Free Educational Support Service Launched
Naver Whale Monthly Users
Increase to 1.7 Million Since School Opening
Kakao Work Using KakaoTalk UI
Easy for Students to Adapt
[Asia Economy Reporter Seungjin Lee] Naver and Kakao are rapidly replacing the American video conferencing platform ‘Zoom’ in public education settings. As remote classes were suddenly implemented in elementary, middle, and high schools due to the spread of COVID-19, Naver and Kakao stepped in with free services amid the confusion caused by Zoom’s announcement of paid plans.
According to the IT industry on the 14th, one out of six elementary, middle, and high school students nationwide uses Naver’s video conferencing platform ‘Whale On.’ Whale On is a service embedded in Naver’s education service platform ‘Whale Space,’ and as of March, about 900,000 accounts have been created and utilized. After the start of the school term, the monthly number of users reached 1.7 million.
Free for up to 500 participants, no time limit
Naver has been operating the education service platform Whale Space since March last year. Whale Space is based on Naver’s proprietary browser ‘Whale,’ and its key feature is that anyone can easily conduct online classes using necessary programs (solutions) or URLs without installing separate software.
Currently, Whale Space has signed memorandums of understanding (MOUs) with 15 metropolitan and provincial offices of education nationwide, rapidly increasing its utilization in educational settings. As of last month, about 900,000 accounts were in use on Whale Space. The video conferencing platform Whale On is highly utilized. Since the start of the school term last month, Whale On’s monthly users reached 1.7 million, a 70% increase compared to the average monthly users of 1 million in the second half of last year.
Besides simply supporting remote classes, Naver plans to attribute the data collected through Whale Space to educational institutions to help schools and education offices improve their own educational environments.
Kakao’s ‘Enterprise’ service free of charge
Kakao is providing its comprehensive work platform ‘Kakao Work’ free of charge to educational settings. Originally used by large corporations, small and medium-sized enterprises, and various organizations, Kakao Work’s features have been applied to education to support innovation in public education.
Kakao Work offers a free version as well as ‘Standard,’ ‘Premium,’ and ‘Enterprise’ versions. The version provided to elementary, middle, and high schools is the most advanced ‘Enterprise plan.’ The Enterprise version allows video conferencing for up to 100 participants without time limits, and students can join without signing up or installing anything as long as the teacher registers. It has a user interface (UI) similar to KakaoTalk, making it easy for students to adapt.
Kakao Work currently provides services through MOUs with education offices in Jeju, Daegu, Busan, and other regions, and beyond MOUs, it is offered free nationwide to elementary, middle, and high schools upon application. Kakao plans to continuously update desired features in the education market and form partnerships with educational services.
"No profit, but social contribution"
The services provided by Naver and Kakao to educational settings are not currently profit-driven models. Internally, they are defined as talent donation projects under ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) initiatives. While providing high-quality services to education sites, they also expect to promote their own services. The security issues and confusion in education caused by the lack of proper remote class solutions in 2020, which led to reliance on Zoom, are expected to disappear.
An IT industry official said, "Although no profit is made, all members agree that this is something that must be done," adding, "We plan to continuously enhance functions and services so that remote classes can be conducted anytime."
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