How to Tutor Online Using Zoom

You should know that this is not an affiliate article. This article is about my personal experience as a Zoom tutor. Tutoring online on Zoom may seem overwhelming, but as soon as you got your head around it, tutoring with Zoom in one-on-one and group classes is extremely simple and has many great online class features. Once you have found your online tutoring job, you want to make sure that you use the best online tutoring tools at your disposal. After all, your main goal is to ensure that your students can succeed.

Tutoring on Zoom

Zoom is a unique video conferencing platform that helps you interact with your students by only using a webcam, headset, and a microphone. The reason why I choose tutoring on Zoom instead of Skype is that Zoom has many functions that are very useful for online tutoring. Not only the connection remains stable during the entire time, as it is very user-friendly. Besides, the screen share option is a great tool to play virtual classroom games with your students.

How to tutor on Zoom

As I already mentioned above, Zoom is the tool I use every single time. But how?

1. Setting up a Zoom account

Before setting up your Zoom account, make sure that you have a good internet connection and a good webcam. There are still webcams available on Amazon.

First, you need to know that only the Zoom tutor needs to set up an account on Zoom. It is for free if you tutor one-on-one. Once you have more than one student, the first 40 minutes are for free. After 40 minutes, you can leave the meeting and start again or pay on a subscription basis. 

Once you created your Zoom account, you can create meetings and send your students an invitation.

2. Breakout room for Zoom tutoring online

Sometimes you will be tutoring a student in a one-on-one class, and other times, you will need to gather a group of students. With Zoom, this isn’t a problem. After all, you can set up a chat room for just one student or different breakout rooms for several groups. 

I find the breakout rooms extremely useful. As soon as I have more than five students in an online tutoring session, I create breakout rooms for different exercises. The Zoom tutor can choose which students should work together in these rooms and then go from room to room to offer help. The students in the breakout rooms can even call the Zoom tutor to ask for help. See these breakout rooms as different rooms at a school. No matter the reason or how many different chat rooms you create, the Zoom tutor can go from one room to the other to help your students. 

3. Use Of Visuals

As you know, using visuals is very important when you are tutoring online. Zoom allows you to use many different tools to make this platform work for you. From audio sharing during screen sharing to mobile collaboration with co-annotation, chat or group messaging, closed captioning, online whiteboards or interactive whiteboards, and even MPEG-4 cloud recording, you can do it all. 

All these tools will allow you to keep your students engaged and eager to learn. 

4. No Interruptions

One of the main differences between Zoom and other tools I used is that there are no interruptions while I’m tutoring online. And this is perfect. After all, interruptions don’t only waste time as your students lose track of what they were listening to or doing. 

5. Works On All Operating Systems And Devices

No matter if your students are on their laptops or using a tablet, they can still access Zoom and all its capabilities. Besides, Zoom also provides Chrome OS and Linux support. 

So, no matter what, you will be able to create groups, take screenshots, send invitations and files during lessons, mute or unmute participants, and even lock the room. 

Backgrounds for Zoom

If you don’t want your students to see your home during an online class, you can use virtual backgrounds for Zoom. It is quite easy to use a background on Zoom, but if you want funny Zoom backgrounds, Pocket-Lint has some of the funniest backgrounds to download. You can use any image you like as long as it is not too dark, bright, or has too many distractions.

You do not have to download any backgrounds to create a nice background for your virtual class. You can also decorate the background, such as walls and windows yourself. Our fall decoration ideas for online classes will give you a good idea of to do so.

Another option is to create a Bitmoji classroom. Creating this, you can add a personal touch to your virtual classroom background by using photos from your real classroom.

FBI warning Zoom – Important Update April 2020

In Covid-19, video conferences are indispensable, and besides some other online conference platforms, Zoom is particularly popular for this. Although the software provider Zoom celebrates enormous successes for video conferencing, it is currently causing many negative headlines and is coming under criticism on several points.

Data protection:

After Zoom’s iPhone app passed data to Facebook without the user’s knowledge, the company apologized and adjusted its guidelines. The company now states that it does not sell any personal data and does not use the data collected based on its services, including meetings, for advertising purposes.

Security Issues:

Because the video service can be used directly in the browser without an additional program, Zoom can bypass browser security protocols to access its webcams. Hackers could use this to spy on people.

Zoom bombing:

Security hackers reported some cases of virtual attacks. Some video conferences were “Zoom-bombed.” Hackers were able to participate in video conferences by merely trying out links. School reported cases where online lessons were bombed with displayed Nazi symbols or pornography. It is, therefore, vital to set the video chats to “private” in the settings.

Is it safe to use Zoom for online tutoring?

We read the Zoom FBI warning with caution and considered all the factors to decide whether we should still use Zoom and make online lessons more secure.

In our opinion, Zoom is still the best platform to use for online teaching, as it is easy to use and has many great features. As long as you handle the platform with caution, it is can still be safe to use.

It is the host’s responsibility to make the meeting as safe as possible.

Here are our safety tips, how you can keep the ‘Zoom-bombing’ hackers away:

• Keep in mind that a public link is public and can easily be hacked. Share the link only with people you trust.
• If you can, use a personal meeting ID and set up a password for all participants. Before entering the meeting, the participants will have to verify their entry.

Once you are in the meeting:

• Adjust the share screen options. Make sure that you are the only person who is in control of the entire meeting. The host should be the only user who can share.
• Only signed-in participants should be able to join the meeting.

For even more security, learn how to:

• set two-factor authentication
• remove unwanted or disruptive participants
• disable video for participants
• disable private chat

Remember:

• everything is being recorded
• if you feel unsafe, report directly to Zoom.

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