In today’s conditions, technology is being used more than ever. The same is the case for the education industry too. With a swift transition from offline to online classes, a lot of questions are still left unanswered, for both the teachers and students. While students are struggling with numerous doubts and technical issues, teachers are struggling with answering all their queries.
Through this blog, our purpose is to cater to all the superhero teachers out there and assist them with a smooth transition during these times. Through in-depth research and a look at the best alternatives on the internet, we have collated a list of online tools that are not just free, but also extremely easy to use. Even if you are the kind of teacher who is not yet familiar with technology, using these tools will be a cakewalk.
ClassDojo
This tool helps teachers monitor the behavior of their students and make sure that each student is appreciated individually when they showcase a good disposition. Whenever there is any feedback for the child, the teacher can instantly contact the student through real-time notifications. This helps the children work on their improvement areas and feel good about their strengths. Moreover, the app makes sure there is a record maintained for each student so that parents can understand their progress in detail during PTMS.
Edmodo
Social Networking has become an important part of learning in today’s era. Edmodo is a platform where students, teachers, and even parents can stay connected and up to date with whatever is going on in each subject. Providing class materials, creating collaborative groups, instantly communicating with parents, are some features of this tool. In fact, students can also interact with one another and indulge in hands-on group activities!
Kahoot!
With a change in the mode of learning, teachers need to modify their method of assessing students too. Kahoot! helps monitor the performance of each child through a gaming mode where teachers can create questionnaires, surveys, and quizzes. This creates a fun learning environment and children love playing as well as learning at the same time. In fact, a healthy competition also takes place in the classroom!
Thinglink
Gone are the days where students suffice and stay engaged with just books and theory! Creating content for your subject is now made easier with this too. You can easily create texts, sounds, pictures, and videos to increase student participation in your sessions. These will not only catch the eye of your students but also push them to ask questions and seek answers. This created media can also be shared on your preferred platform of communication as a form of homework.
Socrative
This tool serves a similar purpose to Kahoot! too. The only difference here is that students get the liberty of performing quizzes and assessments through any device that they feel comfortable with. Socrative also stores and makes a record of all the results so that teachers can look back later and modify their curriculum accordingly.
Storybird
This tool is mainly used to help teachers create activities that will instill reading and writing skills in children of all age groups. Through the art of storytelling, teachers here can find as well as create artistic books, blogs, short writeup, storyboards, and much more. Students can interact with one another through effective communication and get constant feedback on their skills from the teacher.
Apart from all these tools, we hope you have adjusted with the basics of online teaching – choosing a platform where you would like to teach your class. Zoom, Google Hangouts, MS Teams are some of the best ones that you would like to try.
Connecting with your students comes even prior to beginning with the learning process. It is only when you are yourself sorted and confident about the curriculum, is when you can help students out with their many questions and concerns. Remember, it is only natural for you as a teacher to take short breaks when needed and raise questions if you are not sure about this new phenomenon of online teaching all of us are only just adapting to it.
Finally, we hope that these tools not only help make work easier for you but also make your classes more hands-on and interesting. Tried and tested, all these applications are the best way to ease your transition into the online mode of teaching!
At ExperiHub, we teach Science and Mathematics by bringing concepts from the real world into the classroom. We conduct science experiments and have myriad science projects for better learning and understanding of concepts. If you want to learn more about Experiential Learning and cool home experiments, browse through our Online Sessions and Youtube Channel!