On what was supposed to be a day dedicated to Environment and Systems Thinking, the Leadership Waupaca County Class XX paved the way as the first class to ever be held online via Zoom from our kitchens, living rooms or office’s for April’s class. Not originally planned for April, but very relevant in our current “safer at home” orders was time with Christine Rybak, Teaching and Learning Tech with UW-Madison, Division of Extension focusing on preparing for and delivering effecting presentations online. Christine walked the class through Zoom and the features it has as well as gave some tangible tips for delivering content and presentations online.
- Be aware of your background, what will everyone see behind you? Clean up the clutter.
- Make sure you have a good head set like this Logitech USB Headset. A nice pair of headphones that came with a phone will work well too.
- Lighting! Place yourself in front or to the side of a window if possible, you don’t want a window behind you.
- Mute yourself when you’re not speaking to keep out any unnecessary noise.
- Honor your content and also honor your audience’s time.
- Look into your camera
- Have all tabs, videos, links you’ll be referencing during your presentation up before you start your presentation
- Share your screen when appropriate and stop sharing if discussion is happening for longer than 30 seconds to allow participants to see faces while talking.
- Take your time, enunciate your words and don’t worry about getting through all of the content
- Have a co-host when hosting zooms if possible.
Although it wasn’t originally worked into our day, nor was it how we were hoping to end our series of classes, it may be a very real reality for a lot of us in the future to “meet” online more often than we did prior to the COVID-19 outbreak. Perhaps all Leadership Waupaca County Classes in the future should meet one time via Zoom to learn the technology and etiquette?
