student. So, if we take a quick look at what we've compared with the basics of both platforms, you can see that Google Meet has a slight advantage in the fact that the group calls have a limit of one hour, whereas the Zoom calls have a limit of 40 minutes. But, there is a way around this with the Zoom calls. The Zoom calls have a limit of one hour, whereas the Zoom calls have a limit of 40 minutes. But, there is a way around this with the Zoom calls. The Zoom calls have a limit of one hour, whereas the Zoom calls have a limit of 40 minutes. But, there is a way around this with the Zoom calls. By ending the call at the 40-minute mark and just restarting the call again. Now, obviously this is not ideal for a class, especially if a teacher is in the middle of an activity. But, if you know planning ahead that the class is only going to last 40 minutes at a time, then you can make plans to start another class immediately after and continue on from whatever activity you left off in the previous class. So, essentially what I'm saying is that once we've compared the basics, I don't see any real difference between the two. So, let's get started with comparing the key features on both Zoom and Google Meet for teaching online, starting with the whiteboard. With Zoom, the whiteboard is built into the program. So, to get it started, all you need to do is go to the share button and choose whiteboard. This then will share the whiteboard to all the participants and they will see what you're drawing or writing. On Google Meet, the whiteboard will take you to your whiteboard and it will give you a link to a jam board, which is Google's answer to the whiteboard. Now, the jam board is a great feature. The only reason I'm not a fan of it is because you do need to give a link to the students and they need to leave Google Meet to access the whiteboard or the jam board. With Zoom, the advantage is that you open the whiteboard within Zoom, so the students do not have to go anywhere. And they can see everything that's happening in front of them. the whiteboard in Zoom and the Jamboard are not very different so really the advantage for Zoom is that the move to the whiteboard in class is a lot quicker and a lot more seamless for the students. The second key feature for me when teaching online is breakout rooms. Now these are particularly useful for group classes so with Zoom's free version you do have access to breakout rooms. With Google Meet you don't. With the paid version of Google Meet they do give you access to breakout rooms but in this video we are comparing only the free versions. So in this case the fact that Zoom gives you breakout rooms in the free version is a big plus. If you haven't used breakout rooms before then I did make a video on breakout rooms and activities that make the most of them and a short tutorial in a video which I'm going to post right here. The next function I want to focus on is breakout rooms. So I'm going to focus on breakout rooms and I'm going to focus on is the chat function which when you're teaching online can be an invaluable tool. So for Zoom the thing I love about the chat function on Zoom is that you can write to individual students and to the group as a whole. Now this can be very useful for setting up certain activities. Maybe there's information you want to give to one student but not to the group and also for the students they can send a message directly to you as the teacher. So for perhaps an activity where we'd like students to send you their answers individually on an activity then it does give them the opportunity to do that. With Google Meet you can only send chat messages to the group as a whole. There is no option to send chat messages individually so in my eyes the chat function on Zoom is more advanced. Next is how we get the links or access codes out to your students so they can join the meeting. On Zoom we enter via the website and create a meeting on there. Then we can copy an invitation. This gives us a bunch of text which contains a link to the meeting and also the meeting ID and passcode. What I usually do is I copy this whole text and I send it out in an email to the students individually. One of the things I like about Google Meet though is that you can create the meeting on Google Calendar first and it will give you an option to create a Google Meet meeting by default. You can then send a link to the Google Meet by adding the student. You can then send a link to the Google Meet by adding the student's email addresses into the Google Calendar event. I find this process a lot quicker than the one on Zoom. With Zoom you can add your meetings to Google Calendar but this doesn't send invitations out to your students. In both Zoom and Google Meet once you have the meeting started there is an option to invite a participant in the meeting but I prefer to have students join the class at the same time as I do. Continuing with the theme of ease of access for our students, Zoom is a great way to create a meeting experience that is guaranteed with Zoom by downloading their clients from the website. Now with Google Meet the meeting can actually take place within the browser. Now in this case for some of your students who are not technologically gifted then this is a lot easier for them. Something that the Google Meet free version can offer to me as an English teacher which I find really useful are the captions. Now Zoom currently does not offer captions and with Google Meet captions for our students can be really useful as it gives students that extra input they need if they're having trouble following the class. The captions work by essentially providing students with subtitles to what I'm saying. It can also caption any audio that you're playing so if you have a YouTube video or any video for that matter and there are no subtitles available Google Meet does a pretty good job of providing captions or subtitles to that audio. Using these platforms to teach online I have to say that Zoom's whiteboard, their breakout rooms and their chat function are all real pluses and some things that Google Meet does not offer or does not offer to the same standard. Now I have to say that Google Meet's captions and their ease of access for students is something that Google Meet has over Zoom but this is not enough for me to change my mind. So now that you've seen the rundown I guess you can imagine what I'm going to say. That's right, Zoom is the winner. I have to say that after two years I think it's the one that I'm going to stick with for the remainder of this academic year and if we continue to teach online next year then I will be recommending Zoom for my school and for my teachers. Thanks for watching my video. I hope it helps you if you're trying to make a decision on what is the best platform for your classes or for your school and if you like what you saw then please subscribe and I'll see you soon. See you soon.