Nowadays, there are a number of online teaching aids for science to help teachers teach science. One of the best free online teaching tools that is beginning to see immense popularity is educational videos. These videos are effective means to aid in the science teaching process while also providing entertainment.
Online teaching aids help teachers to make their lesson plans effective. These tools are the easiest and most budget-friendly way to train teachers and provide them with the knowledge they need to teach their students.
With Online Teaching Aids for Science, teachers have a specific resource to help them plan and present valuable science lessons. The authors are educators with decades of classroom experience who have learned what works and how to convey it so that other teachers can get similar results.
Trying to help your students with their science homework can be frustrating. Free online teaching aids, also known as online educational materials and online teaching tools, can help. Free online learning aids can make a big difference in helping your students learn more in a self-paced way. In this article, we’ll cover various free online education tools that are available today.
What is teaching aids?
Education is an integral part of the society. Everyone must get an education and teaching students is not an easy profession and even to get knowledge is not easy as it sounds. So, teaching aids are necessary today. It promotes students to learn and engage them in learning in various engaging ways.
For years, only textual structure had been followed to teach, but now different types of teaching aids are available such as video audio, and others.
Dialpad
Dialpad has a VoIP for education solution that provides an easy to use application for schools where teachers & students can meet, text, chat, and interact online.
Students can engage with teachers within virtual classrooms using screen sharing, whiteboarding, and chat features. Teachers can also set office hours, share class recordings, and connect with the faculty all within the same platform.
Dialpad is accessible on a variety of devices, including tablets, smartphones, computers, and laptops. Using Dialpad helps to reduce IT overhead for schools, and removes the requirement for hardware.
Teachers can meet students remotely, and create online classes instantly from anywhere in the world. They can also send out bulk SMS messages to check in with students on assignments, send updates, and announcements. Schools can set up advanced call routing rules for students to reach the correct department or desk, so teachers never have to worry about missing important phone calls.
There are so many features available on Dialpad, that we couldn’t even fit all of them here. For teachers interested in an all-in-one application, Dialpad offers a free 14 day trial.
LightSail
One of the most challenging things to keep up with is your students’ literacy progress. This is true both online and in face-to-face classrooms.
LightSail is a program that has already been showing positive results in classrooms. Now, with the spread of online learning, their team has adapted to educative solutions provided.
The LightSail app provides students with a variety of reading material to improve their literacy. The app tracks how much each student reads and how they are improving.
Teachers can create lesson plans around what their students enjoy reading, be it a book, or a website. Everything the student reads can be turned into a learning opportunity.
Remind
A big part of school education is communicating with both students and parents. This is no different when the learning is being done online.
The Remind App is an advanced messaging system that works in three different ways:
- Reminders for upcoming lessons or due dates of projects and tests
- Email messaging with students and parents
- Direct messaging with parents of students
The main feature of Remind is that all notifications are sent to mobile devices, making it easier for teachers to interact with students and parents.
The app can be integrated with Google Classroom and Google Drive for easy access to class materials. Also, it’s easy to send links to Zoom meetings and webinars.
Teachers can set up office hours for timely messaging and control over their private lives.
Pear Deck
Pear Deck is the perfect add-on for teachers who regularly use Google Slides and Microsoft PowerPoint. It improves interactivity and the quality of visuals on the teacher’s slides.
The add-on is available in the editor and also includes a teacher platform to help keep track of student participation during class.
When you open the PearDeck add-on in your Google Slides or Microsoft Powerpoint software, it’s available in a sidebar. All the features are accessible from right inside the editor and can improve your presentations to a great degree.
Kahoot! (See their Biology and Chemistry offerings)
Kahoot! is an educational tool that can be used on any device that has wifi (even smartphones!). This tool can be used in a classroom to pit students against one another in a game setting. Or students can play by themselves to test their own knowledge. Either way, this resource appeals to the competitive spirit!
Discovery Education
If you are looking for free, standards-based digital content, look no further. This website has resources for students, parents, and educators. On this site, you’ll find games and get homework help. There are even resources for other subjects, though their Science tools are exceptional. For teachers (including homeschool parents), this website acts as a great way to connect with other educators.
Froguts
If you don’t want to cut open a frog on your dining room table, this software has incredible virtual dissection labs that bring science into your home (but not on your table). Though this resource is a paid subscription, the experience is well worth the cost. Topics integrate new NGSS standards (Next Generation Science Standards) and inquiry-based learning.
The Physics Classroom
Need a resource that’s active on twitter? Follow @physxclassroom and your students will love the real-life examples that bring Physics concepts to life. Their website features tutorials, interactives, concept builders, and teacher resources. You won’t want to miss this one-stop Physics shop!
Skype
As an online teacher, you have probably already harnessed the power of video conferencing to chat with students or content area experts all over the world. And you probably already know about Skype, as it’s been around for at least a decade.
Effective and easy to use, Skype has helped countless online educators bring language and culture to life in their classrooms. Some teachers even enjoy the fun of a unique activity called Mystery Skype, in which classes converse and have to guess what country the other class is from based on their conversation.
Skype has undergone many changes and updates over the years, and has some new and compelling features that you may not know about. For example, it’s “Capture” feature allows you to easily add images, attach funny GIPHY comments and add videos within a message thread. This can give online conversation a whole new dimension of realism. Imagine a lecturer on Spanish architecture including real-life photos and video of the buildings as he talks about them, or a conversation about French food enlivened with real video footage of a meal as the speaker describes it.
Zoom
In addition to Skype, another free video conferencing tool called Zoom has recently come on the scene. It functions similarly to Skype, but offers a number of extra features that lend themselves exceptionally well to collaboration. Its unique “Zoom rooms” make group calls a breeze, facilitating collaborative work as well as conversations with other classrooms around the world. Another advantage that Zoom has over Skype: you can record conversations to use for later assessment and feedback, an invaluable tool for helping your students improve.
LiveBinders
Remember those old three-ring binders? They were stuffed with lecture notes, handouts, worksheets and homework in various stages of completion. The idea was to keep everything needed for one class organized in one place—but sadly, this commendable goal often went awry.
LiveBinders is technology’s answer to all that old-school paper wrestling and desperation. You can easily upload presentations, documents, worksheets and web resources, appropriately organized under relevant tabs. This makes it easy for students and parents to see what they need to work on and to track their progress. As an added bonus, it greatly simplifies co-teaching, as lesson plans can be easily shared for collaboration.
Planboard
If you struggle with finding or creating just the right template to use for your online lessons, Planboard truly is a lifesaver. You can set up easy-to-use templates aligned to your curriculum standards, which can be used over and over again. You can even add an entire semester’s worth of lesson plans to be tweaked and used again next year (with some improvements, of course). Attachments and images can be added to your lessons with ease.
Even better: you can access the app from any device, so it’s easy to make adjustments to your lessons while you’re on the go.
Actively Learn
The Actively Learn website is a specialized platform to teach ELA, Science and Social Studies. It’s easily integrated with most LMS like Google Classroom and Canvas.
What stands out about Actively Learn is the way the readings are set up for both students and teachers. It’s the perfect platform for blended learning, and just as easy to use as an online learning teaching tool.
Each article, video or book excerpt has a set of questions, vocabulary features and further reading for the student. The features for teachers include suggested lesson plans and further assignments.
Science Friday
People spend, on average, 4 hours a day listening to audio. Want to tap into podcasts as a medium for your students? Science Friday produces a weekly podcast that tackles various scientific topics. A few recent topics include:
- October 6, 2017: The U.S. government has big trouble managing mustangs. Plus, the ABCs of altcoins, blockchains and cryptocurrency.
- September 22, 2017: Why long dead dinosaurs have plenty to teach us about our future earth. And wildfires have scorched 8.5 million acres of land this year—a look at what’s fueling these fires.
What Are The Need Of Teaching Aids
Teachers use a variety of tools to make the process of teaching and learning simple, interesting, and effective which makes it easier for the teacher to teach even the most difficult subject. It also makes sense and saves time as students learn very quickly by watching rather than reading. Therefore teachers use teaching aids.
- There are many students with a tendency to forget easily. Such students can get benefits with teaching aids.
- Teaching aids make the subject interesting and encourage students to learn it in depth.
- Teaching aids help to understand the concept easily and grasp it completely.
- With teaching aids, students can understand the concept by making the proper image of the topic.
- Teaching aids enhance the conceptual thinking of students.
- Teaching aids do not make the concept boring instead it creates the environment of interest and makes it interesting to learn.
- With the help of teaching aids, students can learn with accuracy and even faster.
- It is proved that learning with visual representation stays in memory for a longer time than textual representation. It impacts better with direct experience.
Conclusion
Beyond the internet, online tools play an important role in science education. It is an opportunity for teachers to engage students with fun and interactive science lessons. Science teaching aids can be used in anytime and anywhere learning, thus helping students to overcome the typical classroom environment which limits across countries borders. This article discusses about the importance of online teaching tools for science and its influence on global learning community with some useful suggestion for using online science teaching aid to enhance digital citizenship as well as skills of students.
Teaching tools are generally physical objects or devices that can help you with your teaching. A tool is a device used to support, move, lift, hold, fasten, or apply force in the manner required. A collection of online teaching aids for science, engineering and information technology educators. These self-study aids are intended to help you better prepare for your classroom lecture presentations.