Eric Won

Caitlin Postal

English 182 K

October 27th, 2020

As we are in a global pandemic, the use of educational technology (aka EdTech) has been

the primary source of education. With the variety of EdTech available to us, the most popular

technology used is the platform zoom. Though zoom has its perks, the few, yet major, issues

such as privacy and security has many controversial perspectives. A countless number of schools

has gotten themselves into this platform and a majority of them may have been compromised of

their right of privacy. Though the students and teachers are in-need of a way of promoting

education, the question is: is it worth it? Do the perks of zoom outweigh the cons of it?

I believe that the pros of zoom outweigh the cons of zoom. I think it is a fantastic

platform that allows us to have ease of communication at a friendly cost, friendly cost as in being

completely free. Zoom has allowed education to take place anywhere as long as there is wi-fi. It

is a portable educational tech that gave us the convenience to be educated in any parts of the

world. It has allowed students outside of the country to participate. However, with pros there are

cons attached. There are many cases where the right of privacy has been compromised. Also, not

everyone can afford to have zoom. Though it is true zoom is free, but there are many students in

this world that aren’t financially able to afford phones or laptops. That leaves a huge portion of

kids that aren’t able to receive the education that majority of kids have the privilege of. In

addition to that, the quality of zoom will always be inferior to that of in-person education.

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Though having a way to communicate rather than not is a perk, it limits us to our normal ways of

communication, and on top of that, the unstable connections and such will hold us students back

from receiving quality education. To address these problems, I’ll research and talk about

programs that can allow those who can’t afford these techs, and for privacy, I strongly believe

that it is a simple problem with a simple solution though I will have to look more into it.

Given that we need two academic sources and one nonacademic, I’m leaning towards to

find my academic sources from Google Scholar and maybe Microsoft Academics. For the

nonacademic one, I think I can just find it about anywhere. I’ll most likely Google it.

As of right now I’m between two choices for the whole shape and structure of my

project. I’m deciding between video or podcast. I’m leaning more towards podcast because I feel

like I can implement auditory input that can also open the senses to imagery and imagination. I

want to give out gestures and common connections through audio. I believe that a conversation

like setting would give proficient information on my topic of whether zoom’s perks outweigh

the cons of it or not. That’s why I’m between video or podcast. Though I’m leaning towards

podcast I feel like a presentation of my project through auditory visuals would be great as well.

My target audience for this is the school community and parents of the students in it,

specifically K-12. I know that the biggest concern for the parents and school community are all

the issues I’ve stated: affordability, quality, and privacy. I will be going in-depth about those

topics and the potential solutions to them. More specifically, my audience will be those in the

community who are opposed to the use of the zoom platform. When I research for my

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argumentative project, I will always have consideration for this audience. I’ll make sure to

address the issues and counter them with logistics. Through either my video or podcast, it’ll be

bias free and will be purely off of facts.