ThemeTech & the online room
CardCard 45 of 63
Questions5 to explore
StepSet up the tech

Screen Sharing

When to share screen & what to show

Screen sharing is how you bring the group into the same visual space, and doing it well requires more preparation than clicking one button.

When you share your screen you are directing everyone's attention to one place. That is powerful, but it also means your notifications, your other tabs, and whatever else is visible on your desktop become part of the session. The preparation matters as much as the content you are sharing.

Screen sharing decisions also affect the pace of the session. Sharing too much, or too often, turns participants into passive viewers. Knowing when to share and when to let people work independently in the shared space is part of the facilitation design.

Online, specificallyIn a physical room a projector or flip chart is a shared object everyone can walk up to and point at; online screen sharing is one person's view broadcast to everyone, which concentrates all attention on the sharer and removes the group's spatial relationship to the content.

In a remote session

The same building block as it plays out online: how experienced facilitators tend to handle it when the room is a screen. Illustrations to react to, not rules to follow.

Share a window, not your desktop

Good facilitators share a single application window rather than the whole desktop, which keeps notifications, other tabs, and personal files out of the shared view.

Do a clean-up before sharing

They close irrelevant tabs and applications, silence notifications (including on phone), and run through what is visible before they share, not after.

Alternate between sharing and not

They share the screen to present something, then stop sharing when the group moves into discussion or individual work in a shared board, so participants can see each other's faces again.

Test screen sharing before the session

They do a screen sharing test with the co-facilitator before participants arrive, confirming what shows, at what resolution, and whether audio from a video plays through correctly.

Questions to plan around

Use these on your own or in a group. There are no right answers, only better conversations.

Have you tested screen sharing and confirmed what participants actually see from the other side?
Do you have notifications turned off and irrelevant applications closed before the session?
When in the session will you share your screen, and when will you stop to let people see faces again?
If you need to play a video with audio, have you tested that sound comes through correctly?
Do you have a plan if your screen share freezes or participants cannot see what you are sharing?

What trips people up online

Sharing the whole desktop is a habit that frequently exposes private notifications, bookmarks, and file names to the group; always share by window or tab.
Playing a video through screen share without testing audio first is a common source of embarrassment: the presenter watches a video that the group hears nothing of.
Keeping the screen shared throughout the whole session reduces participant-to-participant connection; faces disappear and the session becomes more like a broadcast than a workshop.