Presenting yourself

Sharing your screen is a vital feature, as it allows you to incorporate visual materials into your teaching. This may include PowerPoint slides, documents, websites, or collaboration tools.

To begin, select Share in your meeting controls. Depending on your Zoom version, this button may be labeled Share Screen.

You can share either your full screen, or a specific application window. If you share your full screen, your Zoom window will, by default, be hidden from participants’ views.

Selecting an individual application allows you to avoid sharing extraneous materials, but be aware that it can sometimes fail if the application changes sizes or mode: for example, if you set a slide deck to presentation mode and it becomes fullscreen.

If you are screen sharing a video, enable Share sound so participants can hear it. Before clicking Share, select your screen or application and find the options on the right side of the share window. For a video playing in full-screen mode, also enable Optimize for video sharing. Then click Share and play the video. Turn off video optimization when returning to slides or other static content, since it can make text and images blurry. While sharing, you can change video optimization from More in the screen-sharing controls.

Virtual backgrounds can give a professional feel to your Zoom hosting and allow you to maintain privacy if you're joining from home or a personal space. Virtual backgrounds also offer the opportunity to do some branding and emphasize the theme of your class.

Before a meeting:

Sign into the Zoom desktop application, click your profile picture, and then Settings. Select Video & effects, then Virtual backgrounds. Choose an available background, or click the add icon and choose an image or video from your computer.

After the meeting has started:

In the meeting controls, click the arrow next to Video and select Video & effect settings. In the side panel, select the Virtual backgrounds tab or scroll to the Virtual backgrounds section. Choose a background, or use the add icon to upload your own image or video.

Images with a 16:9 aspect ratio and a 1280x720 resolution are recommended, but you will be able to see how it looks as you experiment. Search online for something like “Zoom backgrounds” and you will find many. You can also use MP4 and MOV videos as backgrounds. If you don’t see an option, check Zoom’s system requirements for virtual backgrounds and whether the feature is enabled for your account; updating the app alone may not make every option available.

Virtual backgrounds look best when your real background is a solid color and whatever you are wearing isn’t the same color as the image you choose.

The easiest way to access a whiteboard is the Whiteboard option built into Zoom. Select Whiteboards in your meeting controls, then New Whiteboard, or open an existing board. If Whiteboards isn’t visible on the toolbar, check More.

You can configure the Zoom Whiteboard so that only you can edit it or so other participants can collaborate, and you can choose whether or not to share the whiteboard when the meeting is over.

The Zoom Whiteboard has a number of features for drawing shapes, writing text, and making annotations with a mouse and keyboard. If you want to do more extensive drawings, you may want to invest in a drawing tablet for your computer or a tablet computer with a touchscreen and stylus.