Fellow teacher, if you're anything like me, you haven't seen your kids for several weeks due to the Coronavirus. Your district is pushing you to move towards an online classroom and online interactions with your students to deliver your lessons. Your district may even be pushing you to use a videoconferencing platform without recommending the standard use of a single platform.
If you've been at all in touch with social media, then Zoom would be your video-conferencing platform of choice. You see colleges and universities using it, and your own Zoom conferencing with friends and family has gone relatively smoothly. You may have even been an owner of a Zoom chat and relished in the ability to mute people in a video chat, and, when your students are behaving inappropriately or being disruptive.
We know Zoom, and we know it works well. But as teachers, we should not be using Zoom to communicate with kids, and we can even risk our jobs by using Zoom. I know a lot of my teacher peers may get into trouble doing so, and don't want to imagine the trouble that might get into by violating privacy laws. I know a lot of teachers have already been using Zoom, and some districts have gotten approval to use it.
First of all, using Zoom violates the Fair Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) regulations, which protects the privacy of student education records. Using Zoom with minors also compromises the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), and even goes as far as to violate Zoom's own terms of service. Zoom's eligibility requires that each user person is of legal age, and Zoom reserves the right to terminate access to someone if it believes a user is underage of ineligible.
Zoom-bombing is a term that describes the hijacking of virtual meetings by participants and some even outsiders with bad intent. According to some cybersecurity experts, such as Chris Hadnagy, CEO of Human Hacker and the Innocent Lives Foundation, which fights child exploitation on the Internet, there have been plenty of Zoom sessions where students kicked a teacher out of Zoom. Teenagers have provided too-intimate views of themselves as well as engaged in inappropriate conversations during virtual class sessions.
Also, people outside the intended audience of the classroom can get a hold of a Zoom codes. Scammers have sent out fake "phishing" links to lure children into very vulnerable situations. At the University of Florida, the student government's Zoom meeting was bombed with racist messages, swastikas, pornography, and death threats, and that happened in a university Zoom session. Imagine the types of things that can happen in the average K-12 classroom.
Using Zoom, then, can be a big liability for K-12 teachers like myself. While it works at the university level because the majority of people using its services are of legal age, most K-12 students are not. There are some stipulations where K-12 schools can use Zoom, but that comes with obtaining parental consent to comply with COPPA and having students not create Zoom accounts. But the responsibility lies at the district and administrative level to obtain consent and protections. In a school district like mine in Baltimore City where not every kid has access to a phone, computer or Internet, using a platform like Zoom has highly inequitable implications.
According to Mr. Dicks, a fifth-grade teacher in Connecticut, If Zoom is used, all student microphones should be muted. A teacher should choose which student answers, and unmute a student's microphone. A teacher should combine visual elements with presentation, and should also break up classes, so instead of having one 75 minute class, perhaps break up classes into 25-minute chunks. Parents should be invited to join the class if possible to manage behaviors as well.
Some teachers on public forums have advocated recording sessions in case something happens that can put your career in jeopardy -- but according to COPPA, verifiable parental consent is needed to record audio or video of a child. If you don't personally have that consent in writing and in your possession, then you're putting yourself at risk.
Teachers, now is an unprecedented time where it can feel like we're not doing enough for our kids. But there will always be an asterick next to this semester in 2020 due to a deadly global pandemic. Zoom seems like a wonderful solution to help and engage students during this time, but to protect yourself and follow the law, do not use Zoom to communicate with students unless directed otherwise.