Online Library Instruction: Webex Training Resources

Webex adds enhancements and new features to their products frequently, as you may have noticed! The link below can help you keep up with these. A few recent enhancements of note since the training are -

• Easily See Meeting Participants with Their Hand Raised - As a Webex Meetings host or presenter, you’ll now see participants who raise their hand automatically sorted at the top of the Participants list. The order of the participants will follow the order in which they raised their hand.
• Text Labels Added to Menu Options - Some menu items have had text labels added to their icons. Some of these are found on the bottom menu bar in the Webex app screen - Chat, Participants, etc.
• Breakout Rooms - Starting in WBS40.9, you can use breakout sessions in meetings to place your participants into smaller groups where they can collaborate and share ideas. Check out what you can do in breakout sessions as a meeting host, cohost, or attendee.
• Blur or Change Your Background on Mac or Windows - You can now blur or change the background of your webcam video when joining Meetings and Events from Mac and Windows. This gives you more privacy and removes distracting elements from your surroundings as you participate in video meetings.
• Introducing the Dark Theme - You can now choose whether you want to view the meeting window in the standard Light Theme or the new Dark Theme, available from the View menu. Reduce eye strain by choosing a theme that works best with your lighting conditions.
• Easy to find Mute All and Unmute All Buttons - The Mute all and Unmute all buttons are easier to find, right at the bottom of the Participants panel. In meetings, by default, when you mute another participant directly through Mute all or Mute on Entry, those participants can manually unmute themselves. While this is great for smaller, more conversational meetings, larger meetings and classrooms may require more moderation for when attendees are allowed to unmute. Now, hosts, and cohosts can now choose whether or not participants are allowed to unmute themselves. When this setting (under Mute All Attendees) is unchecked  participants’ Unmute buttons will be disabled.
• Allow All Users to Be Cohosts - In the meeting scheduler and Personal Room preferences, you now have a new option: Allow all users with a host account on this site to be cohosts for this meeting. This is a handy option to entrust cohost privileges to anyone joining from your site, instead of having to specify hosts by name, or limiting it to only the first person to join.

Helpful video resources are linked below. Recordings of the training sessions themselves are linked to the titles of each numbered section below.

1. Introduction to Webex Meetings
   1. Video - Webex Personal Rooms
   2. Video - Schedule a Meeting in Modern View
2. Setting Up and Starting a Webex Meeting
   1. Video - Setting up Your Computer for a Webex Webinar
   2. Video - How to Start and Join Meetings from the Webex Desktop App
   3. Video - Managing Audio and Video Options
   4. Video - Attendee Privileges
3. Sharing Content in a Webex Meeting
   1. Video - How to Share Content During a Webex Meeting - brief
   2. Video - Sharing Content in Webex - comprehensive
   3. Video - Sharing Content & Annotating Using Webex
   4. Video - Tips on Starting and Ending Webex Meetings
4. Make Learning Fun! Interactive Tools in WebEx
   1. Video - Webex Polling Feature
   2. Video - Webex Whiteboard and Annotation
5. Recordings of Webex Meetings
   1. Video - How to Record a Webex Meeting
6. Assessing and Reporting WebEx Meetings
   1. Video - Attendance Data and Reporting

Webex's YouTube Channel of helpful videos is located at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNBf2FAcVlMl5F3hJ2bBc3w

Webex's Meeting product support page is at https://help.webex.com/ld-nyw95a4-CiscoWebexMeetings/Webex-Meetings

Below are some tips and tricks that our webinar and Webex users have found helpful -

• Schedule a quiet space for yourself with few distractions or chances for interruption as soon as possible! Electronic classrooms and labs work well.
• Test the PC. Ethernet may work better than wireless, for example. Test well before your webinar date for needed updates, plug-ins, etc. Check your headset and audio as well. 

Some of you were interested in the Bitmoji slide displayed at the beginning of Session #1. Here are some links that describe the process -

• https://www.helloteacherlady.com/blog/2020/4/how-to-create-a-virtual-bitmoji-scene-in-google-slides-or-powerpoint
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3ZiClcIYJs
• https://www.weareteachers.com/virtual-bitmoji-classroom/
• https://glittermeetsglue.com/virtual-bitmoji-classroom/

There are several FB groups as well. Just search for "Bitmoji."

Basically, Daphene and I used the Bitmoji phone app to create avatars and found "stickers" with our avatars holding books or sitting in a bean bag. I installed the Chrome extension for Bitmoji to be able to easily access stickers and download or drag-and-drop into Google Slides. I found a library background for Google Slides shared online. Lots of these classroom scenes are shared online.I then dragged and dropped my sticker onto the slide and replaced the books on the slide with some ebooks from our catalog. Then, I transferred to PowerPoint.