Online teaching is popular nowadays due to its convenient and flexible features that enable the participants to take the class anytime and anywhere.
What is online teaching? Online teaching is the delivery of instruction or course material to students using exclusively electronic media. Online teaching exists in three basic forms: one-to-one, broadcast-style lecture, and interactive dialogue between instructor and learners, either synchronously or asynchronously.
Online teaching is the delivery of education, instruction, or content through electronic media, typically with interactive participation by students.
The technology of online teaching has evolved enormously over the last decade. It’s now possible to record classes and upload them online, your students can access your class materials, stream discussions, view visual presentations, or download notes for future reference. There is an ever-growing need for more educational resources at low cost. The internet has become an innovative platform for educational affluence.
Google Classroom
Learning management system (LMS) software provides a single space for all your organization’s admin, documentation, reporting, and training needs, in addition to the tools to plan to teach, host virtual lessons and create assignments. As a tech giant dominating the virtual collaboration space, it’s unsurprising that Google can offer a nice free platform for all the above. Google Classroom brings together all its standard G Suite tools— like Docs, Sheets, and Hangouts—to help you seamlessly manage and deliver virtual teaching.
Microsoft Teams
While stopping short of calling itself an LMS, Microsoft Teams offers a similar suite of virtual teaching tools as Google Classroom and is also happily free. It allows conversations, content and collaboration to happen in one unified digital space. Great for creating secure virtual classrooms, sharing assignments and feedback, and streamlining staff communication.
Kaltura Virtual Classroom
Well, what do you know? Kaltura Virtual Classroom is on the ‘best virtual classroom software for online teaching’ list published on the Kaltura blog. Seriously though, our position on this list is not without merit. As the great LeVar Burton liked to say, you don’t have to take our word for it. Try Kaltura Virtual Classroom for Free and continue using it for free as you like.
Kaltura Virtual Classroom is purpose-built for teaching online – virtual classroom software at its core! You can create online courses and engage your participants in virtual classes all through a completely branded portal. Virtual classes are 100% web-based – no Flash, no downloads, no installations – with collaborative tools like a digital whiteboard, content management system to share presentations and videos, screen sharing, cloud recording, breakout rooms, real-time notes, live quizzes, and more. Kaltura Virtual Classroom easily integrates into all major LMSs. Totally worth a look!
Zoom
COVID-19 has made Zoom a household name. But in addition to using Zoom to video call your family, it’s a useful tool for no-frills virtual classrooms and department meetings. Its free version far outstrips Google Hangouts and Skype in terms of participant size—allowing you to host up to 100 participants at once. It also lets you create several breakout rooms, share screens and use group chat for smaller discussions during a lesson. You can easily record calls too—useful for self-critique as you iterate your online teaching methods, and for sharing meetings with colleagues who couldn’t attend.
Vedamo
Vedamo is a virtual classroom platform and learning management system that is built for online tutoring. The virtual classroom is browser-based and does not require any download to join. You can even play around with a demo virtual classroom without creating an account. Collaborative tools include an online whiteboard, breakout rooms, screen sharing, and media sharing. Vedamo also integrated into Canvas, Google for Education, Moodle, and Schoology LMSs.
Slack
Transparent asynchronous is the bedrock of all remote collaboration – it democratizes communication, allowing everyone to access department-wide conversations and talk when it actually suits their schedule. Many remote teams have already realized that email just isn’t the optimal space for that, and are instead using instant messaging platforms like Slack for the bulk of their day-to-day communication. Slack effectively breaks all team communication into thematic groups – called threads – allowing staff to dip in and out of conversations that concern them. It’s a great tool for building an online peer community – creating spaces for colleagues to share best practices, exchange ideas, share global updates and just check-in on each other.
Electa Live
Electa Live provides virtual classroom software and a learning management system for online courses. The virtual classroom is supported cross-platform. Electa Live virtual classroom features include file sharing, interactive whiteboards, annotation tools, screen sharing, session recording, online polls & surveys, and breakout rooms. The LMS component makes it convenient for scheduling live classes.
Adobe Connect
If you have been in the virtual classroom software space for a few years, then you have undoubtedly come across Adobe Connect. Adobe Connect was the standard-bearer for virtual classroom software seeing a lot of early traction in the higher education vertical. Today’s web-based version still requires Flash, but there is a client download version to bypass Flash requirements. Features include a content management system, quick polls, an interactive whiteboard, cloud recording, and different modules and layouts for a highly customizable classroom.
Floop
For students, Floop is the virtual equivalent of raising your hand in class. It was built by teachers to solve the challenge of providing tailored support and feedback to individual students learning remotely. Students can quickly send pictures of their work with anchored comments, so they can highlight exactly where they are stuck and raise questions. Teachers just need to reply to the comment to provide targeted feedback. A handy tool if you’re working with analog or read-only digital materials – although you might want to prioritize using collaborative document platforms like Dropbox Paper longer-term.
Viper (Windows)
The second app worth mentioning and proving suitable for teachers is the one called Viper. It is in fact a valid Windows application that contains ready-made themes which allow teachers to present them directly to pupils. In this app, students are also able to compare their work to understand how to write better by avoiding grammatical errors, paying more attention to syntax and typos.
Attendance
The third app that proves effective for teachers, who have an Android device, is the one called Attendance. Teachers can use it to draw up a list of attendance in their various classes and to help them keep track of the studies and classwork of each individual student. This app also allows a photo to be added to each name so that the teacher can better verify and follow the necessary information.
TooNoisy
The fourth app for teachers is a little bizarre, but in some ways useful; in fact, it is called TooNoisy. It was created to detect environmental noises and it can be used for both an Android device and with an iPhone in a classroom. This app specifically emits a beep when the aforementioned noise threshold is excessive. The main function of this app is dictated by the fact that students, themselves, can become more aware of how to behave, and regulate their behavior. It also helps students avoid the risk of punishment by a teacher or educational representative if they aren’t following the rules.
Conclusion
Online teaching is becoming more and more popular. With the convenience of having an online class, students can do their work at their own pace instead of being stuck in a classroom for 3 hours. Additionally, students find online classes to be much less stressful. An online class allows them to take breaks when needed instead of being forced to sit for 3 hours straight.