ZOOM ANNOUNCES NEW EDUCATION FEATURES
April 19, 2022 / Department of Digital Learning
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April 12, 2022
SAN JOSE, Calif 鈥� (NASDAQ: ZM) today announced, at the national conference, new features for education in response to requests from teachers and administrators. These features span Zoom鈥檚 Chat and Meetings offerings and are designed to support teachers who need to engage and manage students joining class remotely or submitting homework assignments.
Virtual Background & Blur for Chromebooks
Chromebooks are a popular choice for students and teachers. are now available for users. Zoom developed this capability after requests from various education customers, including Clayton County Public Schools, one of the 100 largest school districts in the United States, serving more than 52,000 students in Georgia.
鈥淰irtual background and blur for Chromebooks are extremely beneficial to our students and teachers. Many students were reluctant to turn their cameras on before this feature enhancement,鈥� said Rod Smith, Chief Technology Officer, Clayton County Public Schools.
Breakout Rooms Enhancements
Breakout Rooms, a popular education feature, also received enhancements in this latest release. allows meeting hosts to share content with audio to Breakout Rooms, adding the ability to share videos with audio. With the , educators can populate Breakout Rooms from the course roster. This can be used to assign Breakout Rooms in advance, then automatically sort students into Breakout Rooms.
Additional Features for Chat and Waiting Room
Other new features include , and the ability to . Asynchronous video allows users the time to consider their responses and then record as needed to provide thoughtfully crafted responses. Users can click 鈥渧ideo鈥� at the bottom of the chat client and record up to a 3-minute video message that goes directly into the out-of-meeting chat channel. This is useful for situations such as students submitting brief video assignments. Renaming participants before they join the meeting can be useful for attendance taking where students may be using shared devices, for creating an anonymous student group, or for affirming gender identity.
Anywhere Polls
Anywhere Polls will allow polling content to live in a central repository that can be accessed from any meeting on an account, instead of being associated with a particular meeting. This will make it easier for instructors to reuse polls and will also be beneficial for grading. This feature will be available soon.
鈥淲e鈥檙e looking forward to the Anywhere Polls feature,鈥� said John J. 鈥淪ki鈥� Sygielski, Ed.D., President and CEO of HACC, Central Pennsylvania鈥檚 Community College. 鈥淭he polling enhancements will make it simpler for large groups of students to provide feedback across the College. It will be easier than ever for instructors to replicate content for each course.鈥�
鈥淒elivering happiness to our customers is the core of what we do at Zoom,鈥� said Johann Zimmern, Global Education Strategy Lead, Zoom. 鈥淲e work closely with our global K-12 and higher education customers, taking their requests into account and involving them in feature development. As a direct result of this, Zoom developed these exciting new features for education.鈥�
Zoom is for you. Zoom is a space where you can connect to others, share ideas, make plans, and build toward a future limited only by your imagination. Our frictionless communications platform is the only one that started with video as its foundation, and we have set the standard for innovation ever since. That is why we are an intuitive, scalable, and secure choice for large enterprises, small businesses, and individuals alike. Founded in 2011, Zoom is publicly traded (NASDAQ:ZM) and headquartered in San Jose, California.
Featured image: charlesdeluvio, Unsplash.
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