LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – More than a week after announcing a switch in online video conferencing software for virtual classes, Jefferson County Public Schools will now give teachers a choice between using either Microsoft Teams or Google Meet.
JCPS Chief Information Officer Kermit Belcher said Friday that the district’s decision came after Google added a waiting lobby feature for its video conferencing platform, which was initially the preferred method for synchronous instruction as JCPS began the 2020-21 school year with at least six weeks of distance learning because of the local COVID-19 caseload.
That will allow teachers to admit students in their virtual classrooms before starting lessons and send students to that lobby if they’re disruptive.
That feature would have been useful during the first day of classes Aug. 25 as some middle- and high-school classes faced numerous interruptions from students, forcing JCPS to quickly transition virtual classes to Microsoft Teams.
“If that feature had have been in place a week ago, we wouldn’t be standing here talking, quite honestly,” Belcher said during an interview Friday. The district informed administrators of the change in a letter Thursday and staff on Friday.
“It is good to have those choices, so now we are focusing our efforts on them both,” he said.
Google Meet now also allows teachers to control whether their virtual classes have chat functions.
“These are all feature updates requested from JCPS that are now in place on the Google Meet system,” Chief Academic Officer Carmen Coleman said in the Thursday letter to administrators, adding that the district hopes to recommend both Google Meet and Microsoft Teams “as viable synchronous learning tools.”
Belcher said the district has worked closely with Google and Microsoft to discuss functions JCPS teachers and families have said they need for virtual instruction.
In fact, JCPS officials met with a member of the Microsoft team Friday morning to provide more input on how to improve the district’s experience with Teams.
“This is not just a JCPS concern,” Belcher said. “They’ve been working on this with New York public schools and some of the other schools even back in the spring. They have been very responsive.”
Tammy Berlin, vice president of the Jefferson County Teachers Association, said because teachers could not control who entered and left virtual classrooms on Google Meet, students could share their meeting codes on social media and share inappropriate content.
"Other people were getting those meeting codes and just coming into meetings and wreaking havoc on classes," she said.
Belcher said the students involved in the disruptions, who were tracked down by their user names, will be disciplined.
Like traditional classrooms, teachers should have ways to handle disruptive behavior in virtual settings, he said.
Ultimately, the district wanted to give teachers a choice between Google Meet and Microsoft Teams based on their experiences with the platforms, he said.
Some teachers prefer Google Meet for their virtual classes instead of Microsoft Teams, Berlin said.
"Our elementary teachers, a lot of them are saying that they really liked Google Meet because it's really much more user-friendly for students, younger students especially, and their parents," Berlin said Thursday.
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