Platforms for Teaching Online

With the increasing demand for online teaching platforms, it is becoming a daunting task to choose which platform is going to be useful and effective. One cannot ignore the fact that there are a lot of educational platforms available nowadays claiming to be the best, but does quantity guarantee quality?

In this post, we have taken the pain of compiling a list of top 10+ online teaching platforms 2021 so as to help you pick an ideal platform which is going to serve your purpose in a proficient manner.

3P Learning

Create learning experiences that stick with blended learning tools for mathematics and literacy. Delivered from you to your learner, wherever they are.

Bloomz

With Bloomz, teachers and schools save time by having all the tools they need to communicate with today’s parents and students in one easy-to-use (and free) app.

Buncee

This online learning resources platform gives teachers the ability to create online lessons, boards for students to share their thoughts and work, and collaborative learning spaces. It provides teachers the ability to easily communicate with kids and parents, too.

ClassDojo

The ClassDojo platform has a communication tool that makes it easy to stay in touch and track student progress too.

Deck.Toys

This platform helps teachers create and share online lessons using their easy tools. The ability to offer differentiated paths within the same lesson is a nice feature. (Note: Requires teachers and students to have Google or Microsoft accounts.)

Dialpad

Build a connected campus! Hundreds of education providers have started using Dialpad for not only video conferencing but also as a phone system to keep campuses, students, and staff connected. Keep students engaged while using enterprise-level security to ensure privacy protection and security standards.

EdModo

Send messages, share class materials, and make learning accessible anywhere. Save yourself time by bringing all your classroom tools together. EdModo also offers resources for helping you understand how to make distance learning work for your students.

EdPuzzle

Create interactive online lessons using a video clip of your choice. This tool provides accountability and tracking for student progress, too.

Edulastic

Edulastic is an online K-12 tool that allows teachers to make their own assessments and assignments or choose from over 35,000 pre-made assessments.

Eduplanet

Teachers can access a collection of learning paths from some of the most well-known thought leaders in education. Topics cover Understanding by Design Habits of Mind, Social Emotional Learning, Cultural and Linguistic Diversity, Personalized Learning, and Growth Mindset.

Explain Everything Whiteboard

Create interactive lessons and collaborative spaces for your virtual classroom with these real-time tools.

FlipGrid

Students and teachers can record short videos to document and share their learning. Consider it social media for learning, and a great way to stay in touch!

Genially

Genially offers interactive visual communication tools to create presentations, interactive images, infographics, and more. Many of their premium templates and resources are now available for free, for everyone.

Free tools to stay organized and productive

If you are a teacher struggling to stay organized with your students and the many tasks that go into teaching then look no further than apps like Asana and Trello.

Secret: my favorite is Asana!

Asana

Asana is your personal teaching secretary all in one powerful app that gives you control over your tasks, projects and to-do lists.

Essentially, Asana is a productivity management solution for teams, individuals or anyone that needs more control over their tasks.

Teachers will enjoy Asana for a number of reasons.

Firstly, from a simple angle of gaining control over the multitude of to-do’s and projects that teachers need to manage, this app will do it all.

Some ways that teachers can use Asana in their teaching life can include:

Creating lesson plan tasks with manageable subtasks that have deadlines
Managing students’ information, progress and other important details
Helping with teams of teachers to manage projects that need to be completed
Create online lesson plans that allow teachers to see what parts of the lesson were and weren’t completed

This app is great for teachers in brick-and-mortar schools as well as online teachers who need to gain control over their schedule by focusing on what matters each day.

Additionally, if you are a teacherpreneur building your own online teaching business, Asana will be your go-to place to make sure that everything in your business is running smoothly.

With the free account, teachers will be able to create projects and tasks through a variety of different layouts.

Trello

Trello is another online productivity app that works similar to Asana but has some differences.

Trello is a collaboration tool that lets you organize your projects into boards.

It can tell you what’s being worked on and where your tasks are in terms of the completion process.

Of course, it also lets you add to-do lists, tasks and other similar features to Asana.

Best online assessment tools

Quizlet

Quizlet is a free tool that helps teachers create learning activities for students, like flashcards, study material and interactive quiz games.

The amazing thing about Quizlet is that it can really be used at any grade level and any age! Students love the game-based feature of Quizlet and you are helping them get prepared for assessments without even realizing it.

So, let’s take a look at how it works:

You, as the teacher, create study sets for your students.
These study sets can be used as review activities or it can be a quiz game to help students review for a test.
The student can log in and choose the appropriate study set, either created by the teacher or by others.

That’s it! It’s that easy.

In my opinion, Quizlet is great for students because it allows the teacher to:

Differentiate instruction with the activities that you create
Teach collaborative skills because students are working together
Help prepare students for assessments and tests

Quizlet, while is a great free tool for teachers, does have limitations and should be used as one resource in your classroom among the many others that you have access to.

Kahoot

Kahoot! is a game-based learning platform that makes it really simple for teachers to create and share learning games or quizzes in a matter of minutes with their students.

Once you create a Kahoot quiz or game, you share a simple access code that lets students log on and join the game.

Teachers can create their own assessment games or use premade lessons from other teachers in the Kahoot library.

Here are the steps to making the magic happen in your virtual or online classroom:

Create – you can design your own kahoot with images and diagrams to make your questions more engaging and to support all learners who are playing
Play – Once the kahoot is created, teachers share the unique PIN with their students who can join on their own device wherever they are located. It is best played live in a group setting either in a classroom or a virtual classroom. However, teachers can also send challenges that players complete at their own pace (ie: homework or remote learning)
Share – Kahoots can be shared with the broader Kahoot community which lets others access your Kahoots

Best apps for designing and creating content

As teachers, we are always needing to create things for our students and it can be difficult to find free tools that let us create quality content to use in our classrooms.

Look no further than Canva and Google Slides to make great resources for our classrooms.

Canva

Canva is amazing! It is a free tool, although there are premium features you can pay for that lets you create just about anything for your classroom.

You can create and design all types of content within Canva using their free account that looks professional and can be used with your students in your virtual classroom, or brick-and-mortar classroom.

Think of Canva as your easy-to-use plug-and-play design assistant.

Do you need a presentation? Do you need a cover slide for something?

Let’s look at how teachers can use Canva as a free tool to create lessons for their students.

Canva lets teachers create:

Worksheets
Lesson plans
Presentations
Posters
Virtual backgrounds (for Zoom, etc.)
Documents
Teaching resume
Infographics

…and so much more!

Look no further than Canva for your go-to tool to design just about anything you need.

Google Slides

Google Slides, while more limiting than Canva, is another easy-to-use, free tool for teachers to use to make lessons, presentations and content for their classroom.

Part of the Google Suite of apps, Google Slides acts as your web-based presentation tool similar to applications like PowerPoint or Keynote.

With a free Google account, you have access to Google Slides and can create unlimited presentations to use in your classroom.

Simply go to Google Drive and make a new Google Slide presentation. You can choose from their pre-made templates or make your own.

Once you have made your presentation template you can add:

Images
Text
Audio
Video
Shapes
Tables
Charts
Diagrams

You can customize color, font and all the normal features of a presentation program.

Since it is part of the suite of Google Apps, you can have students create their own presentations collaboratively or individually.

Google slides can also be shared with others with ease of use or you can download them as PDF files.

Conclusion

If you’re a teacher, you may have thought about teaching online. It can be a great way to earn money and set your own schedule. There are a few platforms that make taking students online much easier.