the purpose of this video is to show you
how to use virtual backgrounds on zoom
also known as green screen or background
features
so you may notice behind me i have
a big green piece of fabric on my wall
so with the specific computer i have
the virtual backgrounds on zoom only
work if i have something green behind me
i have an older computer i have heard
with newer computers you don't need
something green behind you
but for me if i tried doing a back um
a background with no green screen it
didn't work
so if you notice when you're setting a
background on
zoom that it's not working you may want
to consider
getting something green to put behind
you
so that the background works better so
this green um screen fabric actually
came in a kit
from play spark toys she is the queen of
green screens i'm gonna link her
information in the description box
she has a ton of resources a ton of
amazing stuff
a lot of the stuff i do are ideas from
her so i really can't take credit
um i just want to show everybody how to
do those things
but just keep in mind you don't need to
spend
a bunch of money on a green screen kit
this was a gift and i'm really blessed
to have it it came from
an amazing co-worker of mine but had she
not gotten this for me
i would have just gone to joann's and
gotten some green fabric or i would have
put up some green construction paper
so it doesn't have to be anything fancy
it can just be something
green that's covering that space
where you are projecting the background
so anyways i'm on zoom right now
in order to access the virtual
backgrounds feature
what i need to do is if i look at the
stop video button
if i click on the carrot next to the
stop video button
it gives me some options one of those
options is choose
virtual background and if i click on
that
it brings up this window
and it says choose virtual background
now i've used this feature before so all
of these images you're seeing right now
are images that i've uploaded onto here
when you're looking at it for the first
time you might not have any pictures
and that's okay if you see
there's a blue outline around the box
that says none
and that's because right now i don't
have any background
but if i was to click on something like
this tree now you can see
i have the tree background and if i move
this window
that's what my zoom looks like to
whoever i'm meeting with
like a student so now they see a tree
behind me
if i was to click on this
boat image i clicked on it
it's outline blue and now whoever's
meeting with me
sees me standing by the boat
so um these are basic ways how you would
use the backgrounds
if i chose the blue background
now i am standing in front of a blue
background
and as you can see the quality is really
nice when you have something green
behind you
so again these are backgrounds that i've
uploaded
into zoom and the way i did that is if
you look over here
at this um plus button
if you click on that zoom allows you to
search through your computer to upload
picture files to set as your background
something else i want to point out
really quickly
is um when you are using a background
when you click on that background
you might get a message that says
manually pick the color of the
background if the detected color is not
accurate
so you'll see in this tiny tiny box it's
green
because when i set my background
it gave me this cross and i clicked on
that green
fabric so that zoom knows i'm using a
green background so that's why the
background is so crisp
because i made sure to manually pick the
color of the background
so i wanted to point that out so anyways
i'm just gonna backtrack for a second i
have my bridge behind me right now
so again all we did was we went into our
zoom meeting
we found the camera button we clicked
the carrot
we selected choose virtual background
and this window appears and i'm able to
switch between the backgrounds i have
if you don't have any backgrounds yet
that's okay
like i mentioned you can use this plus
um sign button to add a virtual
background image
so now that i've showed you how to get
to the backgrounds and how to add one
and we've talked a little bit about
having something green behind us and how
to
manually pick the color of that
green background the next thing i want
to talk about is how to
insert the backgrounds into zoom
so there's a few options you have you
can
find backgrounds on the internet that
have already been created
and you can use those you can
also create your own background
and i'll show you how to do that you can
also go on to
teachers pay teachers or other websites
and purchase backgrounds
so you have a few options the first
option i want to
discuss is finding backgrounds for free
on the internet because we all love free
things
um so right now i am on pbs
kids distance learning and style virtual
backgrounds
and these are all free backgrounds that
pbs
kids has provided that you can use with
your
um virtual background feature on zoom
so as you can see there's tons and tons
and tons of them
i am going to link this in the
description box so that you can have
them
and right now i am going to download one
and show you how i would put it into
zoom so
these backgrounds are nice because they
already give you a button to download
them
so if i click here to download it brings
up the image
and if i right click i can save the
image
to my computer and i'm just going to
write balls
and i'm going to save it to my desktop
so i really am taking
a an image and just saving it to my
desktop
and i did that by right clicking on
other websites you might have the option
to download to your desktop
this one let me save it to my desktop
so once i save this i'm going to go to
my desktop
quickly and if you look right here
you'll see that image we saved so now
what i can do is i
can open my zoom meeting
i can go to that caret
and click on choose virtual background
and now if i click the plus sign
i'm gonna go to my desktop
and there's our image that we labeled
balls so if i click on it
and hit open
it uploaded that ball's image behind us
and if i scroll down
that image is now a part of my library
and what is so great about zoom
is once you upload an image it saves it
so these are all backgrounds that i've
uploaded at other times
so that was how you could take an image
from the internet
and add it as your background
you would do the same thing if you
purchased an image from a website like
teachers pay teachers you would just
download it to your desktop
and then you would hit add virtual
background
you would look for it and you would add
it to your
background library if you are looking
for backgrounds and you just can't find
what you're looking for
you can actually make custom backgrounds
really easily
so that's the next thing i want to tell
you about
so i opened up powerpoint on my computer
and i wrote my name this is just an
example you might do something different
with your kids
but if i wanted to make this a
background
on zoom i would just screenshot it
save it to my desktop and then upload it
into zoom so right now
i'm going to try to do that while
holding my phone so give me a second
nope that didn't work so one second
nope still didn't work okay
i was able to do it keep in mind i have
a mac so screenshotting on a different
computer might look a little different
but i'm gonna screenshot snip that slide
and then that slide is going to save to
my messy desktop
so there is that slide
i'm going to rename it
i'm just going to write name for the
name of it
now if i go on to zoom i'm going to do
the same process i'm going to click on
the carrot
click on choose virtual background and
i'm going to hit the add button
and i'm going to find that slide there
it is right there
name so if i click on that and hit open
now my name is on the slide
keep in mind when you upload words
they're going to look backwards but to
your students they will not look
backwards so remember that don't freak
out if the words look backwards
they will not look backwards to your
students
so this would be a great idea maybe if
you're
a pre-k teacher like me and you're
working on name recognition
or sight words you could create
different slides with kids names on it
or
sight words something like that but this
is how you could upload your own slide
that you made
if you look at the different slides i
have in my library
some of them i made and some of them i
downloaded for free so there's a lot of
great options out there where you don't
have to spend money
on slides and i will link some different
slides that i've made and that other
people have made for free
in the description box
so that would be how to insert
a new slide now what i want to talk
about is how would you
move between slides so for example
one of my favorite activities to do with
my students
is bubbles and how i do bubbles is i
start with a
white background you know and i teach
pre-k so i might ask them what color do
you see
or what happened um and then
i usually pull out a prop so if you look
right here
i have my little jar of bubbles
and you know i'll say to them what do
you see
or what am i holding or what do you want
and obviously with whatever age you're
working with your instruction will be
different i just wanted to do an example
with you
so my kids will say bubbles or i see
bubbles
and then i'll say what do you want me to
do and then they'll usually say open
or blow bubbles so after i open the
bubbles
i hold up the bubble wand and keep in
mind if i hold the bubble wand
in the background it might fade into the
background so any props that you're
going to hold up i recommend you hold
them
in front of your body so i always hold
the bubbles in front of my body so that
the kids can see the prop
so i might say oh you know you want me
to blow bubbles okay
i'm gonna blow bubbles ready so what i
do
is on the um
on the backgrounds i scroll to my
bubbles
and i'm going to click between these
bubble slides
while i'm meeting with the student the
student is not seeing this settings
window
the only thing the student is seeing
is this meeting window so they're not
seeing the behind the scenes of how i'm
getting those bubbles on
only i'm seeing that so i might say okay
ready we're going to blow some bubbles
so i might hold up the bubbles
and i might blow and then normally i
have two hands when i do this so it's a
little easier but i will click on
the two bubbles and i'll say wow what
happened and we'll talk about how many
bubbles we see which one's bigger which
one's smaller
and then i'll give them a turn i'll say
do you want to turn
and i'll hold up the bubble wand and
they'll blow and all i'm doing is
switching to the next slide
and i'll say wow you did such a great
job look how many bubbles and then i'll
say it's my turn
because maybe we're working on my turn
your turn that week
so i'm going to click on the next slide
i'm going to pretend like i'm blowing
the bubbles
and then i'm going to quickly click on
the next slide and i'm gonna say
wow look how many so the idea is that
in order to make it more engaging more
animated
all we're doing is just clicking between
the sides
so at the end i always say do you want
to pop the bubbles and usually they do
so i'll say all right let's pop ready
and we'll sing like pop
pop pop my bubbles pop pop
pop my bubbles pop pop pop my bubbles
and all in that time be clicking
to different slides to make the bubbles
disappear
so that is how you would move between
slides to make it interactive
something else you can do as colors so
what color is this
what color is this what color is this or
make it a little more engaging can you
go through your house and find me
something that matches this color
something else you can do is if you add
a pocket to your green screen and um
play spark toys talks about this if you
add a pocket to your green screen
you can actually um put props into the
green screen
so if i click on the old lady so if
you've ever read the book like there was
an old lady who swallowed
something if i move my pocket down
to probably a little lower if i move my
pocket
down here so that on the screen
it's matching where her mouth is
then what i can do is i can feed her
and it's gonna look interactive and
play spark toys i really give them
credit for this
because they have taught me how to do
this so her mouth is here
and what i can do is i can pick up a
prop and say
we're going to feed the old lady you
know what is she eating
and then the food disappears into her
mouth
and all i'm really doing is putting it
into the pocket but it looks like she's
eating it
i made this background um with clipart
from
lessonpix so this was actually something
i made in powerpoint and all i did was
paste
the picture of the old lady onto a slide
screenshot it and put it onto
zoom an amazing speech therapist
added this block background to tpt for
free
so if we were building blocks i might
say are you ready
okay how many blocks do you see i see
one block
how many blocks do you see i see two
blocks
all right look how many now three
four five
they all fell down and remember the
students not seeing this part
they're seeing this so they're seeing
those blocks on the ground
and i could say let's try again ready
one
two and so on and so forth
so again it's just the idea of clicking
between
things to make it more animated to make
it move i do
colors counting excuse me prepositions
there are tons of things you can do with
this um
but i just wanted to give you an
overview of how to use the backgrounds
on zoom if you have any questions at all
please drop a comment
um in the box below and i'm more than
happy to answer it i really hope this
video was helpful
i know it was a little long and there
was a lot of information
but just keep in mind start small
if you need to just start with one
background that doesn't move
that's okay if you need to start with a
background that somebody else made
and you're not ready to make your own
that's okay um
distance learning is not an
individual race like we're all in this
together and just
take it at your own pace so again
wishing you all the best i hope this was
helpful
