Using Breakout rooms for a community group

[AngelaBee]

Hello there I have been running a crossword group online using Zoom.  I generally have about 15 -20 participants.

I would like to be able to make more effective use of breakout rooms to split the group into say 3 smaller groups whilst still sharing the same puzzle I have on my screen.  If I choose 'broadcast screen share to breakout rooms' can I then as the host visit the individual breakout rooms to check they can see my puzzle correctly and to listen to and/or contribute to their discussion? 

I tried doing this a while back and when I entered the breakout room the screenshare disappeared, leaving them with nothing to look at!  Would this still be the case?

Thanks for any guidance/suggestions as I would really like to be able to do this, as sometimes I have people who like to dominate the discussion and other people then don't get an opportunity to contribute fully.

Angela

[Ray_Harwood]

Welcome to the Zoom Community, @AngelaBee 

Sounds to me like you've already found the ability to share screens to Breakout Rooms.  (I've included some information below if someone comes across this topic and wants to know how it's done!)  Unfortunately, once you've started a screen share (whether shared with breakout rooms or not), moving to a breakout room will stop your in-progress screen share.

My thought would be to log in to the meeting from two different devices - once on your PC to run the meeting, share your screen, and monitor the main room; then on another device (phone or tablet) to wander between breakout rooms to check in on folks.  If you wanted to log into the meeting twice -- but on a PC device both times, you'd have to create a separate account (it could be Basic/free account) and use that extra account to move around the breakout rooms.

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For anyone wanting to know about how to broadcast a screen share to breakout rooms:

Here's the trick... contained in a small section of the Zoom Support article on managing breakout rooms here:

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/206476313-Managing-Breakout-Rooms 

See this section:

Note the words: into all open breakout rooms.  Any screen share in progress will not be displayed into any newly created breakout rooms.  Here's the steps I'd recommend:

1. Share your crossword puzzle to the main room if you like, while people gather.
2. Once you have enough people where creating a breakout room is warranted, do the following steps...
3. STOP your current screen share.
4. Create the breakout rooms and either let people join whichever ones they want, or assign them.
5. Once the breakout rooms are created, start a NEW screen share, being sure to enable the Share to breakout rooms check box (which is nor shown if Breakout Rooms are not currently open):
   

Give that a test run before your next meeting... it should work fine if you follow these steps.