Lots of people using Zoom during coronavirus crisis. Many schools are restricting it
With Gov. Jay Inslee’s recent announcement that K-12 classrooms will remain closed through the end of the school year, teaching will now take place entirely remotely and educators will have to turn to a variety of tools to reach students.
One increasingly popular tool that won’t be used to connect with students, by Tacoma Public Schools at least, is Zoom.
Dan Voelpel, executive director of communications for Tacoma Public Schools, said in an emailed statement to The News Tribune that the “only approved virtual platform for interactions between students and teachers is Microsoft Teams.”
There is an option for Zoom to be used internally among staff, but the current direction is that students are not to be connected with via the application, Voelpel said. There are security concerns with the application as well as an inability to “track interactions,” he said.
“This decision was made by our Emergency Operations Command, led by Superintendent (Carla) Santorno, with input from multiple department leaders,” he said.
Zoom is a remote conferencing service that combines video conferencing, online meetings, chat and mobile collaboration. Initially an emerging tool with a growing user base, Zoom has come under scrutiny for security flaws and lack of privacy protections. One such vulnerability is “Zoombombing,” where someone hijacks a video call to then post hate speech or explicit content.
Some institutions of higher education are using Zoom in some capacity. They include the University of Puget Sound, University of Washington Tacoma and Tacoma Community College.
Jeremy Cucco, chief information officer at UPS, said while it is not being recommended, there are no prohibitions on using Zoom. About 20 professors are still using it, he said.
“The majority of them are in the computer sciences and math departments. You’re probably talking less than 10 percent of our student body,” Cucco said.
Cucco said there also are concerns about protecting student data.
“We don’t have an enterprise license for Zoom,” Cucco said. “When we have an enterprise license, we have some legal recourse and we have some protections in place for student data. If we don’t have that, then we don’t have those protections.”
Cucco said there are currently no plans to purchase such a license, citing cost.
He said he has not heard of any instance of Zoom being compromised at UPS and doesn’t view the steps Tacoma Public Schools have taken as reason to change.
“Should we continue down this path and we see that there are more exploits, then we might also go that route,” Cucco said.
Darcy Janzen is UWT’s director of digital learning.
Janzen said Zoom is being used in teaching but that the university has tried to shift away from having synchronous teaching over concerns about equity.
“UW Tacoma has encouraged faculty from the beginning to focus more on asynchronous activities, rather than synchronous, to take into account varying levels of student access to technology and internet access,” Janzen said in an email.
All faculty and staff across all the UW campuses have been given access to Zoom pro accounts, which they will continue to use into the summer quarter.
Janzen said university officials have encouraged “adjustments to some default settings and have provided guidance on securing class meetings” in order to address concerns.
Tamyra Howser, director of marketing and communications at TCC, said that “none of our faculty uses Zoom for primary instruction” but that it “may be used for office hours” as well as small conferences with students.
TCC has implemented security measures, participation alerts and password requirements, Howser said.
This story was originally published April 10, 2020 at 5:05 AM.
