Zoom Video Communications : How to Use Zoom for Online Learning

UPDATE: How to Use Zoom for Online Learning

This post has been updated to reflect new Zoom offerings and resources for educators in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

March 13

As of this morning, we have two new offers for schools:

1. Zoom is proactively lifting the 40-minute meeting limit on free Basic accounts for nearly 60,000 K-12 schools in the U.S.

If your school has already been pre-approved and your Zoom Basic account is linked to your school email address, you'll get a notification the next time you log into Zoom. If you did not receive a notification, you can request to have the time limit lifted for your schoolhere.

2. We've partnered with Clever to make Zoom accessible to the 8,000 Clever districts who may be experiencing school closures.

Clever is the most widely used single sign-on portal in K-12 districts, making it easy for schools to roll out Zoom quickly. Zoom accounts set up through Clever will include:

• Unlimited teacher accounts
• No time limit on virtual class sessions
• Single sign-on via the Clever Portal
• Support for PCs, Macs, Chromebooks, iPads, Android phones & iPhones

Zoom is making all of these features available at no charge through July 1, 2020, for Clever districts.

March 12

Zoom is temporarily lifting the 40-minute meeting limit on free Basic accounts for sevenadditional countries during the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Effective immediately, K-12 schools in the following countries canrequestthe 40-minute time limit be lifted for free Basic Zoom accounts:

• Austria
• Denmark
• France
• Ireland
• Poland
• Romania
• South Korea

Schools in these countries can request the limit removal by having a member of your school fill outthis formusing a school email address.

Zoom has already removed the 40-minute limit on free Basic accounts for schools in Japan and Italy, and have lifted the limit by request for K-12 schools in the United States.

Additional resources

Here are some additional online resources to help you most effectively use Zoom for virtual education:

• Live Zoom training daily: These include sessions specifically highlighting Zoom Meetings for Education (Students & Educators), focusing on using Zoom Meetings as your classroom setting. Zoom Webinar training is also available.
• Recorded Zoom training:Watch previously recorded sessions on demand and at your convenience. Several are in German, Japanese, and Korean, in addition to English.
• Tips for instructors:Check out thisTwitter threadfrom USC Ph.D. student and online instructorAlana Kennedyon some of the most useful features and best practices for teaching over Zoom.
• Free Nearpod access: Instructional platform Nearpod is temporarily offering free online learning access to schools impacted by closures. Access includeslive weekly webinars, a guideto using Nearpod for distance learning, and lessons on thecoronavirusto keep students, teachers, and parents informed.

March 6

Zoom has a wealth of experience helpingeducational institutionsoptimize the Zoom platform for virtual classrooms and online learning.It's our goal to make Zoom easy to use and accessible for everyone, and we're committed to streamlining the experience for our educational users amid the global coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak.

Zoom's teams are working to provide teachers, administrators, and students around the world with the resources they need to quickly spin up virtual classrooms, participate in online classes, and continue their studies online. It's our intention that everyone, from seasoned Zoom users to those who've never interacted with our product, can easily download the client, start and schedule meetings, set students up with Zoom, and start using Zoom for virtual instruction with ease.

This post is designed to help our education users:

• Sign up for a Zoom account
• Pick the best account option
• Understand best practices for using Zoom in education

Help for schools

To ensure all of our K-12 districts and other institutions can most effectively leverage Zoom for virtual education during this time, Zoom is:

• Temporarily removing the 40-minute limit on free Basic accounts for schools in Japan and Italy, and by request for K-12 schools in the United States
• Providing multi-language resources specifically designed for principals, vice principals, teachers, students, and parents to set up and use Zoom
• Expanding live trainings, webinars, and recorded offerings to share best practices for using the platform

Additionally, Outschool, a marketplace for live onlineclasses, has made available Free Remote Teacher Training Webinars demonstrating how to adapt teaching practices and curriculum to a live video chat classroom. These webinars are led by Outschool's experienced teachers who have transitioned from in-person to onlineteaching. Educators can sign up and find available times/dates here.

How to enable your free Zoom account

To have the 40-minute time limit temporarily removed for your organization's free Basic accounts:

1. Have your administrators, staff, and teachers sign up for afree Zoom account.
2. Have a member of your school fill outthis formto request the temporary removal.
3. Upon verification, all free Basic accounts using your school's email domain will have the time restriction lifted.

Now teachers will be able to log in, schedule their classes, and send out invites to students. Students are not required to have a Zoom account and can join classes using the links sent from the teacher. For the best experience, we do recommend every user download the Zoom application on their preferred Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, or Android device.

We have numerous short videos onsupport.zoom.usto help you get started.

Zoom account features & benefits

Zoom offers robust collaboration and engagement tools as part of its standard free license, including the ability to connect using VoIP or via traditional phone when internet is not available. Administrators, teachers, parents, and students also have access to:

For organizations requiring a more robust feature set and administrative control, Zoom'sEducation planprovides the above capabilities and more at a low cost, including:

• Unlimited meetings for up toto 300 participants
• Single sign-on (SSO)
• LTI integration to support most LMS platforms
• Enhanced user management to add, delete, and assign add-on features
• Advanced admin controls for enabling/disabling recording, chat, and notifications
• 500 MB of cloud recording
• Cloud recording transcription
• Usage reports to track participation

Need help deciding whether a Basic or Education plan is right for you? Connectwith aZoom education specialistfor assistance.

Resources for Zoom's education users

Here are some guides to help school administrators, staff, teachers, students, and parents leverage Zoom for virtual learning:

We're also providing multi-language resources specifically designed for principals, vice principals, teachers, students, and parents to set up and use Zoom.

Additional measures

Zoom is also proactively monitoring our global infrastructure to ensure reliability and uptime for your online learning programs. Our proven infrastructure regularly supports over 8 billion meeting minutes a month, and we are confident that our architecture can handle spiking levels of activity and support educational institutions around the world during this time.

If you have issues accessing your unlimited Basic account or questions about using the Zoom platform, [e-mail].