A Few Essential Zoom tools for Online Teaching

By: Lincoln Li | Outreach Worker in Flemingdon Park

Online video communications have been the norm these days. There is a variety to choose from that range from Google Meets, Google Classroom, Zoom, Facebook Messenger, to Skype. Over time, different platforms added certain features -(could be gimmicky or useful), for users to have a better overall experience. These features could range from filters, backgrounds, emojis, screen sharing, annotating and so on. 

I will be focusing on Zoom as this one has the most features useful for teaching. Not only that, but they have a few features that allow your audience to engage, interact, and participate. 

You do not want to be that person who always flips through a slideshow, reading off of it word for word and talking on and on and on. Unless it’s an information session. If it were in-person, it’s not enjoyable. If it were online, very much less enjoyable as there is a bigger disconnect due to a screen. It would be easy for someone to zone out and click off onto something else. (Our children and youth definitely do this). If adults have difficulty staying focused on a Zoom meeting, children and youth will also struggle with the same issue with attention span.

The key takeaway: You want your lesson or presentation, to provide ample opportunities for your audience to engage, interact, and participate whether they are adults, youth, or children.

Note: All video tutorials are hyperlinked

Here are a few useful Zoom functions:

1) Screen Sharing + Annotating 

This lets you share whatever you want to share from your computer screen. This can range from interactive activities, PDFs, Zoom’s whiteboard, a YouTube clip, or a PowerPoint. Having pictures or a colourful slideshow is a good starting point to get your audience engaged. A good balance of visuals and some concise text is ideal and don’t be afraid to insert interactive slides -slides with the intention of letting participants annotate via drawing, circling, stamping etc. 

Annotating lets you draw over whatever is shared on your screen. Your participants will also be able to see it. There are text tools, shape tools, stamp tools, and drawing tools that you can use. The best part is that your participants can also do those exact same things. You will have to clear your screen as it does get chaotic when there are too many doodles, but if you have a co-host, you can assign them the role of clearing the screen. There is also the option to prevent participants from annotating as well when you need them to focus. 

Here is a slightly more in-depth video

You can use the text tool to annotate if you do not have a graphic tablet or a touch screen. Clearing can be done by host and co-host(s). You have the option to clear everything, or just annotations done by others. 

If you hover over the ‘ . . .’ you can disable annotations when you want the participants to stop doodling.

I screen shared Zoom’s whiteboard as they are trickling into the meeting and getting settled down. They were free to doodle or play tic tac toe.
Somedays, I would share my web browser tab to a website with mazes, word searches, crosswords, or connect the dots and have the children directly annotate on these as well.

I purposely made an empty slide with the intention of having our youth contribute to our discussion question. As you can see, some typed out their responses, while some used their mouse/trackpad.
Other ways you can have your participants engaged is to provide them options (like a multiple choice) to circle or put stamps on via annotating.

2) Poll

 This is a good tool for gauging how much your audience knows or to see if they have retained the important pieces of information you’re trying to convey. It presents itself as a multiple-choice format.
You will have to turn the polling feature on in order for the poll icon to appear on the bottom bar.

The poll icon appears on the bottom bar. Clicking it will bring out the poll. Click ‘Launch Polling’  and your audience will be able to see the poll. You can observe the audience’s inputted response and see how many people selected which option. Once you’re done with your poll, click ‘End Polling’.

Selecting ‘Edit’ once the Polling window pops up redirects you to your browser. Here you can create, edit, and delete the polls for your meeting.

To pull out another poll, click on the down arrow to select your next poll. I usually make my individual questions into separate polls. This is because I can choose which question pops up first. If you were to input all three questions into one poll, all three questions will show up at once.

3) Reactions

 If the screens are turned off and you want some immediate feedback, using reactions can be very useful. Depending on the activity, each reaction emoji can represent a response.

Examples:

If you want someone to agree, get your participants to hit the ‘thumbs up’. If you want someone to disagree, you could use the ‘open mouth’ emoji.

You can also do true or false with a ‘thumbs up’ and ‘clap emoji’. And also just get them to give you a thumbs up if they understand just to gauge.

These are just a few ways to engage your audience as you teach or present. By getting them to participate in small ways such as these can make a long-winded information session, one that is fun and interactive. When your audience has opportunities to participate, learning, overall interest and engagement increases.