How Zoom became 'critical infrastructure' for millions of kids learning online
Few companies were better positioned than Zoom (ZM) for the virtual school, home-based reality that COVID-19 brought to the world’s children. That is precisely why the video communications giant is Yahoo Finance’s Company of the Year.
With millions of students and employees forced to learn and work from home because of the pandemic, Zoom use soared in 2020. In April, the company announced that its number of daily meeting participants surged from 10 million in December 2019 to 300 million in April 2020. More than 125,000 schools in over 25 countries now have free access to the service, the company says.
[Read more: Yahoo Finance 2020 Company of the Year: Zoom]
Since its founding in 2011, the company’s bread-and-butter had been in corporate settings and the higher-education space, but it quickly pivoted to help younger remote learners.
“It’s important to note that universities and the higher education space were some of the earliest adopters of Zoom,” Janine Pelosi, the company’s chief marketing officer, told Yahoo Finance. “We’ve been in the classroom, we’ve been in the operations of the schools for many, many years, [but] the need for the K through 12 environments globally is absolutely something at this scale that is unprecedented, that we haven’t seen.”
“So we were familiar with what the needs of these schools are … [and] back in March, we made the decision that this was not about sales and marketing,” said Pelosi. “This was about enabling our customers and users for Zoom. This was needed — this is critical infrastructure at this point.”
The company “stopped pretty much everything else that we were doing on the sales marketing front to support the customers,” she added, from “the inbound requests that were coming in, creating new content, we had events teams that were no longer doing physical events cranking out hundreds of pieces of video content for these new use-cases in order to educate.”
“So it was really about creating that content, creating that access, web environments, blog posts, videos, you name it, to ensure that they were up to speed and could really take advantage of everything the product had to offer,” she said.
To improve access and instruction the company expanded its free offerings by removing the initial 40-minute time limit for schools across the world. Over the summer, the company provided a free 2-day seminar for teachers and administrators to familiarize themselves with the platform. According to Zoom, it was attended by more than 35,000 educators.
However, the transition to remote learning was not without its hiccups for the company, which had to confront several privacy issues amid its ramp-up.
In April, for example, the New York City Department of Education banned Zoom from its schools, citing security concerns. The schools briefly adopted Microsoft (MSFT) Teams, a Zoom competitor. Google (GOOG, GOOGL) Meet also advertises its services for distance learning.
The schools system’s decision to ban Zoom came after the company faced criticism for turning off passwords by default and advertising its service as end-to-end encrypted when it was not — security flaws that Zoom ultimately fixed. In May, the country’s largest school system reversed its ban on Zoom after it created a customized version for the city’s education department that addressed security concerns.
[Read more: How Zoom overcame security flaws that prompted an FBI warning and an FTC probe]
‘I do feel a lot of Zoom fatigue’
Of course, teachers and parents also had to pivot to remote learning amid the pandemic. Nearly 93% of U.S. households with school-age children have engaged in “distance learning,” amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to a Census survey released in August.
NYC-based 7th grade English teacher Kelly Walker tells Yahoo Finance that her school started using Zoom in the fall. “I love using breakout rooms to have smaller groupings. Breakout rooms are great for more engagement and increased interaction with students over Zoom.”
However, Walker does note that the strain of remote learning can become a bit much.
“I do feel a lot of Zoom fatigue, to be honest, especially on the days where I teach six different Zoom classes. It gets very tiring to be at the computer for long stretches of time just staring at the computer screen.”
Teachers and students are not the only part of the equation for remote learning via Zoom. Parents around the country are also familiarizing themselves with the platform as they try to help their children navigate this most unconventional school year.
Chicago parent Joy McClure’s fifth- and seventh-grade sons have been learning from home for months. McClure, who was familiar with Zoom from her job as VP of admissions and marketing for Tricoci University of Beauty Culture, says she’s seen an improvement in both the product and instruction since the pandemic began. “Now we’re really better utilizing Zoom. And so they’re really in class all day with their teachers. And if they do break apart into group settings, the teacher can move them into a room within Zoom. So they’re still able to do group projects. I think it’s much more interactive than what we saw in the spring.”
But virtual learning isn’t always a good fit for some students and parents. Los Angeles mom Ellen Gould-Silcott said supervising her eighth-grader with special needs is a challenge.
“He gets distracted pretty easily, and it’s taken a while for me to adjust because I work full-time,” she said. “So I really can’t watch what he’s watching all the time,” she said. Looking at a scene all day can also be a problem. “Focus is an issue for sure. He does better when he's in the classroom.”
Gould-Silcott, who also has a 10th grader, worries about kids’ lack of socialization amid virtual learning.
“They want to start seeing people in person again,” she said.
Looking toward the future
Zoom, like the rest of the country and world, is looking ahead to life after COVID-19.
“Throughout the pandemic, we’ve considered it our honor, and our responsibility, to help K-12 educators continue teaching and students continue learning, and we will provide our support to them until we can safely resume learning in person,” Pelosi said. “While remote learning has served a crucial role in connecting students and educators during the pandemic, we believe that many aspects of K-12 learning are best conducted in a hybrid or in person setting.”
Reggie Wade is a writer for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter at @ReggieWade. Aarthi is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter @aarthiswami.
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