Set Guidelines and Behavior Expectations

Just as it is important to establish guidelines within your regular classroom, it is equally important to set clear guidelines for virtual learning so that students understand the behavior expectations when conducting class virtually. From the microphone being muted at the appropriate times to keeping their camera on, all of these expectations should be clearly outlined for students.

Protect Yourself from Zoom-bombing

Presenting instructional content in a virtual platform is new and exciting, but it also comes with the possibility of unwelcome distractions, also known as Zoom-bombing. There are several steps that you may take to avoid this from happening. Students need a link to join the meeting, but sometimes students may decide to share the link with outside people. To avoid this, there are several steps you can take:

1. Only share links to meetings in password protected programs, such as Blackboard, Google Classroom, email, etc.
2. It would be beneficial to establish a Waiting Room. The Waiting Room feature on Zoom allows the teacher to monitor attendees and admit students to the meeting when he or she is ready. It also gives the teacher the ability to not admit and remove any unauthorized attendees. If for any reason an unauthorized user gets admitted to your meeting, Zoom allows you to remove that user from the meeting manually, too.
3. Zoom gives you the ability to lock the meeting once it has begun. This prevents any other attendees from joining the meeting.

There are also a few additional steps to take to prevent Zoom-bombing! As the teacher or facilitator of the meeting, Zoom allows you to control the settings of the meeting. Students should be “muted” upon entry to the meeting. Although it sounds like fun, students should not be allowed to rename themselves! You may also want to disable the chat features, preventing students from sharing out at inappropriate times, etc.

Zoom offers its users the ability to annotate materials and screen share. If this feature isn’t managed, students can annotate materials on the screen and share their own screens throughout the meeting. Talk about a distraction! The teacher should be the only member of the meeting with the ability to screen share and annotate to decrease the number of distractions and keep student focus on the instruction being presented.

Use Zoom for Education

Zoom for Education is another effective tool for successfully implementing virtual learning. This is a tool that can be purchased and used by your school or school district to safely deliver instruction online. This type of Zoom account is compliant with FERPA, COPPA, and other states’ student privacy laws. It is important to note that standard Zoom accounts are not complaint with student privacy laws; thus, additional precautions must be taken when using the platform in that manner.

Students Don’t Need Zoom Accounts

Students do not need Zoom accounts to use the platform. This can be both an advantage and disadvantage to teachers. As a general user of Zoom, students can have access to screen sharing capabilities unless turned off in advance by the teacher; however, allowing students to have their own Zoom account opens the door for unmonitored chatting, meetings, etc. The most useful solution would be to grant students access to Zoom via your school system’s domain if it is available.

Recording Lessons

Zoom gives teachers the option to record meetings. This is an amazing feature as it allows any student who had to miss instruction the opportunity to view the lesson at a later time to catch up on any missed material. Not only is this beneficial to the student, it saves you time as you do not have to reteach the material the next day. The advantages of recording are numerous, but it is important that any and all recordings adhere to school policy and avoid FERPA violations. When recording, you should only include the parts where you are speaking and delivering instruction. If recordings or images of students are part of your recording, they should be strictly limited to those students with permission to be included.

Group Work

Finally, one of the best features of Zoom is its ability to facilitate group work. The teacher may create and assign students to breakout rooms under the Zoom settings menu. Within the breakout rooms, students can work together via chat or video and have the ability to screen share as needed. The teacher never has to worry about groups staying on task or needing help, because he or she can drop in on groups during breakout time to monitor their progress and address any issues they may be having.

The post Hacks and Hazards to Avoid During Your Zoom Classes appeared first on TeachHUB.

What is Zoom?

Zoom is an incredibly user-friendly online platform for meetings. While it may have been used mostly for business in the past, now more and more teachers are realizing the usefulness of Zoom for distance learning. You can easily create an account by going to Zoom.com and following the steps to sign up. It is very easy to go from there and start inviting others to a meeting by sharing a link and a code. However, there are so many more features that can make your online learning instruction more effective.

Whiteboard –  Just like a whiteboard in your classroom, this can be used to demonstrate learning objectives for the entire class. You can also use the annotation feature to write on shared documents.

Breakout Room – This feature allows you to put students in small groups for a designated amount of time for group discussion or problem solving.

Audio Settings – Students can be muted when you need them to listen with minimal distractions. There is even a feature that allows students to virtually raise their hand in order to ask questions as needed. You can also pre-set your meeting to automatically mute students as they enter to minimize disruptions.

Sharing – You can easily share slides, files, or videos with students as you teach.

Poling – You can also poll students while in meetings. You can use single answer or multiple-choice answer format. You can do this during a meeting and see responses from your students. This is a great way to get a quick snapshot of student understanding.

Transcripts – An audio or text transcript can be given to students after the meeting so they can revisit information as needed.

How to Create Virtual Lessons

When creating your virtual lessons, remember that in many ways it is very similar to how you would teach and talk to your students in your own classroom. First of all, students do not have to sign up for an account in order to participate in meetings. After you have sent students the link they need to join the meeting and have set a date and time, you are ready. It is a good idea for you to join the meeting a few minutes early in order to ensure that the connection is good.

When you are beginning with your first virtual lesson, allow some time to speak to the students about the features of Zoom that they can utilize. Be sure to look at the camera to give eye contact to your students. Also, discuss appropriate behavior and procedures for eLearning.

Then, go ahead and give students an agenda or timeline of the events of the lesson. This tends to help students stay focused. Then, you can use screen share to provide direct instruction for your lesson topic. Throughout the lesson, you can allow time to promote questions, comments, and reactions. There may even be some small-group time to work problems together or discuss given issues.

Another great way to encourage student participation is to have students prepare a project, like some slides or a video, to share what they have learned with the whole class. You can use some of your time to check in with students individually to see how they are doing. Perhaps most importantly, allow some time at the end of the lesson for comments, questions, and closure. This is also a great time for engagement with the teacher as well as one another. Remember, relationships are just as important, if not more so, during this time of remote learning. This Tips and Tricks document is very helpful for learning your way around Zoom and all its features.

Other Ways to Use Zoom

Of course, there are many other ways to use Zoom. For example, teachers in our district are currently using Zoom to have meetings to discuss and share ideas for online learning. You can also use Zoom to meet with parents to help them with instructional issues that they are dealing with now as a result of this online learning situation.

Also, don’t forget how important it is that our students still get to have some social interaction with their friends. They miss each other as well and need to have some time to interact. Allow some time after a lesson or set up a meeting just for them to chat with one another. They need that communication and reassurance during this time most of all. Remember, you can always turn the volume down if they get a little loud. What a perk!

The post How Teachers can Utilize Zoom for Online Learning appeared first on TeachHUB.