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Since education has taken a virtual turn, technology has become imperative to learning. Not only do students and teachers rely on the online world to help them connect with each other safely, but they also use the platforms to ensure that children do not miss out on vital aspects of their education. Since many of these apps are new to teachers and students, we wanted to provide some quick tips for teachers to help make the most of their online experience.
School Apps to Support Students
Zoom
Zoom is one of the world’s leading video conferencing and school apps, and it has steadily gained popularity in the educational realm following the global switch to an online teaching mode. Here are some of our most promised tips and features to help you make the most of this app:
Schedule Meetings for the Entire Year in one Sitting
Not only does Zoom allow users to schedule meetings ahead of time, but it also makes it possible to set up recurring meetings by inputting details. This is ideal for a school setting as teachers can plan ahead for the whole term’s classes and send students one link for them all, effectively reducing confusion and improving efficiency!
Stop Manual Attendance Tracking with Automatic Attendance Lists
Once you’ve completed your Zoom session, teachers can easily generate a report of your attendee list. Since teachers still need to mark their students' attendance, life is much easier.
Free Up Your Schedule by Recording Your Lectures at Your Convenience
Teachers may extend the students’ learning without running all classes live through the lecture recording. For example, the district’s drama teacher can record one lesson for all 4th graders, irrespective of school location, and then hold a shorter live class that consists of a follow-up on the recorded session. This allows more flexibility for the teacher. In addition, for students that missed a class, or those who learn through repetition, re-watching live sessions that have been recorded can be really helpful.
Google Classroom
Google Classroom is an educational web service that focuses on the assignment part of the teaching process. With Google Classroom, teachers can easily create, distribute, and grade any assignments they set for their students. Here’s how you can make the most of this app:
One Less Thing for You to Remember: Automatically Remind Students of Assignments
Keeping track of the various technologies and assignments is no easy task; reminding your students of their assignments can be tedious. Google Classroom helps with this. To ensure your students don’t miss out on important dates and deadlines, teachers can use the ‘move to top’ feature with Google Classroom to pin assignments that are due soon. By doing this, the selected task will appear at the top of the students’ stream, thus serving as a reminder.
Get Students Engaged and Provide Feedback by Leveraging the Various Commenting Options
Google Classroom allows instructors to add comments to their students’ streams. While this is a typical feature of many virtual learning aids, it sets Google Classroom apart and enables teachers to choose from various comment modes. They can choose from class comments, private comments, and document comments depending on the nature of the query and the information that has to be relayed. By allowing instructors to opt for their preferred comment type, Google Classroom makes the process efficient and effective.
Private mode is a very useful feature as it allows teachers to give detailed feedback on their student’s work. This mode also allows for more personal communication as teachers and students do not have to tailor their responses so that the entire class setting can benefit from them. After all, collaborative feedback does wonders in building a positive school culture as it allows mutual and unrestricted growth.
Khan Academy
Khan Academy is a vast online learning platform providing students free videos on various subjects. These videos are a great resource for distance learning; teachers can include them in their lesson plans. To make the most of this site, make a note of these tips and features:
Use Multiple Videos in a Schedule to Get the Deepest Learning
The best way to use Khan Academy is to be persistent and stick to a schedule. Teachers should incorporate the videos into their lessons regularly, either during or after they have offered their own explanations. Khan Academy is all about short learning modules that build upon each other, so making a schedule and methodically going through it will build up students’ comprehension of the material.
Leave Time for Discussion
Most Khan Academy videos are short and can be used in a teacher’s lesson. Teachers can teach a point, use a video to reinforce the point, and then use a discussion session to add to the learning through group discussion. Teachers can use multiple videos in one lesson, but we highly recommend breaks in between with discussion (or even Khan Academy activities).
Epic Reading
Epic Reading is an online learning platform focusing on reading material for children up to twelve. It provides an array of e-books and educational videos. Here’s how to get the most out of Epic:
Customization Helps Teachers Save Time
Since Epic Reading holds a vast collection of texts, the platform allows students to customize their individual profiles. Students will receive text suggestions matching their age, interests, and reading ability through this customization. The students can customize their profiles regarding likes and dislikes, favorite genres, authors, and more! And the best part is that this is extremely easy to do with just a few simple clicks. Not only is this useful for students, but it also makes life easier for teachers as they don’t have to assign reading material to each student individually, thus, saving time. We recommend that teachers walk their students through this customization early in the year.
Automated Reporting Gives Insight Into Student Learning
Teachers can access a detailed overview of their students, outlining their progress, selected reading texts, and areas of interest. This makes it easier for teachers to assign tasks according to each student’s individual progress, as well as get insight into how the student is doing for report cards or parent teacher conferences.
Seesaw
Seesaw is a digital learning platform that makes use of portfolios. To get the most out of Seesaw’s offerings, follow these tips and features:
Offer Parents Insights Automatically
Seesaw is one of the rare apps that allow parents to connect to their child’s online learning progress by allowing them to view and comment on their child’s portfolio. By keeping parents in the loop, Seesaw allows teachers to give parents insight into student progress without setting up separate parent-teacher sessions. Teachers will have to grant access to parents by entering their email addresses and linking them to their child’s portfolio. This greatly enhances the parent-student-teacher connection, and it doesn’t take much extra time for the teachers!
Make Learning Fun With a Variety of Mediums and Games
One of the most unfortunate things about virtual education is that it can get rather monotonous due to the lack of hands-on activities and a conducive learning environment. Seesaw combats this obstacle by involving creativity and fun in online learning. The platform calls for each student to have their own portfolio, which they build up using creative mediums such as pictures, videos, and voice recordings. There are also a lot of different drawing and color options. Finally, there are also a lot of different games you can create within the app to enhance the concepts you’re teaching. These features help to keep students engaged while they learn!
So, there you have it, a quick yet thorough guide on how to get the most out of the market’s leading educational apps.