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Why public education continues to use Zoom is beyond me. Not only do they use Zoom, they spend upwards of $10/mo per student for it. For that price you get the

Why public education continues to use Zoom is beyond me. Not only do they use Zoom, they spend upwards of $10/mo per student for it. For that price you get the entire G Suite platform.

reaperducer 6y ago
Why public education continues to use Zoom is beyond me Some schools and states have banned Zoom. I think New York's educational system is one.
Figs 6y ago
We tried using Google Meet for work meetings at my university. The experience SUCKED compared to Zoom. There were serious problems like taking 30 seconds to a minute for the screen share widget to popup after clicking the button in Firefox! It was, frankly, unusable for us. We also tried self-hosting Jitsi, and while that kind of worked, we had some problems getting everyone to be able to connect to it and send/receive audio. It went on the backburner of things to look into more later. Zoom has a lot of problems, clearly, but it solved THE most important issue: we can actually communicate successfully with it -- as in right now with minimal additional effort. That's why it won.
- sm4rk0 6y ago
  Time to learn that minimal additional effort != best solution. When you drink a soda, minimal additional effort is to throw the can away, but if you think about consequences you'll probably make some additional effort and recycle it.
- eee_honda 6y ago
  What sort of problems did you experience with jitsi in terms of the connectivity you mentioned?
  - Figs 6y ago
    It's been a few months since we tried it -- so not fresh in my memory any more -- but as I recall, the biggest issue was with audio not working as expected. e.g. you could see people talking in the video feed, but not everyone could hear the audio. I don't think it was just a muted microphone on the other side; my recollection is that some people could hear the audio and some couldn't, but it wasn't clear why not. I remember having to call our group leader by cellphone because he wasn't seeing/responding to the issue in chat and was just continuing on... We did eventually get it working for almost everyone (I don't remember how though, unfortunately) -- but there were two or three people who just couldn't seem to get it to work no matter what they tried, and we ended up going back to Zoom for the next meeting.
- userbinator 6y ago
  after clicking the button in Firefox A not-so-subtle (and IMHO abusive) effort to get you to use Chrome instead? They've already done that with YouTube's new horrible redesign, it wouldn't surprise me if other Google app-sites were the same. The state of web browsers is a mess but that's a rant for some other time...
crazygringo 6y ago
The simple fact is that Zoom's connectivity is vastly better on low-performing internet, which is critical for students. Where Facetime and G Suite (Meet) simply freeze, drop connectivity for 30 seconds at a time, etc... Zoom just chugs along at an extremely low bitrate but where you can still make out the audio and speak and be heard. Other solutions are awesome when you've got dedicated bandwidth in your office. Zoom is awesome when your local ISP sucks, or the rest of your family is busy using the internet too and there's nothing you can do about it.

Why public education continues to use Zoom is beyond me. Not only do they use Zoom, they spend upwards of $10/mo per student for it. For that price you get the entire G Suite platform.

reaperducer 6y ago

Why public education continues to use Zoom is beyond me Some schools and states have banned Zoom. I think New York's educational system is one.

Figs 6y ago

We tried using Google Meet for work meetings at my university. The experience SUCKED compared to Zoom. There were serious problems like taking 30 seconds to a minute for the screen share widget to popup after clicking the button in Firefox! It was, frankly, unusable for us. We also tried self-hosting Jitsi, and while that kind of worked, we had some problems getting everyone to be able to connect to it and send/receive audio. It went on the backburner of things to look into more later. Zoom has a lot of problems, clearly, but it solved THE most important issue: we can actually communicate successfully with it -- as in right now with minimal additional effort. That's why it won.

sm4rk0 6y ago
Time to learn that minimal additional effort != best solution. When you drink a soda, minimal additional effort is to throw the can away, but if you think about consequences you'll probably make some additional effort and recycle it.
eee_honda 6y ago
What sort of problems did you experience with jitsi in terms of the connectivity you mentioned?
- Figs 6y ago
  It's been a few months since we tried it -- so not fresh in my memory any more -- but as I recall, the biggest issue was with audio not working as expected. e.g. you could see people talking in the video feed, but not everyone could hear the audio. I don't think it was just a muted microphone on the other side; my recollection is that some people could hear the audio and some couldn't, but it wasn't clear why not. I remember having to call our group leader by cellphone because he wasn't seeing/responding to the issue in chat and was just continuing on... We did eventually get it working for almost everyone (I don't remember how though, unfortunately) -- but there were two or three people who just couldn't seem to get it to work no matter what they tried, and we ended up going back to Zoom for the next meeting.
userbinator 6y ago
after clicking the button in Firefox A not-so-subtle (and IMHO abusive) effort to get you to use Chrome instead? They've already done that with YouTube's new horrible redesign, it wouldn't surprise me if other Google app-sites were the same. The state of web browsers is a mess but that's a rant for some other time...

crazygringo 6y ago

The simple fact is that Zoom's connectivity is vastly better on low-performing internet, which is critical for students. Where Facetime and G Suite (Meet) simply freeze, drop connectivity for 30 seconds at a time, etc... Zoom just chugs along at an extremely low bitrate but where you can still make out the audio and speak and be heard. Other solutions are awesome when you've got dedicated bandwidth in your office. Zoom is awesome when your local ISP sucks, or the rest of your family is busy using the internet too and there's nothing you can do about it.