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 the “Share Screen” button at the bottom of your window:

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 in your Zoom session, you'll need to change some additional settings to make sure the video plays smoothly and your participants can hear the audio. After clicking "Share", find "Optimize for video clip" and "Share sound" at the bottom of the share panel and click to enable them. Then, just start playing your video while sharing your screen.

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 on your profile picture, and then Settings. Select Background & Effects. You will probably see a selection of pre-loaded images.  To add your own, click the plus sign to the right of the screen. Select Add Image and browse your computer for alternatives.

After the meeting has started: 

In the Control Panel, click on the caret to the right of the video icon and select "Adjust background & effects".  

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 that option, make sure your desktop client is up to date.)  

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, which you can locate and select from the bottom menu in your Zoom window. 

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.