One of the challenges many industries and organisations faced once the COVID-19 vaccines had been distributed, and lockdowns had lifted for good was technologies and practices from the pandemic should be dropped and what should be sustained.
There are myriad benefits to in-person collaboration, and no industry benefits more from in-person experience than education, where it’s critical to young people’s learning and social development. Naturally, then, much of what was enforced during COVID-19 was reversed once the schools reopened.
But not everything.
“During lockdown, a lot of teachers in the schools that I worked with were already quite used to having an expert on a screen come in and talk to them,” Mina Patel, Head of Videoconferencing and Online Safety at the London Borough of Redbridge, told UC Today at ISE Barcelona 2025.
“But it was a new experience for all of them to be that expert, sitting at home on that screen going into pupils’ homes. It forced a lot of them to learn to use the online platforms and become more confident with using them, and I feel as though they saw that working, and that was a positive thing.”
Patel leads the implementation of videoconferencing technology across schools in the London Borough of Redbridge, ensuring the right platforms—mainly Zoom but also Microsoft Teams and Google Meet—are in place. She supports teachers in using videoconferencing to enhance learning, connect with experts and museums worldwide, and integrate it across all subjects, organising and planning its effective use.
Back in the beginning of the pandemic, Patel and her team bought a lot of hardware, namely webcams and laptops, intending to enable teachers to do remote work. While all pupils are back in the classroom for face-to-face lessons, video conferencing has continued to empower teachers post-pandemic.
“We want to bring experts in from, let’s say, at a York archaeological museum,” Patel suggested, “We want to meet a Viking up in York, and we’re based in London. We may want to connect the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and have a lesson with a marine biologist. Teachers may want to have training with a university up north, a CPD session. We’re connecting all over nationally and globally to meet experts for professional development and for pupils to learn.”
However, the webcams they used during the pandemic no longer suffice.
“You’ve got 30 pupils in a class or classroom, and all different settings, so you can have children sitting around a desk, five little desks with small groups of pupils, or you can have pupils in a hall sitting in a row because they’re having a live assembly. So all environments are different,” Patel explained.
So those legacy webcams no longer worked because everybody’s in one space now, which is why we had to go out, source and work with the AV industry, examining all the brilliant hardware-wise technologies they’ve been developing and then bring that into the classroom.”
That collaboration with the AV industry is why Patel was at ISE this year, as she’s ever-vigilant for technologies and strategies to enhance the classroom videoconferencing experience even further.
Audio is a particular focus for Patel this year.
“Audio is always going to be an issue,” Patel said. “I think the audio is always going to be challenging for us in the classroom so that pupils can all be heard. Up to 30 pupils could sit in different locations in different ways. In a special education needs context, smaller groups of children, up to six or ten pupils, can be in the classroom. That’s a very different environment. All pupils want to be seen and heard.
“In the same way, the museum delivering that session may be thousands of miles away in another country, but they’re looking at these children in the classroom, and they almost want to feel part of the session they’re delivering,” Patel continued.
So when a child raises their hand up or asks a question, they want to be able to see and hear that pupil ask the question, and see the reaction that the pupil has as they’re delivering that session.”
“From both sides of the meeting, we need to just feel more immersed in the call, and the quality is getting better, is all I can say.”
A major factor enabling these improvements in classroom experience equity is, you’ve guessed it, AI. Has Patel dabbled with introducing AI across classrooms?
“AI within the classroom experience—and the experience that I’ve had—has been through the video conferencing platforms and the hardware we’ve been using, and it’s had a real positive impact, Patel affirmed, “because the equity with the participants in the form of the pupils has been brilliant. The audio and the video quality have been absolutely brilliant.”
“You can literally just click on a link, plug in a USB, and you’ve got a camera that is tracking or framing so all pupils can be seen. You’ve got a background noise cancellation. You’ve got all that excellent audio and video. It’s just much simpler to use.”
Where Patel has concerns about the videoconferencing in schools revolution is around what’s happening to all that data.
“What’s actually happening with the images and the audio as it goes up into the cloud, and we do need to put more regulations in for that, especially because we’re working with young people,” Patel outlined. “I know with the cloud, it’s meant to be the zero-trust attitude; that’s what they’re telling us, the cloud manufacturers, that it’s zero trust.”
“We need to be careful about what’s happening with that data, and I suppose if you’re recording something like a live video conference, that’s where most of the risk can be or if there’s a transcription or translation that’s being stored and recorded in a place and it’s a confidential meeting that a head teacher has had with a social worker or with parents.”
“So, not only are we using video conferencing for the curriculum and for different subjects, but teachers are also using it for their everyday operations, involving Teams meetings, Zoom meetings, and Google Meets. It’s found in all classrooms by teachers all the time.”
