May 4, 2020
By the PUSD Ed Tech Team
When there are many people on a Zoom call, noise can be an issue! As a host, you are able to 'Mute Participants On Entry' and control whether or not participants can unmute themselves. It can be helpful to make sure that everyone stays muted when not speaking. If a student forgets to mute themself or is unsure of how to do so, you can mute them by hovering over their video feed in gallery mode. You’ll also be able to unmute the student from the same location.
Zoom offers a way for students to digitally raise their hands. Students can click the ‘Participants ‘button (same location as your Manage Participants) to expand the participants panel. At the bottom of this panel, there’s a button called “raise hand.” Students can use that button to get your attention while muted; this works particularly well for large sections. You'll see the option to lower a student's hand when you hover over their video feed in gallery mode.
The 'stop video' feature functions like a virtual timeout and should only be used as a last resort measure. It will stop the video of the student if they are choosing not tot use the video feature appropriately.
You can use the chat box to send messages to students during class. You can control how the learners use the chat feature by selecting who they can chat with from the “More” dropdown menu. By default, group chat is enabled. You can choose to limit learners to only chat with you or to disable chat completely. There is not a 1:1 student messaging option, so you don’t have to worry about students private messaging each other.
Screen share lets learners see what is on your computer screen. This could include a Google Slides presentation, a website, a video, or anything else on your computer that would be useful for class. Zoom also includes a built-in whiteboard as a screen share option, which can be very helpful for many classes. To share your screen, click the green button at the bottom of your Zoom window, then select the option that you wish to share. Remember to check the use computer sound checkbox on the bottom left of the screen share window if you wish to share a video with students, otherwise the audio will register as background noise on your side and will not be sent into the video classroom.