In the past couple of weeks, I have seen a dramatic increase in the number of questions about how to teach online. This post is the start of a brand new series. The series focuses in on how you can get started using zoom as a digital classroom for your students. This series will lead you right from the very beginning. Learn how to create a Zoom account through to hosting your own online sessions with your students. Today we’re going to cover the first two steps. We’re going to sign up for a Zoom account. Then we’re going to go through our settings to make sure we have the proper settings in place.
In order to create a Zoom account, we need to open up a web browser and go to zoom.us. Here you will be able to sign up for a free Zoom account. That can be done by clicking on the blue “Sign Up It’s Free” button in the upper right-hand corner. You can choose to either sign up with your email address. Or if you have a Google account you can sign in directly with Google. When prompted enter your Google account email. Or if you would like to you could create a Google account. Click Next and then proceed to enter the password for your Google account.
Creating a Zoom Account
Once again click “Next”. You will be welcomed to Zoom and verify that you want to create a Zoom account using your Google account. Once you click on create an account you will be brought to your Zoom meetings dashboard. This is the screen where you can schedule new meetings or view previous meetings or upcoming meetings. Now we’ll discuss this screen in more detail in the second video of this series. For now, we are going to focus in on the Settings tab. We’ll figure out what some of those ideal settings are for when we are planning online classes for students.
In-Meeting Settings
Generally, I choose not to start the zoom meeting with the host video and participants’ video turned on. I usually leave them off until it is officially time to start our session together. Class begins by sharing my Google slide deck with the welcome screen. I have a five-minute countdown video that plays so the students know exactly how much time they have until we start class. The next setting to take a look at is the join before host. I always make sure that that is turned off. I do not want my students to join before I do. It’s just best practice to do that especially since I work with younger students.
Here you have the choice of whether or not you would like to require a password for your meetings. Personally, I don’t require a password. This is mostly because it’s just within my school setting that any of the zoom links get shared. I also have other safety protocols in place to make sure that it’s only my students who are logging in.
This next one is pretty important. You do want to make sure that you mute participants upon entry. If you don’t, sometimes it can get quite noisy in the class. And depending on whether or not students have headphones, you can also get feedback if all microphones are on at the same time. So make sure that you click enable for the mute participants upon entry.
Chat In Class
Now depending on your own personal preferences, you may or may not want to enable chat. In my classes, I do allow the chatbox but I put limitations on it. I do not allow students to have private chat. Private chat between students opens up an opportunity for things like bullying and inappropriate comments. Additionally, distracted behaviour can occur. That is why I don’t allow private chat between students.
I do allow chat, in general, as a public comment for a number of reasons. For those students that may be a little shy to raise their hand and speak on the microphone, it is a way with fewer barriers for them to participate. Additionally, as I’m talking or sharing something with the class students can share their ideas without interrupting the general flow of class. After a certain section is done I can take a look at the chat, catch up, and answer any questions. I also like to enable auto-saving chats. In this way, it saves to my computer and I’m able to reference it if I ever need to.
I don’t enable play sound when participants join or leave. I have in previous years but I found it rather distracting when that would happen. My class sizes are small enough that I can notice when a student joins or leaves.
File Transfers
When it comes to file transfers I generally keep that turned off. I don’t allow the sharing of different files in class. In past years I have had students accidentally share different meme files in class. Obviously, that can be quite distracting and so I do want to limit those types of distractions in class. If there is something that I need to share with the students I’ll change the settings before class. Afterwards, I’ll come back to my settings and turn it off again for any future Zoom sessions that I start.
Enabling the “Allow Host To Put Attendee On Hold” is a very useful feature. Thankfully it’s one I haven’t had to use a whole lot. However, it is one that I do remind students I have the power to do. It allows you to remove a student from the Zoom session if you need to. For example, if you have a student who’s being disruptive and not listening. Whatever the situation might be you are able to remove that student if this setting is enabled.
Zoom Meeting Controls
These next settings are personal preference but I always enable the “Showing Meeting Control Toolbar” and “Show Zoom Windows During Screen Share”. I enable both of those for my meetings. I allow screen sharing in my Zoom sessions – so both I can share as well as my students can share. Google slide decks can be shared for a number of different things:
- Welcome screen in the morning that has a countdown
- Various pictures or text to help those that prefer visual cues
However, oftentimes we will do projects where students are creating their own slide decks. They share them in class as well.
Now, you want to make sure that your Zoom links are secure before you enable this. So, for example, I only release my zoom links to my students on Google Classroom. It’s a secure setting and I don’t have people from outside my school joining my Zoom classes. Maybe you’ve heard Zoom in the news recently. With everyone now using the Zoom platform there have been some public events where random people start sharing inappropriate pictures on their screen. You don’t want that to happen! So, if you do enable screen sharing make sure that you only share your link in a secure setting.
Annotations
Enabling annotations can be very handy. This allows you and the students to be able to make annotations with something that is being shared. For example, in math class, the students and I will annotate a slide to work out the math problem together. Along the same lines, enabling a whiteboard in Zoom adds an additional choice of things that you can share. Instead of sharing your screen with a slide deck, you can choose the whiteboard option. That brings up a whiteboard that you can draw on.
I also like to make sure that the whiteboard is autosaved when you switch between content sharing. Sometimes you might be working on something on the whiteboard and you’ll have to go back and share another screen. Or maybe you just want to go back to the camera view to shake things up for a bit. This way, when you come back, everything that you had written on your whiteboard is still there.
Non-Verbal Feedback
I do enable “Nonverbal Feedback” in Zoom. It provides students with icons that they can click on. This allows them to communicate with you without actually using the microphone. For example, there’s icons like speed up and slow down there’s a coffee cup, a green checkmark and red X. Some of those items I actually use to poll the students. For example, I might say, “if your answer is yes give me a green checkmark”. Or “if your answer’s no give me a red X”. There are lots of ways you can utilize this handy tool.
Breakout Rooms & Virtual Backgrounds
Breakout rooms are essential for group work. They are fantastic and I always make sure to enable them in the Zoom settings. I also like the option to assign the participants to what breakout room they will be going to. I do make sure that I allow that Zoom to have the ability to randomly assign students to a group. Sometimes I’ll use that option. Other times I will have specific groupings that I want students in. Being able to have that option is really nice.
Enabling a virtual background can be really neat and potentially add to student engagement. There are some great ideas out there for how they can be used in a classroom setting. However, be aware that with more students on Zoom they are finding interesting things to do with these virtual backgrounds. Make sure that you’re always engaging your students in some way. Have them answer a question using the microphone or chatbox, do an activity, etc. Students are posting video tutorials on how to record yourself “paying attention”. Then they use it as a virtual background in order to walk away and do something else.
Attention tracking is the next setting that I always make sure is enabled. With attention, tracking turned on you’re able to see whether or not students are in the Zoom window. You can also see if they have moved to something else on their computer. I do find this quite handy. Students find it very interesting that I know when they are not paying attention. This is one of the ways that I am able to do that.
Waiting Rooms
I also enable the waiting-room function. When students log in they get placed in the waiting room. They are told that the host will let them in when it’s time. That allows me to log in and make sure I’m all set before the students start showing up. It also allows me to see who’s trying to log into the class. I can then choose who I allow in. For example, if somebody that I did not know or recognize was trying to log into my Zoom session they wouldn’t be able to unless I let them in.
The final meeting session that I enable is the “Show a Join From Your Browser” link. What this does is allow students to click on a link to join the Zoom session within their browser. They’re not required to download the zoom client in order to access their classes. You as a host will have to download your very first time. We’ll go into that in our post in this series. However, if you enable the “Join From Your Browser Link’ your students are not required to do that download. They can simply click on the link and launch the Zoom session.
The final section in the settings has to do with email notifications. What you like to receive and what not. Of course, that really boils down to personal preference.
Now that we have signed up for a Zoom account and explored the various settings, we are ready to learn how to schedule a meeting. That’s what we’re going to be learning in the very next post of this series.
