This post is part of a series on how to create an online didactics curriculum for our residency education during the COVID-19 crisis.
Once you have Zoom downloaded and have signed in on your laptop or your smartphone, This post looks at how to log into a meeting using a link supplied. There are two videos at the bottom of this post explaining how to join a Zoom meeting on laptop and smartphone.
Join a Zoom meeting on laptop (text version)
1. If you’re invited to a Zoom meeting, you’ll get a link that you can click on that looks something like this https://zoom.us/j/12345678. You can click on the link or type it into the address bar of a browser. We’ll likely send you a link in an email you can easily click.
2. On the Mac, you’ll be asked to open Zoom.us. Click Allow.
3. It will ask you to join with or without video. It’s better to join with video if you can. If your internet connection is not good enough to support two-way video, then you can turn off your video from inside the app.
Then you’ll be asked to join audio. You can join by calling a number (select Phone Call) or using your computers internet connect to join with Computer Audio. I usually select Computer Audio.
4. Then you’re in the session. Here I used my wife’s laptop to join so you’ll see two pictures of my newly shorn COVID hairdo.
There are several options at the bottom:
- Join Audio: if you didn’t join audio, you can do it from here. If you’re already joined, this will be a mute button. It’s best to stay muted unless you need to talk.
- Stop Video: similarly if you didn’t join video, it’ll let you join from here. If you already joined video, you can mute/stop your video. Keep this on if your connection supports it. Being able to see each others faces maintains a little human connection to our disembodied didactic sessions.
- Invite: lets you invite people to join. Since you used Rush SSO to sign in, it’s hooked up to your Rush address book. We’ll likely not use this button.
- Participants: Allows you to see who is logged into the meeting. A bunch of screens of their faces will be across the top, but we won’t be able to see everyone. The host of the meeting (the one who scheduled it) will be able to mute people whose dogs are barking from here, too.
- Share Screen: anyone can share their screen. You can share the entire screen or particular windows that are open. It’s easiest to just share the whole screen (called Desktop 1 in the image below). If you’re going to show slides, bring them up on your screen and everyone will be able to see it. Alternatively you can just pick to share PowerPoint, Word, Google Chrome, etc to show your slides or documents and not the rest of your screen. Remember, everyone can see your screen so be careful what browser tabs you may have open or files are on your desktop. That’s nailed more than one politician.
- Chat: brings up a chat window. With 50 people in one session, it may be easier for people to ask questions of the group by typing it in the chat window. You can have a chat that is private (with one particular person) or public (select Everyone). You can also send files from here.
- Record: lets us record the session. We may not use this at the start, but ultimately it may be useful to record lectures to put on our site and stream later (for people who missed conference).
- Reactions: lets you put emojis up, I guess. I’ve never used it.
- Leave Meeting: lets you leave the meeting.
Video Version
Same content as written above, but video instead.
Join a Zoom Meeting using your phone
I’m tired of typing, so here’s a video instead. Obviously pre-COVID-haircut. This was made for the faculty teaching medical students, so I refer to faculty guides, etc. Just ignore those parts.
