IntroductionThe use of social media is prevalent not only among younger generations but also across all age groups. New technologies are constantly emerging, and many children of the digital age seem to quickly adopt them without much effort. While there are many free online programs available, not all of them are suitable for educational purposes, and some may only bring unwanted results to students. In particular, social media can cause serious problems in schools, such as cyberbullying and privacy and security issues (Mishna et al., 2010; Redecker, Ala-Mutka, & Punie, 2010). Teachers should carefully select a program that meets the educational objectives and provide appropriate guidance to students before using them. Proper use of social media can bring student-centered informal learning and develop student autonomy (McLoughlin & Lee, 2010). Google Hangouts is one of the social media available through Google Plus (Duffy, 2013), and some innovative educators have used it for educational purposes (Isaacson, 2013; Roseth, Akcaoglu, & Zellner, 2013). Google Hangouts is similar to Skype, providing free audio/video conferencing along with text chat functionality. Both programs also offer a free mobile app, making it easy for iPad, iPhone, or Android users to access the programs. There are many other features unique to Google Hangouts. Unlike Skype, Google Hangouts is free for a group conference, and anyone with a Google Plus account can be invited to join the group conference. Video conferences on Google Hangouts can be recorded and uploaded to YouTube for sharing. The user can decide whether to share them publicly or only with friends. Additionally, Google Hangouts allows you to take screenshots, share screens… half a sheet of paper… the video conference should have lasted about 45 minutes to an hour. After the activity, the researcher distributed an online survey created with Google Forms to evaluate the perceived ease of use and usefulness of Google Hangouts. The survey was constructed based on the Technology Acceptance Model (Davis, 1989) and consisted of four sections: 1. demographic information and previous experience with Google Hangouts and/or any other web conferencing program, 2. ease of use, 3. usefulness and 4. feeling about the activity. A total of 30 U.S. and Japanese students responded to the survey. Data analysis is currently underway and will be completed in February 2014. The researcher plans to examine descriptive data for each construct and compare US and Japanese data. Furthermore, participants' overall learning experiences will be analyzed based on their written reflections.