In this article, we'll show you how to help your students connect to Zoom from Google Classroom. While there are a number of ways to accomplish this, we've found the best thing to do is create a new meeting and post the meeting link to your Google Classroom stream. You can use any number of other methods to invite students if they work better for you, but, for a number of reasons, this is what we recommend.
The first time you do this with your class, expect it to take several minutes for your students to get connected. You might expect to spend the entire period getting everyone connected and making sure they are comfortable using Zoom. They will be learning this process just as you are.
Open the Zoom app and click the New Meeting button.
The meeting window will open. The first time, you will see the Join Audio button. We recommend clicking the Automatically join audio by computer when joining a meeting button at the bottom of the window, and then clicking the Join with computer audio button. This way, you won't be prompted about this every time.
Next, we recommend enabling settings to ensure you have complete control over student microphones. Click Manage Participants at the bottom of the screen.
When the participant management pane opens to the right, click the three dots at the bottom of the window.
Check the option to Mute Participants on Entry.
The "Mute Participants Upon Entry" window will appear. Uncheck Allow Participants to Unmute Themselves to ensure you have complete control over student microphones. Then click Continue.
Now, you are ready to share your meeting link with your students. Click Invite at the bottom of the screen.
The "Invite people to join meeting..." window will open. Click Copy Invitation and then click the X to close the window.
Here, we'll show you how to share this link in Google Classroom. You can also share this link via other means, such pasting it into email. We'll show how to share this in Google Classroom here, since this will likely be the workflow for most classes using Zoom. To share in Google Classroom, navigate to your Google Classroom page. On the Stream tab, click Share something with your class.
Right-click in the Share with your class text box and choose Paste.
Add a personalized message if desired, and then click Post.
Your students will now see the Zoom link when they open Google Classroom as shown below, and can then click the link to join your class. Sharing your Zoom link this way makes it easy for your students to connect; all they need to do is click this link. The Zoom app is automatically installed on their ChromeBooks, so they'll quickly be connected. If they're using a non school-issued device, they may need to download an app the first time they connect. Zoom will walk them through this automatically.
When your class is finished, first click End Meeting a the bottom of the Zoom window.
Then, click End Meeting for All in the window that appears.