My second tech tutorial was devoted to learning how to navigate many of the functions of Zoom including how to record a meeting and screencast. Again, I chose this module because of how it could facilitate the filming of my group’s final project. For that reason, I teamed up with one of my team members, Kysa W., to complete this tutorial. 

As the meeting’s host, I began recording the video by pressing the button with the three dots that read “More” and under there I found the record button. Under that same section you can enable captions as well as open up a collaborative whiteboard which all the participants can draw on. Kysa and I played around with both those functions. Looking back at the recording, I realize you cannot see the captions on the screen unless the meeting is live, so to see them after you must download the transcript separately. 

Another thing to keep in mind is that because I was the host, I had to give Kysa permission to share her screen. So when we go to film our group project it will be important to make sure everyone has permission to share before we actually start filming. I demonstrated how to share the entire view of a computer’s screen/desktop and Kysa demonstrated how to share only a selected window. One thing which I realized after our meeting ended is that you can actually pause the recording without ending the meeting. This feature will be useful during our presentation to make sure each member has time to prepare their materials before passing the mic off to them. 

Lastly the process of downloading the recording of the meeting was super easy. You can manually stop the recording by pressing a square icon in the top right corner of the screen, or the recording will end right when the host closes the meeting. Once the host ends the meeting, the video automatically starts to download as an MP4 file. Afterwards when the download was complete, the file automatically saved into the “Recents” folder on my Mac.

I really appreciated taking the time to better learn my way around Zoom because the skills I acquired will extend beyond the scope of this class. Living through a global pandemic showed us how important it is to be able to shift teaching and learning online when need be, and Zoom played a huge part in that process.