What’s the Difference Between the Sharing Options in Microsoft Teams Meetings? 

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Today, we’re going to take a deeper dive into screen sharing in a Microsoft Teams meeting. When you open the share menu, you’ll see several options. But what does each do, and how can they help you achieve your goals

Screen Sharing with a Document Camera 

If you want to share content from a document camera, first make sure that your document camera is plugged in. If the camera isn’t plugged in, you won’t see the options in the meeting to share from the camera.  

Select “Share content” inside your Teams meeting and choose “content from camera.” That will then open a tab where you can select “document” as your type of camera. From the drop-down, select your document camera. Finally, click “share” in the bottom left to begin sharing content from the document camera. 

Screen Sharing vs Using PowerPoint Live 

At first glance, it might seem like showing a PowerPoint on your screen and using PowerPoint Live does the same thing. And, to some extent, it does. Both allow you to share content with your students. But PowerPoint Live also gives both you and your students additional options to enhance the learning experience.  

As a presenter, PowerPoint Live gives you some additional tools. You’ll can turn on a “presenter view” where you can see the current slide, any notes you’ve added for yourself, and a thumbnail strip of slides at the bottom of the screen. Meeting attendees will only be able to see the current slide – not any of the extras that you can use to make your experience easier!  

PowerPoint Live also gives your students some more options. If they’re taking notes and missed a crucial piece of information, they can jump back a slide or two then click a “sync to presenter” button to return to the current slide in the lecture. They can also choose to modify the slides to be in a high contrast mode or even translated to another language. Each student can individually select these things – one student’s tweaks don’t affect the rest of the class.

If you screen share, however, your students will see whatever you have on your screen, including any presenter notes or other details.  

Screen Sharing vs Window Sharing 

If you’re wanting to just share a file or program you have open on your computer, you can use either screen or window sharing.  

Window sharing shows only a particular window (file or program) on your computer. For example, you might want to pull up your course in Canvas and talk over some things with your class and also have up a page of lecture notes. With window sharing, you can choose to show your students just the browser window – they won’t also see your document with the lecture notes.  

Screen sharing, however, shows everything you have on your screen. If you have a browser window open on part of your screen and a document on the rest, your students will see both!  

When you start sharing content, make sure you select which option works best for what you’re trying to do. If you have questions, please feel free to leave a comment below or email us at ctl@cedarville.edu. We’d love to help! 

Ryan Liming contributed to this post.

Want to never miss a post? Subscribe here!