Tag: zoom meetings

Tech Tip of the Week: Sharing a Portion of Screen in Zoom

Did you know you can share just a portion of your screen during a Zoom meeting rather than your whole desktop screen? It’s relatively easy to do so!

To share a portion of your screen, click the green share screen button at the bottom of the Zoom window. When the share screen settings window pops up, select the “Advanced” tab at the top.

On the Advanced menu, select the “Portion of Screen” option and then press “Share.”

A green window will then appear on your screen. You can adjust the size of this green window to fit the area of the screen you want to share.

Tech Tip of the Week: Sharing a PowerPoint in Zoom

With midterms underway and preparations for final presentations beginning, you may soon find yourself needing to share a PowerPoint in Zoom.

This week’s Tech Tip will show you how you can share PowerPoint without it taking up your entire screen, which is particularly helpful if you have notes you also need visible to yourself.

Sharing a PowerPoint

By default, your PowerPoint presentation will take up your whole screen and you may be unable to see the Chat and Manage Participants. Follow these instructions to contain your presentation in a window rather than full-screen.

  1. Open the PowerPoint you want to present.
  2. Click the Slide Show tab in the top bar, then Set Up Slide Show.
  3. Under Show type, select Browsed by an individual (window) and click OK.
  4. Open your presentation by clicking the Slide Show tab, then click Play from Start or Play from Current Slide


    Your presentation will display in a window.

  5. In Zoom, start or join a meeting.
  6. Click Share Screen in the meeting controls.
  7. Select the Powerpoint window and click Share.

You can find a video demonstrating these steps here.

Tech Tip of the Week: Broadcasting a Message to Waiting Room in Zoom

If you have decided to enable waiting rooms in your Zoom meetings, we want to share with you a quick Tech Tip this week!

You are able to send a message to everyone in the waiting room.

You can do this by opening the chat and going to select a recipient the same way you would to send a private message, but while the waiting room is enabled and there are participants waiting you should see the option to select everyone (in waiting room) as the recipient. Sending a message will then broadcast that message to everyone currently in the waiting room.

You can find screenshots and more information in Zoom’s documentation on waiting rooms.

Tech Tip of the Week: Zoom Live Transcriptions

It is now possible to activate a live, computer-generated transcript in your Zoom meetings. There will be a Live Transcript button in your Zoom meeting controls for any meeting that you are hosting where you will be able to start the auto-transcription.

This will create computer-generated subtitles during the meeting as well as a transcript that you will be able to download after the meeting.

Further details about this feature are available via UofI Tech Services here: Zoom Live Transcription explanation.

Important!
You should not assume that this will meet the requirements for a captioning accommodation. Contact DRES in case of a letter of accommodation to assure you are meeting requirements.

Tech Tip of the Week: Join Multiple Zoom Meetings at Once

If you have ever wished to join even more Zoom meetings, then we have some great news for you! It is possible to join multiple Zoom meetings simultaneously on desktop, you just need to update your Zoom settings.

  1.  Sign into https://illinois.zoom.us/
  2. On the left sidebar, select meetings
  3. On this page find the setting called Join different meetings simultaneously on desktop, it will be under the Schedule Meeting subheading
  4. Turn this setting on
  5. You should now be able to join multiple meetings!

Here is Zoom’s documentation on this setting.

Tech Tip of the Week: Pre-Assigning Breakout Rooms

Did you know you can assign meeting participants to Breakout rooms before your meeting begins? You can, and this Tech Tip is going to tell you how!

There are two ways to pre-assign Breakout Rooms.

The first is by using the web portal to create Breakout Rooms.

This method will allow you to add participants by name/address, as long as they have an Illinois Zoom Account, in the web portal (https://illinois.zoom.us/)

Zoom has documentation on how to do this here.

The second method is to upload a CSV file to Zoom.

This method has you create a spreadsheet with your participant information and desired Breakout Room and then upload the CSV file to Zoom.

We have documentation and a video on how to do so here.

Zoom has its own documentation here.

There are certain limitations to these methods:
  • All students must be logged-in correctly to the account tied to the email that was used to assign them to a Breakout Room. Most problems with pre-assigning come from participants not being logged-in correctly. You can find information on how to switch Zoom accounts here.
  • You can only pre-assign participants that have a Zoom account (internal or external Zoom users).
  • To pre-assign participants that are external (non-Illinois) Zoom users, you must use the import a CSV file method.
  • Up to 200 participants can be pre-assigned to Breakout Rooms.
  • If you scheduled recurring meetings (which all classes should be), the pre-assigned Breakout Rooms will only work if it’s applied to all meetings in the recurrence. You can’t edit a single meeting in the recurrence and apply a unique pre-assignment.

Tech Tip of the Week: Students can now move between Breakout Rooms!

With the new Zoom update, students can move themselves between breakout rooms!

As the host, when you create breakout rooms you will now see the option to “let participants choose room”.

As a participant, you should see a breakout room option appear in your Zoom controls (at the bottom or top of the Zoom Meeting). By clicking on this option you should see the available rooms and will have the power to move into whichever you desire.

Everyone in the meeting will need the update for this to work. Check out Zoom’s documentation to make sure your Zoom software is up to date.

 

With this update, you can also play around with some fun filters. Learn more about filters here.

Tech Tip of the Week: How to Look your Best on Zoom

This week we want to redirect you to this article by Brett Bitnner entitled “Webchat like a Pro-Cinematographer.”

This article includes some fantastic insight and graphics on how to look and sound good on a video call.

One note we want to emphasize is the need for a good headset! This will let you hear and sound much better than your computer’s built-in speakers and mic. We also highly recommend getting into the habit of checking if you are muted when you first enter a Zoom meeting.

Tech Tip of The Week: Zoom Game Zone

With the end of classes and the start of summer you might find yourself a little bored and missing your iSchool friends, so this week’s Tech Tip Tuesday is all about how to play games with your friends by using various features in Zoom.

  • The Whiteboard
  • Video Chat
    • By enabling your computer or phone cameras in a Zoom meeting you and your friends can play charades!
  • Share Screen
    • If you’re down for a more mellow hangout, someone could share their screen to show a crossword puzzle for you all to work on together.
    • You can also play trivia with this random trivia generator!
    • Have your friends print out some Bingo cards and play together using this Bingo Caller!

We hope these ideas can help you connect with your friends or inspire you to create your own sort of virtual game night!