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How to Use Blutick With Video Calls (e.g. Google Meet)
For many teachers and students, remote learning is unfamiliar territory. Here we’ll explain how you can best use Blutick with video conferencing platforms (e.g. Google Meet, Skype, Zoom).
There are slight differences between the platforms on how to share your screen, but otherwise they work in a very similar way. Here we’ll use Google Meet for the examples.
Before the lesson
Select which tasks you want to use during the lesson, and set them for your class. Check out our guide on setting tasks if you need a refresher.
Remember you can tailor the tasks to your class by using the ‘Advanced Options’, for example by limiting the task to particular levels within the topic.
Starting the lesson
Connect with your students via your video conferencing platform. Ensure you have the topic page loaded on Blutick and share your screen.
To do this on Google Meet, click the three dots in the top right of your screen.
Then select “Share Screen”.
Finally click on “Application Window”, choose your web browser which is displaying Blutick, and click “Share”.
Now your students can see your web browser displaying the Blutick site.
Begin your lesson, introducing the topic as you wish. You can play the video explanations on Blutick, or you can talk through the worked examples on the site to demonstrate how to solve the questions.
Monitoring student activity during the lesson
Once you have set students working independently on the task(s), you can monitor their activity through the Blutick teacher tools. Go to ‘Your Classes’ and click the orange ‘Recent Activity’ button on the required class.
You will then see the recent activity for that class. The page will automatically refresh every 10 seconds, and you can click ‘View’ for a full summary of any student’s working.
Assessing student progress after the lesson
Once students have completed the task, go to ‘Your Tasks’ to view the task summary.
Click on the green ‘View Task Summary’ button and you’ll find the overall class information.
You’ll also see all the information about the task for every student: their Smartscore, how many questions they’ve answered, how many mistakes they made and how long they’ve spent on the task. Hover your mouse pointer over the Smartscore to see the date it was achieved.
Please note that the displayed Smartscore for any given topic is always the most recent one attained, not the highest-scoring.
You can export this information to a csv file, or come back onto Blutick at any point to see the task summary again – it’ll always be there!
Final tips
When using video conferencing apps to lead lessons, you may find it beneficial to mute all other participants whilst you are talking to the class.
Take care to ensure you only have the necessary web pages and apps open whilst teaching – this can help you avoid accidentally sharing unsuitable content.
Remember this is new to you, your students and most educators around the world! If it doesn’t quite work the first time, give it another go! If there’s anything we can do at Blutick to help, get in touch.
Finally, remember you don’t need to use video conferencing apps to use Blutick with a class – you can remotely monitor their activity as described above.
