Zoom

Feature Highlights

This page will highlight some of features available to hosts of a meeting and may show you useful ways of controlling the meeting in different ways.

Zoom Controls

Updated Features 2020

Zoom just rolled out 4 new features just for teachers:


  1. Video reordering: Now, you can easily drag and drop video tiles and rearrange the order in which students appear in your Gallery View. This view gets locked into a fixed configuration, so it won’t shift when a new person speaks or enters the virtual classroom. This can help you create a virtual seating chart.
  2. Multi-spotlight: Teachers can now spotlight up to nine participants during a Zoom session for the whole class to see. This allows you to create a focused group view that’s visible to the entire class. This view is great for when you want a select group of students to present to the class together.
  3. Multi-pinning: With multi-pinning, hosts can pin up to nine other students on-screen in their custom personal view. Students also are able to pin up to nine other videos with the teacher’s permission. With multi-pinning, students who are deaf or hard of hearing can pin both teacher and interpreter on the screen for a more accessible learning experience. If the teacher spotlights a screen, the students’ pinned videos still appear in their previous order across the top.
  4. Unmute with Consent:  Unmute now has a permission feature where teachers can ask to unmute their students only once and have that permission carried over into other classes. Once the student or parent gives permission, that permission carries to every class that the teacher hosts. So whenever that student joins a class hosted by that teacher, the teacher can always unmute the student instead of asking permission every time.

Screen Sharing

Zoom allows for screen sharing on desktop, tablet and mobile devices running Zoom. The host and attendee can screen share by clicking the Share Screen icon.
There are several way you can share your screen with your students.  Below are examples of the options you have.

    • The entire screen

    • Browsers and other applications

    • Virtual Whiteboard

    • The screen of an iPhone or iPad via AirPlay or Lightning Cable.

Screen Sharing Options

Single or Simultaneous Sharing
Hosts using the Zoom desktop client can allow multiple participants share their screens simultaneously during a meeting.
Advanced Sharing Options
This will display a dialog what will give you the same options mentioned above but also give you control as to who can share their screen.

Managing participants/students in a meeting

There are several features that help you manage students, from muting participants to specifying the host of the meeting.  These menu items are found on the Participants window.

In-Meeting Chat

From the In-Meeting Chat window you can control aspects of the student chat experience.

    • You can chat with everyone at once or privately with as specific person in the meeting.

    • Additionally If you're the meeting host, you can change the in-meeting chat settings. (Note: The host and Co-Host are not limited by these settings)

The chat functions are also affected by these two options in your Zoom profile settings.
  • The first option (Chat) enables or disables the chat function for everyone, including the host.
  • The second option (Private Chat) enables or disables your students ability to chat privately with each other.
  • The third option (Auto saving chats) enables or disables automatic saving of all in-meeting chats.

Annotation & Disable Annotation for Students

Meeting participants can annotate on a shared screen as a viewer or the one that started sharing your screen. You can also use annotation tools when sharing or viewing a whiteboard.

Disable Participant/Student Annotation

Sometime or all of the time you may want to disable the student's ability to annotate over a shared screen that you may be presenting.  This option is available from the Share Screen menu.  Hover your mouse over the More menu and you'll get additional options.  There are two annotation options available called: 
  • Disable participant annotation
  • Show Names of Annotators
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