Zoom....again!

[Koldov]

Honestly, besides all the fuss, I have to hand it to these Zoom guys as they sure hit the sweet spot - talk about 'right place, right time' - and why did Skype suddenly become so unpopular - they pretty much had the market didn't they (I guess it is a generational thing - Zoom sounds much cooler, obviously got a good marketing team and celebs onboard) ?

 

Anyway, I have today received an email from a member of SLT asking me to install Zoom on to a couple of teacher's laptops.

 

I have previously told said teachers no due to security, data concerns and the fact that a lot of education establishments/LEAs have banned it, etc.

 

But here's the thing... they tried joining some sort of subject leaders networking meeting last week via the Zoom web interface and had a less than desirable experience (something to do with them all viewing screens or something)...

 

This was when they asked me to install Zoom (in a 10 minute break in the meeting). After being told no and me genuinely asking the question why they aren't using an MS or Google product for these meetings they left, only to return and ask me to enable the 'Jamboard Service' in our GSuite as they were also using that - so it was obvious that whoever was running the meeting had access to GSuite...

 

So a discussion has ensued with SLT, of which the final upshot is that the meetings are being provisioned by an employee of our LEA for the University of Hertfordshie and if they can use it so can we...

Edited November 13, 2020 by Koldov

[mavhc]

Zoom has an MSI installer. It does hang if you intercept TLS though, without telling you why. It's probably more secure than MS/Google at this point because everyone attacked it for being popular. And it's popular because it has more features.

[Zoom7000]

Zoom sounds much cooler

I agree, Zoom sounds so much cooler! Sorry... Couldn't resist!

[Mako]

I have Zoom installed with the machine-wide installer on one computer in the Music dept for peripatetic music lessons, which is supervised. They were using Skype and it's been an absolute nightmare, and since installing Zoom our head of music believes it's like night and day.

 

I haven't installed it anywhere else. Some staff have used Zoom for online webinars and other such things, but I make them use the web-client to connect. Zoom is blocked for students.

[Koldov]

Well, I have pretty much just been shot down in flames as the Head has just come to the office and told me he doesn't know what the issue is. He uses it for Heads meetings and Govenors meetings, it's much better than Skype, Teams or Meet and that it's easy to use and he always gets a good connection...

 

Where is that concrete piece of evidence that Zoom is a 'bad thing' anyway?

[Bompalompalomp]

Well, I have pretty much just been shot down in flames as the Head has just come to the office and told me he doesn't know what the issue is. He uses it for Heads meetings and Govenors meetings, it's much better than Skype, Teams or Meet and that it's easy to use and he always gets a good connection...

 

Where is that concrete piece of evidence that Zoom is a 'bad thing' anyway?

 

You can pick any week out of 2020 and find an anti-zoom article from a respected tech source, and this is probably the top one this week... https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/11/zoom-lied-to-users-about-end-to-end-encryption-for-years-ftc-says/

[flyinghaggis]

Well, I have pretty much just been shot down in flames as the Head has just come to the office and told me he doesn't know what the issue is. He uses it for Heads meetings and Govenors meetings, it's much better than Skype, Teams or Meet and that it's easy to use and he always gets a good connection...

 

Where is that concrete piece of evidence that Zoom is a 'bad thing' anyway?

 

To me it's more that as an organisation you preferably want to standardize on a single video calling platform rather than a case of labelling specific platforms as being 'bad'. Presumably if you have teachers/staff making calls at the organisation you want a record of those calls in case of and complaints/impropriety/issues and to guarantee a level of service and availability.

 

If all staff are off doing their own thing using stuff like Zoom at a personal level then the school has no visibility/logs of video calls in the event of any issues. Ultimately it's the call of those in charge of the organisation.

Edited November 13, 2020 by flyinghaggis

[Rob_D]

The point I always make when people ask about using Zoom is that, as we're just taking advantage of the free offering we don't have access to their tech support. So if you encounter a problem there's probably not a lot we can do.

[howartp]

To me it's more that as an organisation you preferably want to standardize on a single video calling platform rather than a case of labelling specific platforms as being 'bad'. Presumably if you have teachers/staff making calls at the organisation you want a record of those calls in case of and complaints/impropriety/issues and to guarantee a level of service and availability.

 

If all staff are off doing their own thing using stuff like Zoom at a personal level then the school has no visibility/logs of video calls in the event of any issues. Ultimately it's the call of those in charge of the organisation.

 

This is exactly why we use Zoom.

 

We're a GSuite school but you can't force our staff iPads to record a Google Meet meeting to a central location - if it records to cloud, it's to their own Drive which SLT can't access.

 

We have control of our domain and staff teaching from home in isolation all use @school.com zoom accounts, SSO from GSuite.

[RobFuller]

Any way of having the Zoom client but "disabling" the ability to starte your own meeting, only join. I want my users to have a good experience joining zoom meetings but not have the a ability to start using it instead of our standardised platform of choice.

[Norphy]

Zoom has pretty thorough GPO templates available for it. See reference guide here:

 

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/360039100051-Group-Policy-Options-for-the-Windows-Desktop-Client-and-Zoom-Rooms?mobile_site=true

[atcoates]

My schools are having to use Meet, Teams and Zoom as the services they need to contact all use different software. Internally they all use G-Suite services. Edited November 16, 2020 by atcoates

[paulkerton]

This is exactly why we use Zoom.

 

We're a GSuite school but you can't force our staff iPads to record a Google Meet meeting to a central location - if it records to cloud, it's to their own Drive which SLT can't access.

 

We have control of our domain and staff teaching from home in isolation all use @school.com zoom accounts, SSO from GSuite.

If the meeting is recorded, then Admins can access it through the Meet Quality Tool.

[JATSO]

At the moment Zoom is not allowed for pupils use so the LA asked us to block it in schools.

Some teachers are asking for it for courses they are on, and today I have had a request for Zoom to be used for an online meeting with pupil engagement held by a children's author.

I believe it is going to take place in class only and not ask pupils to access from home if in isolation although this is not yet confirmed.

We use GSuite and Meet is set up for all staff and pupils for remote learning.

Any guidance would be appreciated from those that have had similar requests scenarios.

Thanks

[lionsl2005]

We have zoom installed. They use zoom for whole virtual assemble and open day too. All seems cool.

[compsue]

Hi, a teacher tried to record a Zoom lesson today and cannot open the file. It has saved as a m3u is there anything that we can do to sort out anyone know why it didn't save as an mp4? Thanks

[keyboards]

VLC?........

[compsue]

Hi, a teacher tried to record a Zoom lesson today and cannot open the file. It has saved as a m3u is there anything that we can do to sort out anyone know why it didn't save as an mp4? Thanks

 

Sorted now, thanks. Teacher sent me the incorrect file!

[paulkerton]

M3U is a playlist file, that's the issue