How to Reduce Noise in Zoom Meetings

On Monday I shared Mike Tholfsen's tutorial on how to reduce background noise in Microsoft Teams calls. That prompted a few people to ask me if the same thing can be done in Zoom. Yes, you can filter background noise with some tools that are built into Zoom. 

In the advanced audio settings for Zoom you can adjust the level of filtering that you apply to steady and intermittent background noise. The default setting is "automatic." You can adjust that setting to be "aggressive" to filter more background noises. 

You'll find the advanced audio settings in Zoom by clicking on the small drop-down menu that appears next to the microphone icon during your Zoom calls. 

In this new video I provide a demonstration of how to reduce background noise in your Zoom meetings. 

How to Share Books in Google Classroom and Google Sites

One of my favorite features of Google Books is the option to clip sections of free ebooks to share with students. It's also possible to share with your students an entire ebook from Google Books. You can then use those clips or full books to spark discussions in Google Classroom. Another way to use the clipping and embedding feature of Google Books is to create a digital bookshelf of public domain works in a Google Site. Both of those things are demonstrated in this new video that I recorded yesterday afternoon. 

Watch this short video for a general overview of how to search in Google Books.