Thursday, November 5, 2020

Zoom Plus or Zoom Extend

I look forward to seeing how the larger companies like WebEx, Teams, and Zoom are able to expand their offering to meet these new challenges. For example, Zoom has the primary classroom for lecture down pat, I've started to see some breakout rooms, whiteboarding, chat, and other features come into play as well. 


I imagine that soon (or already) Zoom is creating something like Zoom Plus or Zoom Extend that has a place for discussion boards, a poll and twitter capability, a link for better more integrated video streaming from youtube or live cams, etc. And a file transfer and storage capability Imagine Zoom classrooms integrated directly into the application rather than being an addon. 

I watch the challenges that my 10-year-old has in submitting handwritten homework and I'm stunned by the multi-step process he is following to do it. Write out the homework, take a pic with his iPhone, upload the pic to Google Drive on his phone, download the pic from Google Drive on his computer then upload the image file to the assignment area of his online classroom. That's a tough thing for a 10-year-old to handle. Imagine when he's 20 what his expectations for an online classroom will be? 

Another feature that I think is missed, and that my organization has to contend with . . . is cheating. In an asynchronous class like many folks use, how can we be sure Dick Hannah hasn't outsourced all of his homework and discussion posts to some eager third-party. 

I predict an explosion in online live protecting services to ensure that Dick Hannah is who he says he is, that he's not copying from a textbook and that he's the author of his own thoughts. Maybe that's another feature that will come with Zoom Extend?!?!


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