Zoom Recordings Update

To help serve our students without internet access and those who, for whatever reason, can’t access the Zoom meetings live, teachers are recording Zoom meetings.

These recordings are then posted to the teacher’s unlisted/private You Tube account and then linked in the Google Classroom. Only students with FRSD Google Accounts (accessible with an FRSD ID and Password) can access our Google Classrooms to view these videos. Teachers are not publicly posting videos. It is important that we post these videos so that students who were not able to attend the Live Meeting, can still participate in the class by watching the video. This means that if a student’s internet crashes or their computer freezes or some conflict occurs, they don’t miss class because they have the videos. It also means that our students who have to travel to a “hot spot” for internet access, don’t have to sit at that “hot spot” all day waiting for each period to happen. Essentially posting the videos allows us to ensure equal access to our distance learning classes.

While equity is a important to us, student privacy is as well. While videos are only posted to the Google Classroom that only students can access, we realize that some families may still have concerns. To that end,  we have worked to reconfigure our Zoom settings to do the following:

• Eliminate all names from the recorded video. Names will still appear in the Live Zoom meetings but they will not appear on the recordings.
• When the teacher is  “sharing their screen” to present a slideshow or a video or a document, the camera stays on the screen.
• No “gallery views” are included in the Zoom recordings.
• During class discussions where the teacher is not sharing their screen, the camera does shift to a student when they “unmute” their microphone to ask or answer a question or contribute to the discussion. The camera stays on them only until they stop talking and “mute” their microphone.  If your student does not want to appear on the video or you don’t want them to appear, then before they “unmute” they simply need to turn off their video. The class and the teacher will still be able to hear your student. When they are done speaking and have muted their microphone again, they can turn their video back on. This is the only time students are “on camera” during their Zoom classes with our new settings. Teachers will remind students to turn videos off before they “unmute” if they don’t want to be on camera, but families should also encourage  students to use this simple strategy if they have concerns

It’s also important to note that not every class is being recorded. Teachers who teach just one subject/grade level, are picking one class a day to record.

Please feel free to contact either our principal, Olivia Johnson at ojohnson@fernridge.k12.or.us or our assistant principal Eric Carman at ecarman@fernridge.k12.or.us if you have any questions or concerns.

Thank you for your understanding and flexibility.