Zoom has been gaining plenty of popularity since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. While companies and their employees use Zoom to host and join corporate meetings, teachers and students can also use it as a virtual classroom to enhance their teaching and learning experience in these unprecedented times. Although there are plenty of other video conferencing applications out there, Zoom has established itself as a household name and developed a significant market share in the past few months.
Zoom goes way beyond regular video streaming and conferencing, however. It works as a collection of features, tools and resources to help teachers enhance their virtual classroom experience, thereby maximizing learning among students. Here are the top 10 Zoom tools you can use to make online tutoring more engaging:
1. Whiteboard
Virtual Learning Pods are becoming increasingly common as they bring together a group of kids to promote peer learning and provide opportunities for social interactions. The whiteboard feature can be used to annotate on to better express certain concepts and topics to students. Teachers can use the whiteboard to imitate the boards in classrooms, thereby familiarizing the student with the setting and creating an atmosphere to which they are more accustomed.
2. Virtual Backgrounds
This feature allows users to display a background video or image during their Zoom meeting. Using a green screen with uniform lighting will allow the app to identify the difference between the user and the background, thus allowing the user to pick an image or video of their choice to make the virtual classroom more interesting for their students.
3. Screen Sharing
Zoom can be used to share your screen during calls, which comes in handy if you want to share content with your students in your virtual classroom. Your students will be able to see your screen, thus making it easier for them to understand the concept you’re explaining.
4. Recording
If you wish to record an online tutoring session with your student, you can do so with ease thanks to the recording feature. All you have to do is ‘enable recording’ and everything that is discussed and taught during your online tutoring session will be saved for future reference.
5. Rewatch
This feature allows you to view your Zoom recordings. All your recordings will be organized and stored in one place, and this secure and private video channel automatically transcribes each recording so that you can find the content you’re looking for with relative ease.
6. Google Drive for Zoom
This tool allows you to transfer all your transcripts and recordings from Zoom to your Google Drive, thus creating an all-in-one repository for future reference.
7. Prezi Video
One of the few drawbacks of Zoom is the fact that while users can share their screen with other participants, they cannot engage in regular video conferencing at the same time. Prezi Video, on the other hand, allows you to do both simultaneously. You can overlay the content you wish to share with the other participants on the screen next to you, thereby enhancing the engagement with students and delivering a more interactive and impactful online tutoring session.
8. Polling
Zoom allows users to create polling questions with either a single choice or multiple choices offered to participants. The poll can be launched during your online tutoring session to gather responses from your students. Tutors who wish to take quick formative assessments will find this tool very useful.
9. Scheduler Extension
The Zoom Scheduler Chrome Extension allows you to schedule Zoom meetings directly from your Google Calendar. By downloading this extension, you can start a meeting instantly, or schedule one for a future date.
10. Automatic Scheduler for Recurring Meetings
Meetings that are held regularly every week need not be scheduled independently each time. Zoom enables users to schedule recurring meetings with the same ID and settings in monthly, weekly, and daily increments. Since Zoom Meeting IDs have a 365-day expiry period, you can set a recurring meeting that can be used at any time, which makes it easy for your students to join your online tutoring sessions.
Since children are rooted to continuing their education online for the time being, teachers have to make an extra effort to ensure that students are learning effectively, and Zoom offers a host of tools and features to make it easier for teachers to deliver engaging and impactful online tutoring sessions.