As with any educational technology, a lot of things can go wrong with Zoom, both technically and pedagogically. The following checklists may help reduce the headaches. You might want to adapt them to your own needs, and maybe have a printout on your desk.
Long term …
- Look at the syllabus and decide which lessons can be adapted to online teaching and which lessons need to be replaced with something different.
- For each lesson, decide if it should use
- Zoom;
- Some other tool;
- A combination of zoom and another tool.
- For Zoom lessons, think about what the students will actually be doing in Zoom.
- Work out a Plan B in case something goes wrong with the technology.
NOTE: We do not recommend using Zoom for every lesson. Communication via video tools is more tiring than face-to-face lessons or meetings, and it is easy for students to lose focus. It is therefore advisable to mix Zoom lessons with activities where students are not on the spot all the time, such as Moodle quizzes and forums, videos on YouTube or Edupuzzle, note-taking exercises using Padlet or Edji, and so forth.
Short term …
- Set up any documents that will be referred to in class (texts, rubrics etc.)
- Set up any other tools that will be used in class (Socrative, Kahoot etc.).
- 8m before class: Sign in with room account (not personal account).
- Check audio and video are working.
- 3m before class: Start meeting, mute mic.
- Send a welcome message to chat.
- Check sharing and annotation options.
- After class: Sign out.