In the past number of weeks I have seen a dramatic increase in the number of questions about how to teach online. In today’s post, we will continue learning how to teach with Zoom. We’ll do this by focusing on how to easily schedule a zoom meeting as a teacher.
The first post in this series is getting signed up for zoom and is a great place to start. It walks through signing up to hosting online sessions with students. Today we’re going to take a look at the third step: scheduling a meeting. We will focus on the different ways that you are able to schedule a meeting for your students.
Schedule A Zoom Meeting from the Dashboard
The first place where you are able to schedule a Zoom session is directly from the Zoom dashboard. Click on the meetings tab. This is the same Zoom dashboard that we learnt about in the previous post. Go to zoom.us and sign in. In order to schedule the meeting, click the blue schedule a new meeting button. You will be able to add a name and a description as well as add dates and times.
In the example, we create a socials class. Type “Let’s meet together and talk about socials” as a description. Then, we schedule it for March 23 and select 2:00 p.m. as the start time. Next, choose the duration of the session. Even if you place an hour or two for the duration you aren’t actually limited to that duration. It’s also important to note, the free Zoom account has a limit to the length of the session (40 minutes).
There’s also the option to make this a recurring meeting. If you have a class that happens each day then you can set it up just the one time. You can also specify how long this session continues. So, for example, you can specify an end date. Alternately, you can specify that it’s going to occur a certain amount of times before it ends.
Include Security Settings
For increased security, you can choose to include a meeting password. I don’t generally use this function for my sessions. This is mostly because I’m not terribly worried about my Zoom link getting out publicly. I work within an enclosed setting where people outside of our school don’t have access. However, if privacy is an issue, then you might want to choose to include a meeting password.
The last few settings are carried over from the general settings that you put in place earlier. Those would be the ones that we talked about in our first video. However, you still have the option to change them per session that you create. For example, if the general settings are set to start with the host and the participant video on, you can change that in the individual session. Alternatively, you can just carry over the general settings that you have selected on your settings page.
Once everything is to your liking, click the blue Save button and you’re done. You will be brought to the meeting information page where all of the details that you selected are contained. You will also find options for adding the meeting to your calendar. The join URL is also provided on this page. This is the URL that you can pass along to those that you would like to join the session. So, for example, I take this link and post it onto my Google classroom for my students to access. They can then log into Google classroom, click on the link, and they’re able to join class right from there. This is a topic I will cover in the next post where I specifically investigate inviting students to Zoom.
Schedule A Zoom Meeting From Your Calendar
If we go back to our meetings tab, we will now be able to see a listing of all the different Zoom sessions. If you scroll down to the bottom of that page you will see two options for downloads. These allow you to be able to schedule your zoom sessions directly from your calendar.
Clicking on the Chrome extension link will bring you to the Chrome Web Store. This will give you the option to add the Zoom scheduler to your Google Chrome. Once completed, the next time you open Google Calendar you will have the option to schedule a zoom session. When you create an event in Google Calendar, there is now also the option to make it a Zoom meeting.
If we open up the event that was just created you’ll notice two options. There is a blue join Zoom meeting button as well as a link to join the Zoom meeting. You’re actually not limited to a one click zoom meeting creation here. With this method you can actually get more detailed. As you’re creating the event, instead of clicking the make it a Zoom meeting, go to the more options tab. This will open up the specifics of the event. Here you can take a look at all of the different options that you’re able to to add. It is very much like how we created the session from the Zoom dashboard. You have similar options that you can choose when you click the more options button.
Well there you have it. We have now been able to learn a couple of different ways to schedule our class sessions in Zoom and are ready now to learn how to invite our students to those class sessions. We will also tackle that in our next post. See you then. 🙂
