Students studying with Red Balloon of the Air receive their learning and well-being support via the Google G-Suite. This provides many ‘apps’, most of which run from anywhere, in a web browser on your computer. They are all linked together, and can be shared by students, teachers, therapists all working and collaborating online together in real time.
In addition, we make use of a few other apps that are pre-installed on the computers we provide. Below, you can find out a bit more about these tools, and what they should look like, so you can recognise them.
Gmail
Gmail is Google's answer to email. Students have full access to an email inbox so they can use their Red Balloon account to send email to their teachers and receive communications from Red Balloon directly.
Hangouts
Hangouts is an instant messenger. The teachers at RBAir use this to help deliver lessons to students. All students have to accept communications before they can be messaged through Hangouts and we'd encourage students to not accept an invite from someone they don't know.
YouTube
Almost everybody knows YouTube these days, it's a video streaming service that allows users to watch other people's videos and upload/livestream their own. As we provide students with a Google account, they have the ability to use YouTube through their accounts for educational videos
Slides
Slides is Google's answer to Microsoft PowerPoint. Teachers use Slides to prepare lessons and share them with students, supplementing this with Hangouts to deliver lessons online.
Sheets
Sheets is a spreadsheet application. Sheets can also be used collaboratively like Docs to create spreadsheets with others.
Mumble
Mumble is a voice over IP program, which means it allows people to talk over the internet using a headset with a microphone and speakers. RBAir makes use of this for students who are comfortable talking to their teachers with their voice and deliver their lessons using this tool. It's installed on every RBAir laptop ready to use.