For the past 5 months, we have had our grandson staying with us. When he arrived at the end of April, he was attending online classes for third grade which finished in mid-June. Then starting the second week of August, he started 4th grade. We had him with us until mid-October. Every school morning we got him up, gave him breakfast, and listened in, and watched his classes.
I think the online classes went very well, and that our grandson was receiving an excellent education! The teachers were excellent, very motivated and I was amazed at how well some of the software worked. I was also amazed at how well the kids learned how to use it.
As an engineer, I know that there is no software package that can't be improved upon in some way. Since the education market is so hot right now, I would think that every software company would be trying to make their packages the best. However, I was surprised that I saw no improvements made to any of the software the students used during those 5 months. I suppose there were lots of "under the hood" repairs or improvements that helped security, processing speed, etc. But I saw no new features added. I thought that maybe during the almost 2-month summer break there would be a lot of big changes. But I didn't spot any.
Below are some of my observations and suggestions for future software that might be implemented during the next revision cycle. I believe that Zoom, Google, Webex, etc needs to develop a package that has most of the same features they have now -- but add features that are needed by teachers, students, and parents.
Bell for the class start:
Students are used to having bells ring for the start of class, warning bells prior to the start of class, and an end-of-class bell. The meeting apps need to have some similar capability. I've watched the kids sign in and "change class" and have seen that during the short breaks, the kids get distracted and miss getting back on in time, which appears to waste time on everyone's part. The teacher (or the school) should be able to set up a bell schedule and appropriate "ring tones" for the application to automatically ring at the prescribed time. The teacher should also have some way of suppressing the bell for a few hours for those times when special events or exams are being held.
Auto-start, and auto sign-in for scheduled classes:
Auto start-up for class sessions that are scheduled. Students should never have to wait for a teacher to start a class. Once the student logs on at the beginning of the day, they should be connected until school ends. The school already has the student's schedules in a database. The school version of the classroom app needs to have access to that database and be able to connect students to their next class automatically. The software should also recognize the student's IP address and not force the student into a waiting room after validating the first logon for the day. I watched my grandson get disconnected due to an internet "glitch" and then have to wait up to 15 minutes to be let back into his Spanish class. The teacher is often busy and doesn't notice a student leave, and maybe also misses the notification that a student is waiting to get back in.Individual student log
Maintain a log of when each student signs on, turns on/off-camera, and mutes/unmutes the microphone. With face recognition, the software should also know if and when a student leaves the camera field of view and record that in a log System to allow parents to scan through their child's video for the day. The log needs to be made available to a parent by the teacher. Students will lie about turning off-camera or when they signed into class, and they may need the proof. The log should also to the best of its ability also be able to identify when internet problems may have caused a camera outage or disconnect.Log under parent and teacher control that has all of the student's log-on to the app (zoom) and when sound is muted, or video is turned on or off.
Teacher Screen Sharing limits
Somehow students are able to write on a teacher's shared screen. That is a good feature. But the teacher should be able to select an individual student to draw -- not allow any or all to do so. When a student does write, the student's name or ID should be shown in some way on the screenOpt-in Social Chat before class.
One of the reasons students want to be back to in-person school is because they want to interact with their classmates. In school, the students can talk in the classroom until the teacher calls the class to order. If not in the classroom, they can talk outside the door while waiting for the classroom to open. On Zoom, it seems that the teachers don't want the class to start early, so they try to start it right on time. Meanwhile, the students are all sitting alone staring at nothing. Students should be able to sign into the class at least 15 minutes early -- or as soon as their previous class ends, and be able to Opt in to being able to chat with their friends until the teacher starts the class and maybe turned on the teacher's camera/microphone. If the "autostart" discussed above is enabled, the student would only have to click on a chat button to opt-in to talking to friends.. It would help build social bonds, and make online school much more fun for the students.
Break-out Room Information, Management, and social considerations.
Breakout rooms are a very useful tool, and they teach kids how to work together on projects. However, the students never fully "buy-in" to the breakout room, because they have absolutely no control over it. The teacher decides who meets together. The teacher controls the time in the breakout room, and there is no warning when the breakout time is about to expire. I have encountered the same frustration during webinars.
Team Selection: People would like to have at least a little bit of control over who they are going to be teaming with. SUGGESTION: Have an app that the teacher could enable that would provide all students with a display of icons representing all of the students. The teacher would tap on the ideal sizes she wants for each room (3, 4,5, or six students, for example) The students would be given 15 seconds to tap on two people they'd like to have on their team. Then using an algorithm the breakouts would be started. The algorithm could try to match students per their preference, but could also introduce a little randomness, or could restrict people from teaming with the same person more than every third time.
Knowledge of other Teams: Students would also like to know who they are 'competing with" in the other breakout rooms. When kids are in a breakout room, they may be able to figure out who is in their room -- but not who is in other rooms. That can be helpful and is similar to what kids experience when at in-person school They should have a way of clicking and seeing the members of each of the other groups.
End of Session Warning: During the final minute of each breakout room session, there should be a countdown timer to show the remaining time, so the group can finish up their project.
Better application integration with the classroom video
An integrated package for education that includes all the software in one place with one standard protocol would simplify the teacher's job, reduce wasted time, and help students focus on learning. Our grandson's school used Google Classroom for some of the work, but then also used Zoom for the video, IXL for math exercises, RazKids for language, Flipgrid for video recording etc. Sometimes the application used different protocols for clicking, dragging, dropping, copy/paste which made it confusing for students. Fellow students used Chromebooks, older windows versions, and Apple devices such as Apple laptops or iPad. When students had problems, the teacher had to be an expert on each type of device. The software builders need to be forced to develop standards so the student interface is as close as possible to being the same.
