[Socrates] Important Announcement: Changes to Google Meet

[Jean Kelly]

​Google Meet is a video conferencing tool available through your QC G Suite account. Several premium features are changing and you should be aware of them. If you do not use these specific premium features in Google Meet, there is no action required on your part. 
 
**Recording Google Meets**
If you are using the Google Meet recording feature, please be aware it will be changing. The exact date of this change is unknown at the moment, but we will do our best to give you a month of notice prior to it taking place. 
 
Once the transition is implemented, recordings made using Google Meet will expire after 30 days and cannot be downloaded, copied or shared outside of the QC G Suite environment. This has no impact on existing recordings, and will only impact recordings that are made after the transition has fully taken place. 
 
Since it is possible this change will be happening while the semester is in progress, we recommend being familiar and prepared with alternatives if required. 
 
**Alternatives:**
If you were using Google Meet to record your virtual classroom, try using ZOOM: https://keepteaching.qc.cuny.edu/i-need-help-with/zoom
If you were using Google Meet to record lectures, see here for our page on other methods of recording lectures: https://keepteaching.qc.cuny.edu/i-need-help-with/record-lectures-and-virtual-classrooms
​
**Participant Limits to 100 in Google Meets**
Starting September 30th, Google Meets will be limited to 100 maximum participants (including the professor). 
 
**Alternatives:** 
- ZOOM has a participant limit of 300 participants: https://keepteaching.qc.cuny.edu/i-need-help-with/zoom
- Blackboard Collaborate Ultra has a participant limit of 250 participants, with a more limited feature version for 250-500 participants. 

We will be having additional ZOOM workshops to ease the transition. You can register for them here: 
https://keepteaching.qc.cuny.edu/workshops