Online education review tools have been harnessed to empower educators in different online classrooms. These tools are found to be highly resourceful and effective during online teaching sessions. With online education review tools, online teachers are able to engage the students and add a professional touch to classes conducted online. The best online tools for online teaching tend to be more appealing, since they are less time consuming, of high quality, and open-ended in nature. This makes it easier for teachers to function effectively in the classroom environment. As educators look for options on what constitutes best online teaching tools, one can evaluate certain features like affordability, editorial reviews, ease of use, among others.
Online Education is a fast growing trend. More and more students of every age are turning to the internet as the hub of education and learning. At OnlineEducationReviewTools.com we search the web looking for quality websites that offer free learning tools. Our featured websites on this website offer a wide variety of educational tools for both teachers and students of all ages.
Online education review tools are the best tools to help teachers and students. However, it is important to note that some of these tools will require payment and subscription. Before you can take advantage of these tools, you can easily download them from the Internet.
Online learning tools virtually connect teachers and students and aim to technologically assist in education. Examine how online learning tools are defined, and review examples of the different types of tools available and their purposes.
Why Use Online Tools?
With the rapid increase of technology over the last 20+ years, the way students learn and teachers teach have changed, too. Luckily, today a wealth of online tools can supplement your ability to bring new information to students, while providing students with many different options for learning input and output. You may be able to teach more effectively and your students may enjoy learning more using a variety of tools like these.
What Are Online Learning Tools?
It’s difficult to provide a single definition of online learning tools, because of the variety of tools. Think about online learning tools in this way: online learning tools refer to any program, app, or technology that can be accessed via an internet connection and enhance a teacher’s ability to present information and a student’s ability to access that information.
The following are three major types of online learning tools: online classrooms, assistive technology, and apps.
Online Classrooms
Today’s students are comfortable and familiar with using the internet to gain information about unknown topics. In the past a person would have gone to the library and referred to an encyclopedia for information. Today we pull smartphones out of our pockets and ask Google to tell us all about any topic. It is for that reason many students wish to facilitate some of their own learning rather than coming to school and waiting to learn at a teacher-led pace. There are three main types of online classrooms that teachers need to be aware of to meet their students’ learning needs.
1. Blended Classrooms
Blended classrooms use a combination of face-to-face instruction with a teacher at school mixed with some online student-facilitated learning, using the online tools and resources that a teacher gathers and organizes for student usage.
2. Flipped Classrooms
A flipped classroom also involves students using online student-facilitated learning, but what is different about a flipped classroom is that students are solely responsible for learning prior to coming into a physical classroom. Projects and activities are done in the classroom led by the teacher with the assumption students have already learned the online assigned content.
3. Distance Education Classrooms
Distance education classes, sometimes called virtual schools, consist of 100 percent of instruction via the internet and teacher-provided online tools. In this type of classroom a teacher and student would never interact in the same physical space.
Online Teaching Tools to Enrich Your Virtual Classroom
1. Visme
Visme is an online design tool that anyone can use to create presentations, infographics, concept maps, schedules, reports and more.
It’s packed with tons of features, like free photos and graphics, customization options and an easy drag-and-drop editor that both non-designers and designers love to use.
Many tools are directed either at the educator or the student. In the case of Visme, our integrated design tools benefit both.
How Visme Can Help Teachers
Teachers are always creating content for their students to learn with. From slide presentations to fillable worksheets and more. With a Visme education license, teachers and students can use the tool together for a creative and interactive educative experience.
Below are some of the solutions Visme offers for educators at any level.
- Interactive content as presentations and infographics
- Visual posters and infographics
- Webinar materials
- Interactive schedules
- Syllabus and lesson plans
- Printable lists and worksheets
- Embed third-party content like quizzes and forms
- Share news about a class on social media or email
- Personalized report cards
- Personalized certificates
To help you get started, here are some handpicked Visme templates for teachers. Click on the button below each template to customize it for your own use.
Class Schedule Template
Create a class schedule in the form of a presentation and share it with your students to help them stay on track with their weekly lessons.
This class schedule template is designed with engaging colors and visuals to make it easier for students to remember the information.
Customize this presentation template and make it your own!Edit and Download
Lesson Plan Template
Use a template to create a fully visual lesson plan to share with your students.
Simply input all your information and download it as a PDF or image. It’s easy to then import into your LMS or send it to students via email.
Customize this template and make it your own!Edit and Download
Report Card Template
At the end of each semester, show students their grades by adding a little fun.
Use this report card template to input each student’s final results and inspire them to continue performing well for the rest of the year.
Customize this template and make it your own!Edit and Download
Certificate of Completion Template
If your course isn’t part of a school curriculum, you can still instill a sense of accomplishment in your students with a certificate of completion or achievement certificate.
Use this template to add your course information and personalize it with the student’s name.
Customize this template and make it your own!Edit and Download
How Visme Can Help Students
Visme also helps students get their work done for their online classes. Teachers can assign all sorts of assignments to be created with the tool.
Below are some ways students can use Visme:
- Book report presentations or infographics
- Research projects for any topic as presentations or infographics
- Graphic organizers for research and mind-mapping
- Venn diagrams for comparisons
Here are some useful Visme templates for students at the school or university level. Click on the button below each template to customize it for your own use.
Idea Web / Mind Map Template
Students thrive with graphic organizers and visual mind mapping tools. Visme makes it easy and fun to create idea webs, flowcharts and mind maps. This idea web template is perfect for finding similarities between two different topics.
Customize this infographic template and make it your own!Edit and Download
Presentation Template
Research projects and book reports have been assigned as presentations since we can all remember. Help your students create better presentations with our Visme templates for students.
Customize this presentation template and make it your own!Edit and Download
Timeline Infographic Template
Many assignments involve understanding how things happened over time. This type of visual can be apple to projects for history, literature, and social studies.
By creating a timeline infographic, students understand the process of the topic and enjoy creating it along the way.
Customize this infographic template and make it your own!Edit and Download
WIth Visme you can also create any type of graphic organizer from scratch using the free design tools that come built-in with the editor.
Watch the video below to learn more about graphic organizers and how to create one.
2. Google Classroom
Google Classroom is the low-key most versatile online teaching tool available.
This Learning Management System (LMS) is part of G Suite, which means teachers can use Google apps to create lessons, quizzes and documents all inside Google Classroom.
To use the Google Classroom app, you’ll need a G Suite for Education account. Many schools and teachers transitioned to this LMS when schools were closed due to the pandemic.
For anyone using Google products regularly, Google Classroom is easy to tackle. Inside the app, educators offer the content for the lessons, quizzes, assessments, and tests. They can also communicate with the students and parents via message boards or email.
The best thing about Google Classroom is that you can create all the content for your classes with the software of your choice. For example, you can simply use Google apps to prepare lesson materials or import any visual created with Visme.
In 2020, Google Classroom is easier to integrate with Google Meet, the new version of Google Hangouts. This has made it even easier to conduct an online class.
3. Zoom
You might know Zoom from business meetings but did you know that it also works great for online teaching?
There are two ways of using Zoom; Meetings and Webinars. The most suited for interactive online teaching is Zoom Meetings, while Zoom Webinars is better for lectures. Teachers can choose with which to work at any given time.
Zoom Meetings have practical features that make online teaching easier, such as breakout rooms. These help teachers separate the students into groups, much like you would do in a normal classroom setting.
Each group can communicate with each other and the teacher can be notified to come in and help if needed. Since Zoom became so popular for distance learning, many other online teaching tools have incorporated seamless integrations.
4. A Web Whiteboard App
AWW App is the perfect solution for teachers that are used to having a board to write on during class. This is a digital whiteboard where teachers can annotate much like on a regular board.
The integration between AWW and Zoom makes it easier than ever to teach a class online. You can also import PDF and PowerPoint files into AWW.
This app is great for teachers that enjoy explaining things by showing how it’s done.
The boards can be pre-created before a lesson or written on during the lecture. The settings permit students to collaborate or “come up to the board.”
5. Ted Talks
Ted Talks are a great resource for online teaching. We wouldn’t exactly call it a tool, but more of a repository.
Ted’s website offers videos of 18-minute speeches by influential speakers on a variety of topics. There are even some Ted talks by kids, which can be greatly inspiring for students.
Best of all, every talk is free to include in lessons. The videos can be embedded or shared with a link. They’re easy to incorporate with any LMS.
Online tools used in this research and how they were used
A variety of online tools utilised by undergraduate and postgraduate students were involved in this research. The tools included blogs, discussion boards, wikis and 3D virtual worlds. An explanation of each of these tools follows.
Blogs
Blogs are an information portal but began as an online diary. They enable the sharing of information and encourage collaboration. Entries are typically ordered by date, with the most recent posting at the top. Blogs were developed in the mid 1990s (Wikipedia 2010), known as a weblog which was eventually shortened to the term “blog” (Gregory 2013). “Blogging software encourages students to thinking deeper in relation to their learning and engage in discussions” (Masters et al. 2015, online).
Blogs enable a number of metacognitive and self-regulatory processes to be practiced and enhanced. As an online diary, reflection on self-knowledge including memories, knowledge of personal theories and capabilities, self-awareness and self-understanding are encouraged. There are also opportunities for the author to reflect on their knowledge of self-systems including self-efficacy, self-concept, self-esteem and self-appraisal (Tarricone 2011). The educator can manipulate which skills they wish to encourage within the blog by carefully designing guiding questions to elicit purposeful reflection. Teachers should also be very aware of the audience and design the question accordingly. If, for example, a large group will be reading the blog, the teacher needs to ensure that students do not share personal or offensive information that will negatively impact on the students’ experience of the unit, or the audience.
Metacognitive reflection offers a powerful skill set students should be encouraged to use. These skills include “reflective thinking – purposeful reflection, higher-order reasoning, critical reflection, critical thinking and reflective judgments” (Tarricone 2011, p. 199). Once again, careful design of the task can elicit enhanced practice of any one or multiple skills. For example, higher-order reasoning requires the learner to make connections with prior knowledge and understanding in order to build new knowledge. A task could be designed asking students to explain their understandings about a topic before completing new readings and then explain how their attitudes may or may not have altered as a result of the new information.
Discussion boards
Discussion boards are also known as bulletin boards or forums and are used to post information, ideas or questions enabling others to respond asynchronously. Whereas a chatroom is used for responding to posts straight away, a discussion board enables someone to make a considered response because they have time to think about how to respond, before posting.
All units conducted by the authors have used discussion boards to communicate with students within the university’s designated LMS. Moodle has been the LMS of choice at UNE since 2011. Information is disseminated wide scale and is relatively easy using a discussion board. Students use the discussion board to post queries and/or respond to other students. They make statements and share information and resources. Discussions are often channeled by the academic, such as through Unit Announcements (sent to all students via email and also posted on the discussion board); Introductions (where students get to know each other at the beginning of a course); Assessment Tasks (where questions and answers in relation to specific assessment topics can be posted); Administration (where students could ask administrative-type questions that were not related to an assessment task, for example, how to complete forms or find them on the UNE website); General Discussion (students could generally add posts here that were not related to another of the other topics, for example, they may add a YouTube video that was relevant to the unit, but not specific to assessment tasks); and the Coffee Shop (this was a space just for the students. Questions by the academics were not answered here and it was not monitored. This space gave students an online presence and private space with their peers).
Participation in the discussion boards was voluntary (unless there was an assessment task around the posts). Students were encouraged to ask their questions here in case they were pertinent to other students.
Careful consideration of responses on discussion boards gave students the opportunity to reflect on what information they wished to share with their online peers. Less confident students may use the opportunity to read other students’ work before committing their own responses to the board. In this way, they may choose to monitor and control clarity and accuracy of the type of information they wish to share, reflective of self-regulation. The more complex the task set by educators within discussion boards, the more likely the task would elicit critical thinking or reflection (Tarricone 2011); however, the task also needed to be age-appropriate and skill-based according to the learning cohort.
Conclusion
Some online education review tools are more diabolic than others . It might be essential not to trust new online education review tools before trying them. Best way to check each educational resource is by visiting their website and looking at various details about the product or service. Online teaching has completely transformed the way we explore ideas with people from all over the globe. There are many different online teaching tools which can engage students in a different way.
Technology is no longer an option, it’s a requirement. In today’s digital world, your institution needs to continually evolve. Online education review tools are in most cases part of a broader initiative to improve student learning outcomes, and meet the increasing demand for more flexible learning options