Preparing Your Device
How Do I Best Prepare My Device for the Online Classroom?
Our online classroom has been designed to be as user friendly as possible. There aren’t too many settings to adjust and it works on any smartphone, tablet, laptop or desktop. This guide aims to help you prepare your device for a great experience teaching and learning online.
1 - Choose Your Browser
For the “digital immigrants” amongst us, a browser is defined as:
“An internet browser, also known as a web browser or simply a browser, is a software program that you use to view web pages on your computer. You can think of your browser as your gateway to the internet.”
Laptops and Desktop Computers:
Except for Internet Explorer (no longer supported), our classroom and management systems will work with any browser. However, not all browsers are created as equals! The technology which drives our system is based on that of a Google Hangout. Therefore, Google Chrome is the recommended browser for a laptop or desktop.
Download and install 'Google Chrome' HERE.
Apple iPads and iPhones:
Safari is our recommended choice of browser on an iPad or iPhone. For some versions you will need to amend the settings before the camera will work.
Here’s how:
Tap the grey ‘Settings’ icon on your homescreen
Find ‘Safari’ in settings, and tap it.
Scroll down to find ‘Camera’.
Click ‘Camera’ and change “ask” to “allow”.
The online classroom will now work!
If these options aren’t available in your settings - you need to first update your operating system.
To do so, go to settings>click general>click software update and go though the steps as instructed.
Android Tablets and Smartphones:
Google Chrome is by far the best browser to use with these types of devices.
2 - Update Your Browser
This is by far and away the most important point in this guide. The technology which drives our classroom is very new. If you are using an older version of your browser, whatever that may be, you may encounter problems. Specifically, if you can’t see or hear your teacher, or if your teacher can’t see or hear you, the issue is most likely down to your browser being out of date.
Update your browser to the latest version and try again - we are 99% sure this will eradicate problems of this kind.
Here are guides to updating your browser, whichever browser you may be using:
Note that on Apple iPad and iPhone , Safari is automatically updated when you update the operating system as described above.
3 - Manage Your Connection
Once your browser is up to date, remaining issues can often be solved by making sure your internet connection is up to scratch and giving the online classroom every chance to succeed, by minimising the pressure on your home network. Our Troubleshooting Guide will help you achieve this.
4 - Manage permissions
Regardless of which browser you use, upon your first visit to the classroom, you will be asked to give permission for the classroom to access your camera and microphone. Click yes to both for a smooth entry into teaching and learning online.
If you click “No”, you can change this decision in the settings of your browser, or while in a lesson, you can click the camera icon in your address bar.
5 - Test your set-up
Music Tutors are able to arrange a test session for you, where you can check that everything is working, ahead of your first lesson. Please contact Music Tutors for further information or to arrange a test session: [email protected]
If this is not possible, you can enter any lesson up to 2 hours before it starts - you should be able to check for yourself that you can be seen & by clicking on the ‘Media Settings’ icon, you can see if your audio is coming through. For more information, see our Online Classroom Guide.
6 - Have a Plan B!
If possible, keep a second device nearby where you can attempt to access the online classroom, should there be problems with your first device. To save time, login to musictutors.co.uk on both devices ahead of the lesson.
Thank you for reading this guide! If you have any questions, please contact Music Tutors: [email protected]