Zoom is software that allows you to hold online meetings and communicate with others. When you create an online course, Zoom is a great way to do one on one and small group training. It allows you to audio record, video record, share your screen, and also has chat. If you are teaching or supporting people on software, Zoom has the added benefit of allowing you to remotely control another computer.
Free and premium accounts are available, and the free plan is plenty to get you started testing Zoom. Personally, I use the Pro plan at $14.99/month because it allows me to have longer meeting times with recordings, reports, more scheduling options, and admin control over some features.
How to Use Zoom
To join a Zoom meeting, you either click on the link that someone sends you or you launch it and enter a number code they send you. If prompted to Launch the application, from your browser,
If you are creating your own meeting, login to your Zoom account and select Host a Meeting from the menu.
Once you are in a meeting, you will see the toolbar. This has options to open the Chat area, share a screen, start or stop video, mute or unmute audio, and record. You can also invite other attendees and manage participants. Note that if you are an attendee, not the host, you may not have access to all of the features.
Zoom versus Blab – Note that Blab is no longer available
Zoom is similar to Blab, for those of you that know that I love Blab. It’s a way to jump on with people and share. In this video, I mentioned that Blab isn’t private and doesn’t allow screen sharing. Note that this is currently changing. Blab does now have a way to create unlisted Blabs and is just launching screen sharing. I will be testing these features.
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