Zoom is well-known as a tool for video meetings and conferences, but it also contains an independent whiteboard tool that operates outside of the meeting environment. In this tip, you will find ideas on how to utilize the features of Whiteboard for various purposes.
What do I need?
You can find Zoom’s Whiteboard at tuni.fi/zoom. Select Sign in and log in with your TUNI credentials. Once logged into Zoom with your TUNI account, the Whiteboards tool will appear immediately on the left side. You can also use Zoom Whiteboard app installed on your computer.
Features
- Likes and other emojis
Especially in brainstorming sessions, there are phases where participants’ ideas and views are reviewed. In this activity, Zoom Whiteboard’s emojis, smileys, and other icons can be used to express emotions or show agreement or disagreement. Clicking on a note or other object will open a toolbar at the top, with an Add emoji button. From this button, you can choose different emojis. It is good for the teacher to instruct which symbols to use. For example, a heart for a ‘like’ or thumbs up or down for voting. When participants mark notes with emojis, the emoji and the number of people who gave the same mark will appear at the bottom of the note. It’s easy to see which idea has gained the most support from the numbers.
On the left-hand toolbar, there is also a separate Stickers and emojis tool, from where you can also pick an icon. After selection, the mouse cursor works like a stamp to mark thoughts on the board. In the image below, the stamp is shown as a large heart on the right. This way, you can create a cloud of hearts, for example.
- Voting
Adding emojis can be used for voting, as described above, but Zoom Whiteboard also has its own voting tool.
At the top of the board, you will find the Voting button. Clicking it will open settings for the vote on the left side of the board.
- Name the vote
- Choose how many votes each person can cast
- Set a time limit for the vote
- From the Advanced option menu, you can also set additional options, such as anonymous voting.
After making your selections, you need to choose which items on the board can be voted on. Do you want all items added to the board to be included in the vote (select all objects on canvas) or only certain notes or items? If you choose only certain ones, click on the items you want to include in the vote. In the image, you can see the selected notes within the orange frame.
Once you have selected all or certain items, click Start voting. Participants will see a voting button at the top of the selected items, and depending on your settings, the voting status will also be shown on the left side. Voting works well on mobile devices too, where the view is more compact.
When you end the vote, the results will be displayed.
You can conduct multiple votes and build a vote where you have pre-created the options, and the vote does not follow a common work session.
- Commenting
Zoom Whiteboard also has a commenting tool, where comments can be added to individual notes or objects. Clicking on a note or other content will show the Comment icon on the toolbar. Clicking it allows you to leave a comment about the content. You can also tag someone in the comment using @tag. When someone leaves a comment, you will see a bubble at that content. Commenting can be a good phase in group work or a useful tool in long-term remote work where comments cannot be left during the session.
On the top right corner of the board, you can see the comment icon, which will bring up all comments left on the board. You can also mark comments as resolved, which will remove them from the board.
- Presentation
When you want to review the work together, focusing attention on individual items on a large whiteboard can be difficult. You can create presentation views, which are like screenshots of certain parts of the board. At the top left of the board, you will find the Presentation icon on the toolbar. Clicking this opens a window on the left side of the page, where you can add a frame that will appear as an area on the board, which you can drag to a specific spot. This frame takes a “snapshot” of this area and adds it to the sidebar. You can take multiple snapshots, and from the Presentation section, you can display these snapshots when it’s time to present the work.
The presentation feature can be used, for example, to summarize or review work. After a work session, the teacher can take snapshots in this way, and in the next session, go through the work using these snapshots.
In addition to the presentation feature, you can focus attention on a specific area of the work with the All eyes on me function, found on the top right toolbar. Selecting this shifts everyone’s view to the same view as the person who selected the feature and moves with them on the board.
Similarly, the Laser tool found in the top left helps focus attention on the teacher’s mouse movements. The cursor will then have a highlight color of your choice.
- Sub-pages and parallel boards
In Zoom’s Whiteboard, you can create multiple pages or boards within one main board. This allows, for example, subgroup work on different boards or switching from one theme or work method to another. Paging also means that you do not need to send separate links to different boards to participants, but moving from one board to another happens within one main board, and only one link to the main board is needed.
The teacher can create multiple boards in advance through the Pages icon found on the top left toolbar. The Add page button creates a new blank board, which can be edited or chosen from the Template library as a base for work. There can be multiple sub-pages or parallel whiteboards, and they appear to participants in the window opened by the Pages icon. However, it is essential to provide good instructions when using sub-pages to ensure participants are editing the correct board.
- Timer
Working on the board can be easily scheduled with a Timer tool. From the top left toolbar, you can click the Timer button, and a clock will appear, where you can set a time limit for the work. Once you start the timer, the clock will start counting down. The clock is visible to participants at the top of the board, so no one needs to worry about the time.
Read more
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