Wireless screencasting with Google Cast for Education

One of the best features of a Chromebook is its portability. That's also perhaps its downfall. Sometimes you want to be "plugged in." For example - projecting a screen to the front of your classroom to guide students through an activity. That can be accomplished via an HDMI cable, but a lot of older school LCD projectors are still kicking from the dark ages of VGA. Previously, going wireless meant investing in a secondary device to act as a receiver for your projector (such as Chromecast or Apple TV). There must be a better way.

Enter the new Google Cast for Education App, available from the Chrome Web Store. Teachers at schools using GAFE accounts can download the app to their Chrome account on whatever device is hardwired to the projector. Students (or the teacher on a portable device) can download the Google Cast Extension for their Chrome browser.


Google's hook straight from the Project Manager:

"Teach and learn from everywhere in the classroom with Google Cast for Education"

Once the teacher broadcasts as a "Receiver" and shares with groups of students (you can share with an entire Google Classroom group at once or single users), students can click the Cast extension in their browser window and choose which receiver they'd like to cast to.

Here's a link to the support page from Google. I just tested it and it works great. Keep a couple of things in mind:

• The computer receiving the information needs to be running the App.
• The computer casting (sending) the information connects through the Extension.
• You can share with as many user groups as you want. To restrict access (and avoid a hostile takeover by one of your students) you can adjust the settings so that users looking to cast have to be approved before their view is shown.
• Users who are casting can choose to display their entire desktop (helpful for walking students through Chromebook tutorials, etc.) or just one browser tab (protects privacy of the casting user and keeps the receiver user a bit more focused).

Perhaps you'd like to cast a view of your own Chromebook's desktop up onto the screen so that students can follow along with your instructions. Yes - that's possible. Use the App on the projector computer, and click the Cast Extension from your Chromebook's browser.

Maybe you want one student to share a screen with another. Students can download the App too and act as a Receiver.

Want to showcase a student's work in front of the whole class? Have them cast to your Receiver.

Looking to push out information from the teacher device to a student one? Having a student computer as Receiver effectively lets the teacher device cast to and "take over" the student device with the content you want them to see.

Finally - don't worry if you don't have Chromebooks - any computer with a Chrome browser affiliated with a Google Apps for Education account can screencast to another one. It would be a great way to look at student work from all the different desktop computers in a traditional computer lab, as well.