Virtual meetings
Setting up virtual conferences is an important task. In fact, the types of settings that you define before your meeting can actually set the mood for a very interactive meeting of for a talking head kind of meeting. Therefore, I suggest to become familiar with the different settings your video conference tool has and decide, with all intentionality, the settings for the meeting. Here are some suggestions before you start the meeting (these are best practices for meetings. For teaching I would add some others, but that would be another post):
1. Set starting time using the right time zone considering that some calendars have US times and some of those settings may not include “daylight time savings” time. Be mindful of the time it will be in all those countries you are meeting with.
2. Ask participants to join 5 min earlier in case technical issues arise (and they will!)
3. If using zoom authenticate participants to avoid hacking (in the “settings” you can authenticate who joins). In the past weeks hacking has happened with zoom and hackers have shared videos you don’t want to see, believe me).
4. If using zoom change the settings to have cameras and microphones “off” as soon as participants join. They will have to turn their camera and mic on when they join (you will thank me for this one as you don’t want to see what I have seen when participants think their cameras are off)
5. In the zoom settings disable “join before host” so that you manage who enters the meeting
6. Enable “co-host” if you need someone in the meeting to share screens. If you make someone a co-host the can request permission to control your desktop, restart your computer or even reboot your machine. Think about this before you allow someone to be a co-host.
There are many other combinations of settings to create different types of meetings. Keep an eye for other posts where I will include a classification of meeting and suggested combinations of settings. You want to make sure that your settings actually set the right mood...
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