Advanced Zoom-Fu: iPad Screen Sharing

The more I use Zoom, the more little bells and whistles I find out about how to get the most out of it. Sure, I’ve done the fun Zoom backgrounds (my favorite is the one from The Office, but I’ve also got The Matrix, The Shining, The Simpsons. Star Trek, Harry Potter, and more . . .), and I’ve been in two Zoom meetings at the same time. But I’m also getting experience using Zoom to teach, since Denisa has been working with it for teaching both seminary and her college classes. She’s turned to some awesome people at the university for help, but when it comes time to actually implementing the plans, I’m often the go-to tech support person for my house.

So we’ve recorded Zoom meetings now and seen the wonders of automatic transcription via Kaltura. We’ve figured out using waiting rooms and passwords to keep meetings safe. And for our next trick, Denisa needed to somehow use a whiteboard on Zoom to illustrate linguistic examples as she lectured.

Zoom has a whiteboard, but it’s a whiteboard controlled by a mouse. It’s not the worst thing in the world, but it’s also not the most user-friendly approach. I kept insisting it would do the trick with some practice, but Denisa pushed for something easier to use.

Enter my iPad and Apple Pencil.

If you click the “Share Screen” button at the bottom of a Zoom meeting, it gives you the option to share your screen, share a whiteboard, OR share an iPhone or iPad screen. If you select the iPad option, then it asks you to download a plugin. Once you’ve got that plugin installed on your computer, you just need to make sure you’re on the same Wi-Fi network as the device you’re using to Zoom. Once that’s taken care of, you can screen mirror to your Zoom session.

If you’ve got an Apple Pencil and a drawing app (I use GoodNotes), then you can have everyone in the meeting see exactly what you’re drawing on your iPad. It’s really slick, with no other apps needed to install. Of course, this assumes you have a higher end iPad with an Apple Pencil to go with it (though I imagine any stylus could work, and in a pinch you could use your finger . . . ) but if you have those things already lying around, then this is a great way to have the whiteboard functionality and have it feel like an actual whiteboard, as opposed to drawing-with-a-mouse.

Necessity is the mother of invention . . .

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