Zoom, a web-conferencing tool

Description: Zoom is a conferencing platform for conducting virtual meetings, webinars, and online events. It provides users with various options for video and audio conferencing, screen sharing, chat, and recording. Other useful features include whiteboards for drawing or creating diagrams, and breakout rooms of up to 50 people to facilitate smaller group discussions. Participants have different statuses, with meeting hosts able to grant permission for screen sharing, and record meetings in MP4 and M4A video formats for later use. Zoom’s chat functionality allows users to instantly share text, images, audio, or video files. Group calls can be accessed through URLs or codes. Zoom offers a limited free version, which includes a 40-minute time limit for meetings and a maximum of 100 participants per call. Users are required to sign up for an account to host meetings, though joining meetings can often be done without an account. Zoom was developed by Eric Yuan in 2011.

Evaluation: Zoom is a handy tool for hosting online meetings and courses. It is highly versatile, supporting various interaction and class formats. Its whiteboard feature is a useful resource to make online classes more interactive. Zoom is perhaps the most popular video conferencing tool due to its intuitive and straightforward interface. However, other more privacy-friendly options would be Jitsi or BigBlueButton.

Cost: Free + paid plans available.

Respect for privacy Privacy evaluations indicate how a tool handles personal data collection, storage, and sharing, including GDPR compliance and security measures, among others. The ICT-REV team provides them for informational purposes, reflecting our best understanding at the time of review, but assumes no legal responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of these evaluations and encourages users to conduct their own assessments: Medium. Zoom collects a wide range of personal data, including account information, profile details, contact information, device information, content from meetings and webinars, usage information, and more. Data collection serves various purposes, such as providing and customising Zoom services but also marketing and advertising. Zoom shares user data with several third parties to support and improve its services but also based on commercial grounds. Additionally, it uses cookies and similar tracking technologies to gather information about website interactions, which can be managed through the settings. Zoom uses security measures to protect user data, including encryption, access controls, safe storage, and compliance with industry standards. It acknowledges users’ rights to access, modify, or erase their data, having direct access to certain data settings on their account. Importantly, Zoom’s privacy policy has raised concerns in the recent past since it asked users permission to use their data in order to train AI models. However, the company has since rolled back on this policy change. Read more in-depth about Zoom’s privacy policy here.

Type Of Interaction: Group/pair work - classmates, Whole class,

Skills: Listening, Speaking,

Content: Website/other users supply, You supply,

Usability and tech notes ▼