That’s a Wrap! Learnings from Zoom’s First Annual Education Summit

As educators plan for the beginning of the 2022-23 school year, classrooms are being set up and teachers are excited to engage with this year’s new students. To help teachers prepare for the new school year, we recently hosted our first annual Education Summit, which brought together over 3,100 registered educators, IT professionals, and administrators to discuss the future of Unified Communications across the Connected Campus. 

While we previously held Zoom Education Academy events, these academies focused on user training at scale. The shift in the title comes as we focus on leveraging the entire Zoom platform across your online school, campus, or University, delivering the high-level thought-leadership you need to inspire ideas and create connections that will last into the school year and beyond. 

Here are some of the key takeaways from this year’s event:

We were honored to have Zoom’s very own President Greg Tomb welcome everyone to the summit by inviting attendees to look into the future of education and how to leverage new and existing tools to drive learning forward. 

Zoom’s Global EDU CIO-Advisor Ted Brodheim joined Dr. Charles Hodges and Dr. Stephanie Moore for a conversation about online and blended learning. Dr. Moore asked schools to think about building education and technology eco-systems that help create institutional resilience and flexibility. 

“Schools at all levels need to stop thinking about technology as an add-on that they slap in when they need to and start thinking about the technology tools, human resources, and professional development to make sure technology is infused into their culture and their habits at their institutions”. - Dr. Hodges

In this session, Mina Patel, executive director for Video Conferencing for Global Learning, joined Zoom’s Paul Morrison to discuss how bringing immersive experiences to your classroom has never been easier with cutting-edge communications solutions and hardware.

By bringing experiences such as digital field trips and guest speakers directly into the classroom via video conferencing, teachers can help level the playing field for accessibility and create rich learning opportunities for all learners. 

As we already know, teachers lead very busy lives. Their days may start well before school and often don’t end after the last bell. Offering these teachers training and support is crucial, but sometimes the technology solutions they use are not considered. 

We joined Zoom’s very own Technical Sales Architects, Todd Dewell and Mike Williams, as they mapped out what your school's LMS could look like with Zoom, including how Zoom can streamline your faculty workflow and provide a single user experience for your students. 

As school leaders, you prepare for emergencies every day, hoping you never need to use this training. However, having the processes and necessary solutions in place that are simple, thorough, and scalable is critical. 

In this informative panel, Dustin Ferguson, Zoom Education CSM; Sean Gaines, Zoom Phone Expert; and Brent Kiedrowski, VP of Strategic Initiatives and Channel at Singlewire went over ways to leverage the Zoom platform for your daily emergency communications and response efforts.

“Having the ability to communicate in all forms at once is very important for day-to-day uses like morning announcements, afternoon messages, two-way intercom between the classroom and front desk, and bell schedule. The nice thing about using the same system for mass communications, is you are actually testing the system every time you are using it for day-to-day”. - Brent Kiedrowski, Singlewire

Creativity and curiosity are key to learning, and storytelling is the perfect bridge to these concepts. Using the power of Zoom and remote learning, educators have the power to bring the world to their classrooms. With the immersion of real-world experiences, students can hear and see the amazing stories that others have to share, which can also help them discover their own storytelling abilities. 

This dynamic panel dug into the importance of storytelling, but more importantly, how educators can empower their students and themselves to enrich the learning experience with stories that capture the attention of their learners. 

That’s a wrap on our first annual Zoom Summit! We’re so excited you could join us and we’re grateful to all our presenters who shared their insights and stories with us. 

We hope you’ll keep your learning going with us in our Zoom Learning Center, where you can take tracks specific to education and learn more about the Zoom platform. 

We also encourage you to continue the conversation — now and throughout the year — at our Zoom Educator Community. You can ask our Zoom team questions, participate in discussions, and exchange best practices with a community of peers. Hope to see you there!