Zoho Meeting has a new annotator function which offers basic annotation features for presenters sharing their screen to an audience in Zoho Meeting.

Areas where this is useful could be (for example) to share a complex architectural design document where the presenter needs to highlight a certain portion of a design drawing;  Or to highlight certain parts of a legal document that need approval or input from other teams.

The text feature allows you to type in comments or changes to any text that night be required and, especially if you are recording the meeting at the time this can be referred to later on or can be made in real time in the document using Zoho WorkDrive.

Zoho Meeting has a new feature: a collaborative whiteboard.

Presenters can now use the whiteboard feature to do simple drawings, real time presentations with flow charts, shapes and images, text boxes and so on, using the whiteboard to dynamically add/remove or move them around as the presentation progresses.

During the lockdown period we saw a surge in demand for a Zoho's collaboration and communications apps, mainly Zoho Meeting/Zoho Webinar.

A case study we thought was extremely interesting was that that we set up for a local elementary school using Zoho Webinar.

As my own kids were forced to stay home back in March 2020 I thought of ways to try to help the school to continue some form of teaching and found them very receptive to the idea of providing online webinars to the students on a daily basis.

We set up Zoho Webinar for them as part of a gratis project and within a very short time frame all of the teachers had become experts in presenting webinars online, which is no mean feat! 

If you've ever had to to conduct webinars online you will know that they do require a certain amount of know-how not only of the software but also of how people learn and listen during a webinar session, not to mention young kids!

One of the the aspects we found particularly interesting and relevant to a case study was the security element of Zoho Webinar vs the popular free conferencing apps, which are not necessarily all that secure.

Being a school, obviously the teachers had to treat student confidentiality and privacy as the primary concern.

The registration process in Zoho Webinar is such that attendees can register first for the event and the registrant list can be monitored by the presenter. Suspicious registrant's can be blocked from attending the webinar. As can older siblings who who enjoyed registering with joke email addresses!

During the webinar it was important to be able to protect the student's privacy and deny the teacher visibility into the students home. As webinar software is typically designed as a tool to present on a 'one-to-many' basis the teachers (as the presenters) were not able to see into the students homes but rather were the only ones on the camera at any one time - students could see them but not the other way around.

Also when presenting a webinar it is important for the presenter to be able to control the audience. This is even more applicable when the audience is under 12 years of age! Zoho Webinar has a standard 'hands up' function whereby the attendees are all muted by default and if they wish to get the attention of the teacher they can click a button to raise their hand. (Some might say they wish this was the case in the school too!)

All communication between the attendees and the teacher was done by the inbuilt chat module, which meant the teacher was easily able to control the flow of comments and only discuss those that were relevant to the lesson. The attendees in other words are completely isolated from one another, cannot communicate in any way with other attendees, and do not even know who else is attending.

The registration page can be publicised using a link or even embedded in a school website.

The automated follow up emails that get sent by Zoho Webinar act as useful reminders, so the teacher doesn't have to worry about manually reminding people as they get sent automatically by the software just prior to the webinar and the reminder settings can be configured easily.

Within the space of a couple of weeks we noticed how excellent the teachers had become a presenting online, using all manner of innovative methods from the standard presentations, to screen sharing of drawings, 'jackanory' book reading, playing of videos and music, and even drama classes and quizzes.

My daughter absolutely loves the webinars and asks us to leave the room each time so she can get physical and dance around with her drama teacher!

Within a few weeks the school admin had increased the webinar license to allow up to 100 attendees at a time.

See our Tips for Giving an Effective Webinar.

Conducting webinars can often involve a learning process but there's really no limit to what you can do.

Make use of the webcam and a blank background and make use of props whiteboards videos and other media to make the webinar as engaging as possible and suitable to your audience.

Make sure you do not have any distracting posters/wallpaper/pictures in the background of the presenter.

Make sure you prepare all all relevant materials and handouts for the webinar in advance and make the handout materials available immediately after the webinar has finished.

Ensure you have only relevant websites or applications open on your computer that you need during the webinar. Close unnecessary browser tabs and make sure anything you do not want attendees to see is closed in case you wish to share your screen.

Try not to have numerous apps or browsers open at the same time as this will cause your computer to struggle unnecessarily, which can potentially disrupt the webinar.

If you are conducting the webinar at home or where the connection speed is temperamental or on a shared network, ensure all unnecessary devices are either switched off or have Wi-Fi turned off.

Shut the window/door/turn off any audio devices that may result in ambient sound.  For example radios, TVs, music etc., it is very hard for attendees to hear presenters if there is ambient noise in the background.

Mute your mobile phone! It will certainly impact the perception and attention span of the attendees if the presenter's own phone is buzzing or ringing during a webinar. Never take a call if you are presenting a webinar.

When presenting a webinar, it is impossible to read body language to ensure audience understanding. Ask lots of questions and encourage interactive feedback by asking attendees to type their answers in the chat pane. Setup several polls beforehand and ask attendees to vote, this will also increase attention and make it more interactive. When asking questions, publishing polls, give the attendees time to respond.

Layout your webinar topics in front of you, allocate a time for each, maintain momentum.

Learn to deal with inevitable technical glitches! These most often relate to connection issues. If you have an old computer, understand your computer's limits. Or if you can, upgrade to a modern machine. Learn how to quickly shut down unnecessary apps/browser tabs (see above). Be prepared to instruct attendees to do the same.

Finally, if in doubt, practice the webinar beforehand, especially if it's your first time, and do a dry run with colleagues or friends so you can tweak and improve anything that potentially stalls the momentum. With a webinar it