The current spread of the Corona virus has not shown a weakening in our country. Several countries are still anticipating the outbreak so that it does not spread more widely. Some countries are even now extending lockdown status for their countries. Currently Italy and the United States still occupy the highest number of people with the Covid-19 virus in the world. Indonesia has also had several patients for this disease since early March, but when compared to Indonesia's population, this figure is insignificant. President Joko Widodo has announced that work and teaching and learning activities should be carried out at home via online. Schools and colleges have also followed this recommendation for the learning from home process.

Well, for those of you who are still students and still have to take part in a number of teaching and learning activities, of course, you need a medium to continue to be able to carry out lectures. For that, here is a summary of 4 applications that you can use to continue studying from home during the Covid-19 pandemic.

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Zoom Cloud Meeting

The first application that you can use is Zoom Cloud which is an online meeting application. This service has been present on the desktop platform since 2011 and can now also be used for Android and iOS smartphone users. You will be able to use this application to gather with lecturers and fellow lecturers and share material to be discussed.

You can directly download this application on the Google Play Store or AppStore for smartphones.

And for laptop users, you can directly download via the search engine that you use with the keyword 'Zoom Cloud Meeting' or you can directly visit the https://zoom.us/ page. If so, you can immediately create a Zoom ID using your personal email. After that, you can immediately search for the online study room your lecturer has created by clicking the 'Join' menu.

Then, enter the appropriate room number code given by the maker of the room. Later, you will be able to connect with friends directly into the same room and do lessons. Zoom with the basic version of the account can facilitate participants of up to 100 users and the meeting duration is 40 minutes for one meeting, but if you upgrade to the business version, you will get a lot of value, such as no time limit of 40 minutes and more users.

Google Meet

The second application that we can use during the Covid-19 pandemic is Google Meet. This online meeting application facilitated by Google has made it easy to interact and share information in an online meeting media that presents several people in one forum. The ease of this application is that it is integrated with a Google Mail account. So if you already have a Google account, and when you access your Google email, you will immediately be able to take advantage of this feature via the internet browser you are using. You don't need to bother having to download and install applications to use them on a laptop. If you are using a smartphone, you have to install it first through the Google Play Store or AppStore.

By using Google Meet, you can connect with as many as 250 participants, of course, all of this is accessed through your G Suite account. G Suite is a suite of tools, software, and products tailor-made by Google to support productivity and collaboration. In it, Google has several products for email, document creation, presentations, calendars, drives, and much more. There are 2 types of G suite, namely the G Suite Basic Plan and the G Suite Business Plan. The difference lies in the advanced admin controls for unlimited drives and storage as well as additional features that you can choose to make your account management easier, such as message retention policies that are not included in the G Suite Basic Plan account and many more.

Skype

The third application recommendation is one that doesn't seem new to technology connoisseurs. As is well known, Skype is an application for communication that displays face-to-face video between users. Although the use of this application can be considered to be decreasing, if during the quarantine period that is being carried out by the Indonesian Government, there is nothing wrong with using the application again. In fact, the use of Skype has been carried out by several universities abroad for their qualification programs.

By using Skype, you can connect with colleagues and lecturers up to 50 people in the same room. That way, of course, the process of providing material will be very well done. You can also make presentations easily without having to re-type the text. What must be ensured in using the application is a strong network connection because the problem in using Skype is that the connection is easily lost.

WhatsApp

For the last application, it seems like something you can do if the two previous recommendations cannot be executed. Who doesn't use WhatsApp nowadays, of course for students this application is a must on their cellphones. In addition, this application is also considered easier and less complex in operation.

You can carry out teaching and learning activities using group chat on WhatsApp. You only need to enter your classmates and teaching lecturers to be able to provide the lecture material. Regarding its implementation, teaching lecturers can use the voice note feature to be recorded and sent to the association. There is also a videocall group feature that can be filled by 4 group members. If it is not effective, the lecture process will inevitably have to be done through text chat. Well, that's a recommendation that we can give to those of you who are still in the lecture process. (hms)

Author:

Hariadi Yutanto, S.Kom., M.Kom.

(Lecturer and Head of ICT STIE Perbanas Surabaya)