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Being a teacher in today’s online setting is either demanding or energizing. Where do you belong?
Diving into an entirely different platform from a real classroom to a virtual environment has become interesting, thanks to the best apps and tools for online teaching. You will only need to adapt to the changes if you want to teach your lessons in a straightforward and on-point manner.
What are the tools used by teachers?
From the App Store to Google Playstore, you can pick what suits you and download it anytime, anywhere with just one tap on your phone, free of charge.
Teaching remotely is a new challenge for teachers. This is where the best apps and tools for online teachers are for – to help make their teaching a little easier. Check out these top apps that are popular today. If you’re already using some of them, that’s great! Quizizz, for example, can make your discussions enjoyable.
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<<<You might be looking for the best iPad apps? Look at our favorites below!
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Why is Google Classroom a Leader?
You are using this already, right? So just a little recap:
The Google Classroom is a web service developed by Google especially for schools. Its goal is to help the education sector simplify the creation, distribution, and grading of assignments. The streamlined process of sharing files between teachers and students will run online smoothly and efficiently while saving both parties’ time.
The Google Classroom will help you prepare everything. This is where you can post tasks, lessons, agenda, and even materials for the day. Include your worksheets, assignments, videos, and anything else you need for a teaching day. You can set schedules, deadlines, and event reminders.
With Google’s ecosystem, each class will learn to create a separate folder in the respective user’s Drive. The work submitted by the student can be graded by a teacher and then returned to the student along with the teacher’s comments. The Google Calendar is used for marking assignments and projects. It makes it convenient for teachers to monitor and evaluate the progress of each student through the history doc.
Since its birth, the Google Classroom now involves a new classwork section, an improved grading interface, a feature that allows the reuse of classwork from other classes, and a redesigned topic organization for teachers to organize their contents. It’s amazing that you now have the option to drag and drop topics and assignments in the classwork sections.
Google loves educators. In fact, the latest addition to its tools includes a new to-do widget, 10 additional languages, and the added smart correct-and-auto-compose to google docs. Thanks to Google’s learning management systems, the Google Classroom has sharply made remote education possible and reachable during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Google Classroom works best on a device with a full-size keyboard. This is needed especially for kids to help them in their writing lessons and assignments. But it also lends itself to function even on phones and smaller devices like tablets.
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Best Apps and Tools For Online Teachers
Let me walk you through these teaching apps to help you in your preparation, planning to execution, and even until assessment. I’m sure each can help you get used to teaching in the new normal way.
1) Quizizz
Quizizz is one of the popular apps for learning at home and in classrooms for its interesting learn and study features. This app helps you serve a diagnostic test for how much the students have understood or learned about the topic. You can use the many resources for whatever topic that you need help with. There are also ready sets of questions per topic so all you have to do is pick the one you like.
2) YouTube
You know what YouTube can help you with. If you see a video for a certain topic, the link can be quickly shared for everyone in the class to see. To make it more interesting, you can provide an exit pass for the students before they leave your class. This helps you gauge how much they have learned from that video.
3) Animoto
This is the first app that I have that I enjoyed using a lot. I was able to create short videos out of what I love. It has a full range of design templates, drawings, colors, and music for the most beautiful video. If you’re into video presentations, you will enjoy Animoto’s library of stock images to cover your multimedia contents in the classroom.
4) Loom
If there are concepts that need reinforcing, Loom will help you create pre-recorded discussion. This is a video messaging tool you can use to get your message across through shareable videos. Just launch the Loom extension and select your recording settings. You can record with or without your camera – you have the option to choose cam, screen, or screen plus cam. Just click the Record button and after recording, you can get the link provided by the Loom app.
5) Nearpod
This app is an award-winning instructional software. It lets the teachers present their multimedia lessons and at the same time, students can upload to their mobile devices. The software is very interactive giving students a voice in open-ended questions and polls. With collaborative boards, learners will not only have fun in their classes but will develop a sense of confidence and belongingness, too.
6) Remind
Remind is ideal for sending out big class announcements specifically for big projects, activities, and events. This is a fantastic online teaching tool for organizing any forthcoming activity like a school trip, weekend practices, meetings, quizzes, and other useful information. Getting everyone on the track creates fewer mistakes and more things are done for your students and you.
7) Viper (Windows)
This online tool is compatible with Windows users only. The app scans documents that are uploaded into the system and notifies users if they detect similar sentences and phrases that can be found anywhere on the internet. Other than being a cost-effective solution to ensure plagiarism-free assignments, it also inspires students to write better and avoid grammatical errors and typos.
8)Additio
Additio App is a learning platform that caters to teachers, students, and parents. It is every teacher’s productivity suite to keep them organized from a powerful grading book and robust lesson planner to students and family communication. The Additio app stands for building student growth and family engagement, as well as for tracking attendance or creating custom reports.
9) Alma
Alma is the first Student Information System to consolidate with Google Classroom. The integration led teachers to synchronize task lists, assignments, grades, and fulfillment activities and run customizable Google Classroom classes across their schools and districts. The app helps teachers lessen paper lists while letting them roam throughout the library.
10) AnswerGarden
Having this app gives you an easy-to-use online feedback approach that brings out quick answers from your class. Its minimalist design makes it simple to create, share, answer, and manage topic questions. With this tool, teachers can ask students questions that are answered with only one word or phrase. Since their answers are stored in a cloud, you can use them for future interactions.
11) Book Creator
This unique app is an easy-to-use tool that enables students to create and read multimodal digital books. With limitless options, it is a perfect occasion in enhancing student engagement through story creation and multimedia design. The finished books then can be shared or sold online. Teachers as well can compile these books in a library to be used in their other classes.
12) Explain Everything
Learn as you teach and create your personal brand remotely with Explain Everything. This is your one-stop whiteboard that offers infinite canvas and recording tools in a single solution. It combines gadgets, images, documents, videos, and more so that you will have unlimited possibilities for how you communicate and share ideas. Perfect for note-taking, meetings, discussions, and brainstorming sessions.
13) Fox Fi
Although not free, the Fox Fi app lets you and your students create a Wi-Fi hotspot wherever you are. This makes it an extremely popular Android app requiring no tether plan or rooting. It also connects you via Bluetooth or to your phone via a USB cable. If you need a line and cannot find a Wi-Fi hotspot, make your own and enjoy teaching online wherever and whenever.
14) Audio Boo
Do you want to broadcast announcements to your students quickly? The Audio Boo allows you a three-minute recording so you can send voice announcements through their smartphones. You can even share the must-read information through Facebook and Twitter. It is very ideal for making date reminders and tips for upcoming assignments and projects. Now you can reach out to your students in a snap.
15) Class Craft
This app is an Engagement Management System to specially address student motivation through a gaming concept. You can provide accounts and pull rosters from Google Classroom and give corresponding points to students for completing assignments on time. Converting their classroom results into game points also lets you “blend in” your learners’ physical and virtual learning.
16) Desmos
Desmos is a collection of unique digital math activities. You can avail yourself of the free graphing and teaching tools for your math topics. With a free account, you can use a variety of math concepts like plotting equations and then revisiting them later. With a free account, you get to enjoy a powerful platform for instruction, and your students a visual way to understand expressions.
17) Calendly
Another scheduling tool, Calendly lets you track multiple calendars. What’s good with this app is it allows you to choose your own slot. That means you can program various sessions including remote meetings with parents. depending on your availability. Are you already using Google Calendar? Then maximize your experience by connecting it to Calendly.
18) Haiku Deck
Looking for lovely presentations? Haiku Deck presents to you pre-built templates for a one-of-a-kind lecture. It helps you create a professional-looking and feeling presentation by getting rid of background clutters. The Haiku Deck is a wonderful option to go to if you’re fed up with traditional slides and blocks of texts.
19) Canva
An extremely popular teacher and student tool today, Canva offers free graphic designs for beautiful educational visuals and infographics, Surely the class will find your creations perfectly attractive. Even if you’re a beginner in designing, the easy interface is enough to make you a master of your vids in just a few tries. Trust me, I’m a Canva user!
20) Zoom
You sure know Zoom! It’s a video-conferencing application that can be installed on phones and computers instantly. It lets the teacher share their screen or audio for class/lesson purposes. In the same way, students can use the share screen feature to have their presentations. While you need to pay to access its full features, everyone is still free to use Zoom using a lot of mileage from the mobile app.
There goes my list!
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Why Should You Use the Apps on This List
The answer is, you get the benefits of interactive and personalized learning using what is only basic. For teachers, those apps will enhance their ability to explain the lessons per topic and present information with more fun.
For the students, the education-based apps will provide the convenience to achieve more in less time. Our young generation today has their interests online and the e-learning apps will be their new friends while studying in a virtual setting.
I hope you will find the apps really helpful. Any interesting suggestions you want to add to my list? Feel free to share them in the comments. It would be great for us all!
