5 Online Teaching Tools to Make Life Easier
We live in a digital world, and the coronavirus pandemic has further amplified this fact. With the closure of schools and institutions of learning, everyone has clung to an alternative. In this case, online learning is the most viable option. Even after the pandemic, digital classrooms would remain, and these online tools would still be helpful.
Digital tools make learning more interactive, convenient, and fun, and this makes them trump over traditional classrooms in terms of impact.
This article shares some online teaching tools teachers can use to make learning fun:
1. Animoto
This app allows you to create teaching and presentation videos. Traditional classrooms are tedious, and students detest sitting for long hours listening to a teacher, but this tool makes learning more dynamic. It adds life to your lessons and grabs the attention of students who are easily distracted.
It takes only a few minutes to create an appealing and attractive presentation. You can customize videos with text, music, and images. To get started, you need to create a project, and the site is so user-friendly that it walks you through every step. You can choose a theme of your choice and add creative images from sites like Flickr.
There are songs on the site as well, but you can upload your songs. Text is optional, as you can add it if you will. Your video would be ready in a few minutes and published to your Animoto account.
After a video is published on this site, it is shareable through a link and export it to other video sites. For teachers who cannot afford a paid version, they can apply for a free account and set up Gmail addresses so that students can have access to it. Animoto is fun every step on the way, and teachers should give it a try.
2. Kahoot
Kahoot is a free tool used to collect data, administer quizzes, and facilitate discussions between teachers and students. It is game-based and played by students in real-time because it permits an unlimited number of players.
The questions are displayed on the screen and accessed via a tablet, computer, or smartphone. The quizzes are multiple-choice and can be drawn from the curriculum and class discussions. Although this tool resembles the traditional mode of testing, it is more exciting and employs less complicated techniques. Students play to learn and catch fun on the side.
As a teacher that wants to use this app, you first connect your device to a projector or a large screen where every participant can see. In this period of the pandemic, students can connect from the comfort of their homes when streamed online via YouTube or Skype. After it is live on a screen and a game mode selected, participants can input the game PIN to join. After their nicknames appear, you can click the start button.
Use Next to navigate to the next question. Kahoot gives you feedback on each student's performance almost immediately.
3. EduClipper
This is a web application famously dubbed the "Pinterest of Education." It is a free tool where teachers and students create videos, images, websites, and images. It is similar to regular social media sites where you can follow and interact with people of like minds. It is also a platform that is rich in educational resources from varying fields.
Since it is a free tool, you can create an account and login to see a screen filled with web pages, articles, and links related to your area of interest. In Pinterest, you pin an informative content, but in Educlipper, you clip. This digital tool aims to gather as many digital materials as possible so that teachers can easily share it with their students.
Asides getting ready-made content from this app, teachers can create personalized clipboards and upload materials there for students to learn from. They can read, watch, and ask questions where necessary.
Here's how you can set up a clipboard for you and your students. On the left pane of the app, click on "your classes." A new tab opens for you to enter your class details like the subject, level, and icon. Students can also create individual accounts which they can use to sign up and learn!
4. Classdjo
Teachers who want to challenge their students to try something different can achieve that with classdjo. From pair-share activities to personalized activities for students, everyone is engaged with something. The noise manager embedded in the app keeps class discussions at bay and within an acceptable decibel.
How can teachers keep students engaged using classdjo? They can record audio messages discussing their current read, write a hypothesis for a laboratory, take pictures of their assignments, and send them to the teacher, and lots more. This tool proves that online learning can be as interactive as traditional classes and even more. Parents also get the opportunity to receive reports about their children's performance.
And yea, some of your students would not do their homework because their parents don't understand it, but this can be averted. You can do a video recording of yourself explaining any task so that parents can help at home.
There is also an award mechanism for students who exceed their expectations. Like Kahoot, you can track student's performance and privately coach them to become better scholars.
5. Ted-Ed
TED-Ed is a youth and education initiative created to ignite a fire of knowledge among tutors and students globally. It supports learning across various educational fields. TED provides an international platform to create interactive lessons and students to cue into this wealth of knowledge.
Globally, many schools have joined the TED-Ed train, and teachers on this platform have taught across various topics. This idea that started on a small scale now has over 250,000 teachers and millions of benefiting students.
Every TED talk comprises a collection of experts who know their onions in their given field. The presentations are creatively delivered before an audience made up of people who long to learn and unlearn—virtually all aspects of life like designing, research, animation, screenwriting, directing, etc.
Users of the TED-Ed platform can use educational video 1's to create a lesson plan and formulate questions and class discussions from there. Users can track the impact these lessons have on each student or the world at large
All the tools above make for a more efficient teacher. There are dozens of other tools to make your career effortless. Most of them are easy to understand and saves you lots of time. Explore as many tools as you can and choose what works for you.