You’ve been on the lookout for a new course to add to your roster, and you’ve come across a wide range of platforms from SlideShare to Udemy. Many students set out on the hunt for an online education tool, but don’t know which one is best suited for them. One size does not fit all when it comes to online education tools. Each has different features and benefits, and a few will be a better match based on your personal learning preferences while some will cater to what you want to learn.
Online education has taken the world by storm. Thousands of people take part in MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses) offered by big companies like Udacity, Coursera, and Khan Academy. Now everyone can be a student at their convenience without having to physically go to the classroom. No more commuting, no more tardiness, no more wasting time on never-ending lectures.
The Most Popular Digital Education Tools For Teachers And Learners
Hundreds of digital education tools have been created with the purpose of giving autonomy to the student, improving the administration of academic processes, encouraging collaboration, and facilitating communication between teachers and learners. Here we present 11 of the most popular.
1. Edmodo
Edmodo is an educational tool that connects teachers and students, and is assimilated into a social network. In this one, teachers can create online collaborative groups, administer and provide educational materials, measure student performance, and communicate with parents, among other functions. Edmodo has more than 34 million users who connect to create a learning process that is more enriching, personalized, and aligned with the opportunities brought by technology and the digital environment.
2. Socrative
Designed by a group of entrepreneurs and engineers passionate about education, Socrative is a system that allows teachers to create exercises or educational games which students can solve using mobile devices, whether smartphones, laptops, or tablets. Teachers can see the results of the activities and, depending on these, modify the subsequent lessons in order to make them more personalized.
3. Projeqt
Projeqt is a tool that allows you to create multimedia presentations, with dynamic slides in which you can embed interactive maps, links, online quizzes, Twitter timelines, and videos, among other options. During a class session, teachers can share with students academic presentations which are visually adapted to different devices.
4. Thinglink
Thinglink allows educators to create interactive images with music, sounds, texts, and photographs. These can be shared on other websites or on social networks, such as Twitter and Facebook. Thinglink offers the possibility for teachers to create learning methodologies that awaken the curiosity of students through interactive content that can expand their knowledge.
5. TED-Ed
TED-Ed is an educational platform that allows creating educational lessons with the collaboration of teachers, students, animators—generally people who want to expand knowledge and good ideas. This website allows democratizing access to information, both for teachers and students. Here, people can have an active participation in the learning process of others.
6. cK-12
cK-12 is a website that seeks to reduce the cost of academic books for the K12 market in the United States and the world. To achieve its objective, this platform has an open source interface that allows creating and distributing educational material through the internet, which can be modified and contain videos, audios, and interactive exercises. It can also be printed and comply with the necessary editorial standards in each region. The books that are created in cK-12 can be adapted to the needs of any teacher or student.
7. ClassDojo
ClassDojo is a tool to improve student behavior: teachers provide their students with instant feedback so that good disposition in class is ‘rewarded’ with points and students have a more receptive attitude towards the learning process. ClassDojo provides real-time notifications to students, like ‘Well Done David!’ and ‘+1’, for working collaboratively. The information that is collected about student behavior can be shared later with parents and administrators through the web.
8. eduClipper
This platform allows teachers and students to share and explore references and educational material. In eduClipper, you can collect information found on the internet and then share it with the members of previously created groups, which offers the possibility to manage more effectively the academic content found online, improve research techniques, and have a digital record of what students achieved during the course. Likewise, it provides the opportunity for teachers to organize a virtual class with their students and create a portfolio where all the work carried out is stored.
9. Storybird
Storybird aims to promote writing and reading skills in students through storytelling. In this tool, teachers can create interactive and artistic books online through a simple and easy to use interface. The stories created can be embedded in blogs, sent by email, and printed, among other options. In Storybird, teachers can also create projects with students, give constant feedback, and organize classes and grades.
10. Animoto
Animoto is a digital tool that allows you to create high-quality videos in a short time and from any mobile device, inspiring students and helping improve academic lessons. The Animoto interface is friendly and practical, allowing teachers to create audiovisual content that adapts to educational needs.
11 Padlet
Padlet is a multifunctional platform to collect information, visuals, videos, documents and much more. Users can create “padlets” or digital corkboards to create collections of data and information pretty much any way they want.
Teachers can use padlets to build group lessons, work on group projects, collate research for a lecture, and much more.
Padlet is one of the favorites in the online teaching world and it’s no surprise why. Here is an article with a long list of ideas for teachers using Padlet.
12 Thinglink
Thinglink is a platform dedicated to the creation of interactive visuals. You can add interactive elements like audio, text popups and map location labels to any of the following:
- Images
- Videos
- 360-degree media
This is one of the most immersive online teaching software. You can even create VR-ready environments for students to explore at their leisure.
13 Edpuzzle
Edpuzzle is an app that takes any video and turns into an educational lesson. Teachers simply add their chosen video, set it up for students with questions about the content and assign it to them via their regular LMS.
Edpuzzle integrates with Google Classroom and many other platforms as well.
A notable feature of Edpuzzle is that teachers can easily track student progress. The settings can be toggled for the video and to make added questions unskippable.
Edpuzzle is the perfect accompaniment for the flipped classroom method, both in face-to-face and virtual classrooms.
14 Quizizz
Quizizz is a free quiz maker for students of any age. If you don’t want to create your own quiz, there are lots of available quizzes in the gallery that are free to use.
Integrate your quiz seamlessly with Google Classroom or share it with a link. You can also share it as a game and send the link to the Remind app and other online teaching tools.
Considering that Quizizz has been used in regular classrooms for a while, the transition of the tool to online teaching was seamless.
15 Talking Points
Talking Points is a communication platform for teachers and families. It’s similar to the Remind app but the most important feature is that the messages are translated to the family’s language.
The app supports more than 100+ languages. Each family picks their home language (if they don’t speak English) and all messages will arrive in the chosen language.
The app works on all mobile devices and is free for teachers.
What Are Your Favorite Online Teaching Tools?
Teaching online in a virtual classroom is easier than it seems—the difficult part is getting used to it. Once you have the tools you need to be efficient and engaging, every lesson is easier than the one before it.
Most of the online teaching tools in this list can be used with Visme. Simply upload your Visme creations to your preferred tool and you’ve got the perfect combination.
Sign up for a free Visme account and take your virtual classroom to the next level.
Conclusion
Education is a massive industry that touches nearly every single life not just in America but around the world. Education is one of the most valuable things anyone can have and it is something that everyone should have access to, at all levels – from preschools to colleges and universities.