Live Zoom Captions for K-12 Teachers

Students and teachers K-12 can now use Rev’s live captioning services on Zoom for closed captions. It’s no secret that the spread of COVID-19 continues to impact our communities, including our schools. To provide a safe learning environment, school administrators and teachers have adapted, offering students new ways to learn from home. As part of this effort, a lot of teachers have adopted Zoom video conferencing to hold live lessons. 

We’d like to help. Rev is offering live captioning on Zoom for all K-12 educators. It’s a simple installation process, and once it’s turned on — all administrators, teachers, and students will be able to see accurate, timed-to-discussion captions for their Zoom meetings.

Live captions on Zoom are a powerful educational tool. They can help: 

• Ensure accessibility of lessons via video conferencing for all students
• Maximize comprehension for students adjusting to a new learning environment
• Keep students engaged during remote lessons 
• Boost literacy skills like vocabulary acquisition and word recognition

Make Lessons Accessible for All Students

The benefits of captions are already widely recognized in higher education. In fact, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) had made accessible lecture content a requirement at universities. While online classes are nothing new for college students, it’s not something that most K-12 classrooms are prepared for. That said, as we adapt to this “new normal”, K-12 students can benefit from accessible lessons the same way that college students do.  

On average, nineteen percent of undergraduate students have a disability that prevents them from viewing or listening to data online like the rest of their classmates. Transcription and captioning are incredibly useful since they help create a more inclusive environment.

Improve Learning Comprehension for Students

Closed captions are not just for those who are deaf or hard of hearing. In fact, studies show that comprehension improves when learning materials are presented in both a visual and auditory fashion. Offering students the opportunity to read captions during lessons is just one more way to help different types of learners absorb information in a way that fits their individual needs.

Keep Students Engaged

If you think distractions are plentiful in the classroom, imagine the endless number of distractions the average student is faced with at home. From unavoidable interruptions by pets and siblings to the temptation to shut the laptop and turn on the TV. Anything we can do to help students maintain focus at home is worth trying.

Adjusting from a classroom to a home learning environment can take time. Even if students are in a good headspace to learn, noisy home environments can make it especially difficult to concentrate. Closed captions give students the ability to read along with what is being taught on screen, making background noise less of a distraction. 

Boost Literacy Skills

By providing written words to match the spoken language in your video content, you can help ESL learners not only understand your content better, but become stronger, more proficient English speakers. This demographic of learners has been reported to respond more positively to the use of closed captions over more traditional forms of teaching spelling.

For ESL learners and others that find themselves struggling with listening to English compared to reading it, your closed captions will give them a chance to engage with your content at their own pace using the methods they are most comfortable with.

Using Captions in Online Lessons

In an online learning environment, closed captions benefit all students. They help the deaf and hard of hearing, those with different learning styles, students that speak English as a second language, or are just generally faced with a less than ideal learning environment. If you’re looking for ways to keep students engaged and make the transition to an online classroom easier, consider taking advantage of Rev’s Zoom captions for K-12 teachers. We hope you do!