Zoom has introduced a new feature called Focus Mode that's designed to prevent students from distracting each other during virtual classrooms.
When enabled, Focus Mode allows the teacher or lecturer taking the class to see all the students, while each student can only see the teacher.
The setting can be activated at any time by the teleconferencing host, so for example it could be turned on for lecture periods to reduce distractions from students' video feeds and then turned off for group discussion.
Focus Mode is available on the free desktop Zoom client, therefore lending itself to other uses, like business meetings, family gatherings and so on.
Zoom announced the new feature in a blog post offering other back-to-school tips to get children prepared for virtual or hybrid learning. Version 5.7.5 of Zoom for Mac is available to download from the Zoom website.
Sunday September 13, 2026 3:00 am PDT by Eric Slivka
Update 10:04 a.m.: iOS 27 is rolling out now, though it may take a bit for all users to see it, so keep checking!
Apple is about to release iOS 27, which will finally deliver more advanced Siri AI capabilities as well as a variety of other refinements, improvements, and new features to iPhones. It's Apple's biggest software update of the year, and Apple announced at Wednesday's iPhone event...
Monday September 14, 2026 9:00 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
Update — 10 a.m. Pacific Time: Apple has released iOS 27.
During its iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone Duo event last week, Apple announced that iOS 27 will be released widely on Monday, September 14.
iOS 27 should be available around 10 a.m. Pacific Time / 1 p.m. Eastern Time today via the Settings app, under General → Software Update.
Below, we have highlighted eight new features and...
Tuesday September 15, 2026 1:43 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Apple today announced a new subscription initiative that turns paid iCloud+ subscriptions into a broader services bundle in more than 100 countries.
In select countries, Apple says every paid iCloud+ plan, including the cheapest 50GB tier, now includes Apple TV and Apple Arcade "at no additional cost," while family sharing extends the storage, TV and Arcade access to up to five people....
I've been teaching a lot over Zoom during a few periods of lockdown, and it has been less than ideal.
However, this seems like a nice way to get the students to actually enable camera (privacy concern and distractions are two main reasons why I normally teach to a bunch of "icons on black background").
That way it would be possible to actually get the "feel of the room", although just fraction of what you can get in a physical classroom.
There are other issues to zoom lectures (not least for practical subjects), but every little bit helps.
Now, I don't trust Zoom anywhere near enough to install the client on my personal Mac, I still consider the app as Malware, but on my company issued work Mac this will be a welcome upgrade.
I've been teaching a lot over Zoom during a few periods of lockdown, and it has been less than ideal.
However, this seems like a nice way to get the students to actually enable camera (privacy concern and distractions are two main reasons why I normally teach to a bunch of "icons on black background").
That way it would be possible to actually get the "feel of the room", although just fraction of what you can get in a physical classroom.
There are other issues to zoom lectures (not least for practical subjects), but every little bit helps.
Now, I don't trust Zoom anywhere near enough to install the client on my personal Mac, I still consider the app as Malware, but on my company issued work Mac this will be a welcome upgrade.
Honestly, as a student, I feel like this is the worst of both worlds from a student perspective. I absolutely hate zoom calls for a number of reasons:
- It’s distracting/hard to focus - primarily because of your OWN preview (you also don’t do other things in front of a mirror) - Other students can be distracting - (Most) teachers themselves can be distracting, for instance by being poorly prepared, having technical issues (bad WiFi - stutter, bad microphone or bad camera) or another common one is teachers taking +25% longer than a physical lecture because ‘they can’ which generally results in lectures that either drag and are too slow paced or on the other end of the spectrum, are overfilled and fatiguing
The upsides being:
- seeing your fellow students - seeing the teacher
With this new feature, it basically remains a ****** experience for students while also removing any social elements.
at this point might as well just stream a live recorded video and have a live q&a chatbox imo.
This reminds me of 19th century prison chapels where each prisoner sat in a partitioned cubicle so they could only see the priest and not each other as part of a prison-wide regime of total isolation from other prisoners. Can you imagine the response if anyone suggested doing the same in a normal school environment? So why do people think it's a good idea for online teaching?
Because it is not a normal school environment. you wouldn’t want it on all the time, but it would be good during an online assessment, plus there are special needs students who don’t have their camera on during lessons but would be more comfortable if they know the whole class isn’t looking at them. Our head of learning support is very happy they added this feature.
PS: The model for a whole gaol like you describe was called a panopticon ('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon')
Have you never attended an assembly or lecture? This is intended to be used for short bursts of focus where you don't need to see everyone else's face for any dubious social reasons, but the presenter would. I have seen meetings go off the rails because someone's child or pet came on camera and someone called attention to it, or I get really self-conscious about my fidgeting/stimming and kill my video feed.
So instead of learning focus let’s mask it completely so these kids are more socially awkward and unprepared for the real world.
Guess what? When you grow up that big business meeting isn’t going to cater to your issues.
