During pandemic, many of us got to know the Zoom teleconferencing platform well, as we did everything from attend church to teach preschool, join business meetings and happy hours, play pub trivia and lead support groups. Different people may have different levels of understanding, but most of us are still trying to work out some glitches.

Here is a huge and hopefully comprehensive collection of tips for each of these levels, from simplest tasks (the “Zoom for Dummies”) to more complex. If you need a beginner’s guide for brand new users of Zoom, just read the first blog post and feel free to ignore the rest! But for those who are ready, there’s lots more to learn – check out any of these how-to tutorials.

• • • Zoom Basics. How to join a meeting, mute / unmute, turn camera on/off, chat, raise hand.
    • Becoming a more skilled Zoom participant. Changing how you see people – gallery view vs. speaker view; changing your name, updating your app.
    • Looking and Sounding Good on Zoom. Finding a better internet signal so your calls don’t freeze, improving your audio and video quality.
    • Hosting a Meeting. Scheduling a meeting, inviting people, security, muting, basics of recording and sharing screens.
    • Advanced Meeting Management. Spotlight, breakout rooms, co-hosts, polling, captions.
    • Registration for Zoom Events. Have participants pre-register to increase security.
    • Sharing Screens on Zoom. How to share PowerPoint slides, videos, documents, the whiteboard, etc.
    • Optimizing PowerPoint. Place all the audio, video, and images you need in one PowerPoint to help meetings go more smoothly.
    • Doing Demos on Zoom. If you teach hands-on skills (art, crafts, cooking) or physical skills (dance, athletics), you may benefit from adding a second camera.
    • Games and Interaction on Zoom. Lots of ideas from charades to Pictionary to polls to Show & Tell.
    • Use Other Apps with Zoom. Increase interaction, learning and fun using outside apps like Kahoot, skribbl, mentimeter, Jackbox, and more.
    • Music on Zoom: Playing recordings, live music or leading songs
    • Sharing Picture Books on Zoom. Four methods for story time – reading a physical book, an e-book, sharing a video of a read-aloud, or making a slide show of a book
    • Young Children and Zoom. Tips for how to help teachers and grandparents connect with kids online and how to help children connect with others.
    • Using Zoom on Facebook Portal. This device is an inexpensive way to access Zoom, and offers a good audio-visual experience.
    • Screen “hygiene” for prolonged use – reduce Zoom fatigue

Note: Zoom also has LOTS of great online tutorials / support information. You can find it all from: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us.

Zoom calls works differently on different devices (laptop vs. tablet, iPhone vs. Android) and also the host of the meeting can adjust many of the settings so that some options that I describe may not be available in all meetings. If I describe an option in these guides that you’re not seeing, the support documents should help you out.