Zoom Gains Focus Mode to Help Reduce Distractions in Virtual Classrooms

[hybrid_x]

Honestly, as a student, I feel like this is the worst of both worlds from a student perspective. I absolutely hate zoom calls for a number of reasons:

- It’s distracting/hard to focus - primarily because of your OWN preview (you also don’t do other things in front of a mirror)

You know you can turn off your own preview, right?

As a full time student, this is not good for students. Not even able to socialize on campus because of Covid, and now you cannot see your peers during class discussions!! During test or quizzes sure but to have enabled all the time is a horrible idea!

This mode would likely be used by instructors during lectures, and then turned off during discussions. Enabling it all the time would be just dumb.

You were already able to hide every camera except the host though

But how many students would turn on host-only mode? Few, if any. With the host having control over this feature during lectures or demonstrations, it has the potential to boost focus and information retention.

There is a free and open source app called Jitsi , so I see no reason for people to continue to use zoom

Schools use Zoom because it has some robust features such as cloud recording and transcription, and it fits into a complex technology ecosystem pretty well, which is not something open source software tends to do very well.

 

[RogueWarrior65]

And in other news, Instagram releases a new pass-notes-under-the-desk app.

 

[araadt]

Now if only they'd roll out a feature that doesn't suck my laptop battery from 100% to 0% within a half hour.

 

[MacLawyer]

I just hope Microsoft doesn’t decide to acquire this product and ruin it.

 

[kesenwangs]

I am so over virtual classes, having everything online this long is destroying my motivation.

 

[Poisednoise]

Though I didn't add any information other than what I said I do love the assumptions and judgmental responses. I kind of did this on purpose to find out how many apologists there were. It seems a lot.

First, not all areas in the US teach the same. For instance in my school district my kid's teachers spent 12 minutes of each classroom time actually on video teaching. The rest was chat me or email if you have a question. I spent more time teaching my kids the lesson work than teachers did. Why then am I sending them to school (virtual or not)? In my kids case teachers are making them selves irrelevant to the process. My wife situation? the professors record the lecture and then it's up to the student to go watch it. If they have questions during the video and they are taking it during class time the professor is in his "office" and can answer questions.

Mind you I did my masters degree by virtual in 2011. It worked well. I am doing my phd by virtual now. also working well. My wife is in Community College prepping for medical school and it is not going well. The standards vary and not all is quality.

Unclear why I was quoted above: I made no reference to your comment at all…

 

[JKAussieSkater]

As a full time student, this is not good for students. Not even able to socialize on campus because of Covid, and now you cannot see your peers during class discussions!! During test or quizzes sure but to have enabled all the time is a horrible idea!

If you're a full time student and you don't think this is a good idea, then you're probably the wrong target audience of this feature. This is clearly intended for primary school (elementary school) students who may or may not be supervised by their parents.

However, if you are indeed a primary school student under the age of 12, then I'm pleasantly surprised to hear that fruitful class discussions happen on Zoom.

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

As a full time student, this is not good for students. Not even able to socialize on campus because of Covid, and now you cannot see your peers during class discussions!! During test or quizzes sure but to have enabled all the time is a horrible idea!

I think this is mostly a feature for lecture mode, where the teacher is going through new stuff.

For discussions and group work and the likes the students should definitively see each other. Preferably in smaller (randomly rotated?) breakout rooms or similar. (20+ students discussing something over Zoom is a futile exercise, but in smaller groups of - let's say - 4, 5 maybe 6 students, at the most, where the teacher could "hop" between the rooms are more doable.)

Still, I prefer to teach directly to students in a physical classroom. Something always gets lost in translation, when using video conferencing.

 

[unsyllable]

Don't forget that Zoom was recently fined in a class action lawsuit because they were found guilty of lying to million of users about providing end-to-end encryption on their video calls (to which they admitted) Here's a link to that article Zoom to Pay $85 Million to Users for Misleading Encryption Claims

 

[Tech198]

I like it Focus Mode.

In regards to not doing end-to-end encryption, they fixed that, so its not an problem anymore:

End-to-end (E2EE) encryption for meetings

Overview End-to-end (E2EE) encryption for meetings is now available. Account owners and admins can enable end-to-end encryption for meetings, providing additional protection when needed. Enabling e...

support.zoom.us

but limited still..