Education

Zoom for Online Learning Updates

Zoom has a wealth of experience helping educational institutions optimize the Zoom platform for virtual classrooms and online learning. Learn more...
8 min read

Updated on September 29, 2022

Published on March 29, 2020

Zoom for Education and Online Learning
Editor's note: This post was last updated in April 2022 announcing the status of Zoom's 40-minute meeting lift program for education accounts.

April 25, 2022

This program is definitively concluding on June 30, 2022, as most students have returned to in-person instruction. Starting on July 1, 2022, impacted Zoom Meeting accounts will automatically revert to the Zoom Meetings Basic plan. Users can meet as often as needed for up to 40 minutes with no limit to the number of hosted meetings. See our FAQ for more details. 

December 8, 2021

In support of primary and secondary education (K-12) and due to the ongoing pandemic, Zoom will continue to lift the 40-minute time limit on existing accounts through June 30, 2022.

November 11, 2021

Zoom is no longer accepting new requests for the lift of the 40-minute meeting limit on free Basic accounts globally.

March 31, 2020

Waiting Room on by default: Starting today, the Waiting Room feature will be automatically turned on by default. This security feature is one of the best ways to control who’s entering your Zoom virtual classroom by giving you the option to admit participants individually or all at once. Visit our support page for more information on adjusting your Waiting Room settings, or check out our blog on best practices for securing your virtual classroom.

March 29, 2020

Zoom has lifted the 40-minute meeting limit on free Basic accounts for K-12 schools in Australia, India, and New Zealand.  We've also put together this security resource for educators teaching over Zoom - Blog: Best Practices for Securing Your Virtual Classroom.

March 26, 2020

We've lifted the 40-minute meeting limit on free Basic accounts for K-12 schools in Israel.  We're also lifting the minutes limit for K-12 schools in Hong Kong SAR. Hong Kong SAR schools must request access through their support website only.

March 25, 2020

Zoom hardware partner Logitech is providing free equipment bundles for K-12 educators. Get more details in the Logitech blog post, or access the application request form.

March 23, 2020

Zoom has lifted the 40-minute meeting limit on free Basic accounts for K-12 schools in Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

March 20, 2020

Resources for parents Some programs that can help keep your at-home kids learning in a structured environment:

March 16, 2020

We've also lifted the 40-minute meeting limit on free Basic accounts for K-12 schools in the United Arab Emirates. 

March 13, 2020

[Updated at 4:00 p.m. PT] We’ve proactively lifted the 40-minute meeting limit on free Basic accounts for schools in Belgium, Czech Republic, Greece, Norway, Portugal, and Switzerland. 

March 13, 2020

As of this morning, we have two new offers for schools: 1. Zoom is proactively lifting the 40-minute meeting limit on free Basic accounts for nearly 60,000 K-12 schools in the U.S. If your school has already been pre-approved and your Zoom Basic account is linked to your school email address, you’ll get a notification the next time you log into Zoom. If you did not receive a notification, you can request to have the time limit lifted for your school. 2. We’ve partnered with Clever to make Zoom accessible to the 8,000 Clever districts who may be experiencing school closures. Clever is the most widely used single sign-on portal in K–12 districts, making it easy for schools to roll out Zoom quickly. Zoom accounts set up through Clever will include:
  • Unlimited teacher accounts
  • No time limit on virtual class sessions
  • Single sign-on via the Clever Portal
  • Support for PCs, Macs, Chromebooks, iPads, Android phones & iPhones 
Zoom is making all of these features available at no charge through July 1, 2020, for Clever districts. Here are some additional online resources for educators:
  • Outschool, a marketplace for live online classes, has made available Free Remote Teacher Training Webinars demonstrating how to get started teaching online in a live video chat classroom for learners ages 3 to 18. These webinars are led by Outschool’s experienced K-12 teachers who have transitioned from in-person to online teaching. Educators can sign up and find available times/dates here.
  • Instructional platform Nearpod is temporarily offering free online learning access to schools impacted by closures. Access includes live weekly webinars, a guide to using Nearpod for distance learning, and lessons on the coronavirus to keep students, teachers, and parents informed.

March 12, 2020

Zoom is temporarily lifting the 40-minute meeting limit on free Basic accounts for seven additional countries during the global COVID-19 pandemic. Effective immediately, K-12 schools in the following countries can request the 40-minute time limit be lifted for free Basic Zoom accounts:
  • Austria
  • Denmark
  • France
  • Ireland
  • Poland
  • Romania
  • South Korea
Zoom has already removed the 40-minute limit on free Basic accounts for schools in Japan and Italy, and have lifted the limit by request for K-12 schools in the United States.

Additional resources

Here are some additional online resources to help you most effectively use Zoom for virtual education:
  • Live Zoom training daily: These include sessions specifically highlighting Zoom Meetings for Education (Students & Educators), focusing on using Zoom Meetings as your classroom setting. Zoom Webinars training is also available.
  • Recorded Zoom training: Watch previously recorded sessions on demand and at your convenience. Several are in German, Japanese, and Korean, in addition to English.
  • Tips for instructors: Check out this Twitter thread from USC Ph.D. student and online instructor Alana Kennedy on some of the most useful features and best practices for teaching over Zoom.

March 6, 2020

Zoom has a wealth of experience helping educational institutions optimize the Zoom platform for virtual classrooms and online learning. It’s our goal to make Zoom easy to use and accessible for everyone, and we’re committed to streamlining the experience for our educational users amid the global coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak.  Zoom’s teams are working to provide teachers, administrators, and students around the world with the resources they need to quickly spin up virtual classrooms, participate in online classes, and continue their studies online. It’s our intention that everyone, from seasoned Zoom users to those who’ve never interacted with our product, can easily download the client, start and schedule meetings, set students up with Zoom, and start using Zoom for virtual instruction with ease. This post is designed to help our education users:
  • Sign up for a Zoom account
  • Pick the best account option 
  • Understand best practices for using Zoom in education

Help for schools

To ensure all of our K-12 districts and other institutions can most effectively leverage Zoom for virtual education during this time, Zoom is:
  • Temporarily removing the 40-minute limit on free Basic accounts for schools in Japan and Italy, and by request for K-12 schools in the United States
  • Providing multi-language resources specifically designed for principals, vice principals, teachers, students, and parents to set up and use Zoom
  • Expanding live trainings, webinars, and recorded offerings to share best practices for using the platform

How to enable your free Zoom account

To have the 40-minute time limit temporarily removed for your organization’s free Basic accounts:
  1. Have your administrators, staff, and teachers sign up for a free Zoom account.
  2. Have a member of your school fill out this form to request the temporary removal.
  3. Upon verification, all free Basic accounts using your school’s email domain will have the time restriction lifted.
Now teachers will be able to log in, schedule their classes, and send out invites to students. Students are not required to have a Zoom account and can join classes using the links sent from the teacher. For the best experience, we do recommend every user download the Zoom application on their preferred Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, or Android device. We have numerous short videos on support.zoom.us to help you get started.

Zoom account features & benefits

Zoom offers robust collaboration and engagement tools as part of its standard free license, including the ability to connect using VoIP or via traditional phone when internet is not available. Administrators, teachers, parents, and students also have access to: For organizations requiring a more robust feature set and administrative control, Zoom’s Education plan provides the above capabilities and more at a low cost, including:
  • Unlimited meetings for up to to 300 participants
  • Single sign-on (SSO)
  • LTI integration to support most LMS platforms
  • Enhanced user management to add, delete, and assign add-on features
  • Advanced admin controls for enabling/disabling recording, chat, and notifications
  • 500 MB of cloud recording
  • Cloud recording transcription 
  • Usage reports to track participation 
Need help deciding whether a Basic or Education plan is right for you? Connect with a Zoom education specialist for assistance.

Resources for Zoom’s education users

Here are some guides to help school administrators, staff, teachers, students, and parents leverage Zoom for virtual learning: We’re also providing multi-language resources specifically designed for principals, vice principals, teachers, students, and parents to set up and use Zoom.

Additional measures

Zoom is also proactively monitoring our global infrastructure to ensure reliability and uptime for your online learning programs. Our proven infrastructure regularly supports over 8 billion meeting minutes a month, and we are confident that our architecture can handle spiking levels of activity and support educational institutions around the world during this time. If you have issues accessing your unlimited Basic account or questions about using the Zoom platform, email support@zoom.us Update May 12, 2020: We have adjusted Hong Kong’s designation to “Hong Kong SAR” in this blog post to align with the naming convention adopted by many of our tech industry peers.

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