How awesome is it that Zoom has offered FREE access to their platform during this school closure? I have been having a lot of fun with virtual backgrounds, and have been even creating my own with Canva! A great thing about using Zoom with students is embedding more digital citizenship and media literacy skills.

Zoom is a platform that many of us have used as a participant in a virtual PD or conference call. And all of us are now pseudo-experts in using Zoom to schedule calls, record, mute participants, and so on.

Just because we all learned quickly, does not mean that our students will. Especially our younger students. Video chatting with friends and family, is a different skill set than participating in a conference call.

To help with that, I create this handy presentation to use with students. It has 5 skills that students need to be successful during a live virtual lesson.

Each slide has information to help students be successful with Zoom (or other video conferencing platform). They also have teacher notes to guide direct instruction of each skill.

All of these skills are things that we take for granted. We had years of practice interacting with people in different ways.

With today’s technology, it can be hard for many young children to differentiate between funny YouTube & TikTok videos, chilling on FaceTime with friends, and a conference call.

Check out this Wakelet that my friend Amy and I have been curating. It has a lot of information to help you and your students be successful on Zoom,