These pages are here to provide Instructors a walk-through of the more commonly used features of Echo360. The pages contain click-through infographics, videos, links to our online documentation, and Quick Reference Card links, available for viewing and download as PDFs.
Start with the Overview. Learn about the typical uses of the platform, navigation in and around Echo360, and get insight from other instructors on creating media and engaging students.
Just an FYI…
Adding someone as a guest to your Blackboard course, DOES NOT give them access to your Zoom meetings. This is not a work around for bringing guests into a zoom session.
It now allows for live streaming!
I’ve done some tests already. I’m seeing a 10 sec lag on what comes out of my mouth and what comes through the stream. The screen share seems about 3 seconds ahead of my camera’s live video. There is a 15 secondish lag between when you start streaming and the stream actually begins.
I was testing on a laptop that had a hard wire connection to my router at home… the receiving computer was on the wireless.
Here is their documentation which includes technical requirements:
https://learn.echo360.com/hc/en-us/articles/360041458112
I will be doing more tests… but this is awesome news for additional options for synchronous and asynchronous teaching and learning!
You don’t have to download a new version of the software. If you have never used it before, the software can be downloaded from echo360.org with your netid and password.
More to follow!
Zoom has been around a while. Many people already have used it, even if their company or school never had it as their official web conferencing platform. Because we have had to suggest that all users be authenticated, it is important that you are arriving in the room with the correct account.
Inside the zoom app, check that you are logged in with your stonybrook.edu email address.
You can see that in the upper right. If you are not, select switch account, and login through SSO. (Not Google)
You made a room from Zoom Meetings in Blackboard. You know it has a forced password. You know students will be logging into Blackboard to find the link. Isn’t that enough to prevent others from joining? And when I say others, I mean truly foul people who apparently have nothing better to do with their time then really and truly mess up your whole class. Nope. We have to do more
After creating your room in Blackboard, leave Blackboard, and sign back into zoom at stonybrook.zoom.us. Your room will be listed under meetings. Click on the name, go to the bottom on the page and click edit meeting. Just above there, in meeting options, you will find the “only authenticated users can join” option. stonybrook.edu will pre-populate for you. This will force them to use a stonybrook.edu email address and they can no longer be anonymous in the session.
Please note that this means that guest speakers from outside the University will not be able to join. Nor would high school students be able to participate. See other methods for tightening up security below the screenshot.
“Require a password when scheduling new meetings” – this is locked on. So you’re good.
“Require a password for Instant Meetings” – default this is on.
“Require a password for Personal Meeting ID” – default this is off.
In addition, you can disable the setting called “Embed password in meeting link for one-click join”. This means you will have to provide the password in a separate communication from the meeting link. This is much less convenient, but is a deterrent to unwanted visitors.
Consider having a Co-Host to handle these items during the meeting.
Shut Down the Meeting
After having said all that…. don’t you wish people were just nicer??
Polling. I love polling. It allows you to engage with a large group of students and comes with all sorts of side reasons to use.. assessment, active learning, demographics, attendance, etc.
But, we are strongly encouraging remote learning these days, as well as asynchronous learning. This means recording things. Turns out that zoom cuts polls clean out during a recording. The screen that is pops up in isn’t part of the recording, and even if you share your display and the poll is on your display when open and as you go through the results, that window is not part of the recording either.
argh. You could speak the poll question and verbally go over the findings, they just won’t be able to see anything or participate. So… perhaps a good time to bring Turning Technologies back into the mix??
Let me know what you think in the comments.
Zoom has a lot of features.
A
Lot
Some of them are not by any means easy to locate. I mean, even not easy enough that I may have told you that apparently we didn’t have access to those features.
So here is the issue. You need to create the zoom meeting room through blackboard. That way it is tied to your course, and has all your students getting easy access. But after you save the room:
Leave Blackboard.
Go to stonybrook.zoom.us and login back in
To find the option for preassigning break out rooms:
and click on Meetings and find the meeting room you just made.
Click on it’s name and then go to the bottom and find Edit this Meeting.
Towards the bottom, in the Meeting Options section, you will see Breakout Room pre-assign. This lets you create the rooms manually, or with a CSV file.
ALSO FOUND HERE: What you need to stop ZoomBombs:
Anyone can share the link to the meeting. It can even be a student in the class that is signed in from another device doing the trolling. The only way to stop this is to enable the authentication profiles and force them to use a specific domain account. We have done just that so you can add it to any of your meetings. Simply go into the meeting options and check the “only authenticated users can join” option. Please be sure to leave the domain as stonybook.edu. I am including a screenshot below. This will force them to use a stonybrook.edu email address and they can no longer be anonymous in the session.
Set a Virtual Background, Controlling who can share screens, send invites to meetings in different languages, etc:
Go to Settings on the left menu and dig through this area. Note that some options are locked by “admin”.
Actually choose the Virtual Background:
This must be done in settings in the Zoom application. (Oiy!) It will download a virtual desktop package to your machine the first time.
Leave some comments below if you find more “hidden” features in zoom!
our account login is stonybrook.zoom.us