When using online whiteboard tools for teaching, your students will see that you are tech-savvy. Get ready to take teaching to the next level! Use this blog post as a guide to learn more about the advantages of using online whiteboard tools for teaching.
So, let’s look at some online teaching tools for teachers.
iSpring Free
iSpring Free is an eLearning authoring tool that allows you to turn boring PowerPoint presentations into mobile-compatible online courses with quizzes. The main advantage of the tool is its simplicity. Its intuitive interface enables any novice course developer to create an unlimited number of courses quickly and easily.
2. Kahoot
Kahoot is a game-based learning platform that lets you create fun learning games. You can make quizzes on any topic and in any language, and customize those quizzes with videos, diagrams, and images. Students participate in “kahoots” (games) by logging the game codes on their device or application.
3. Edpuzzle
With Edpuzzle, you can create interactive video lessons with embedded audio notes, assessments, and quizzes. Its analytics tool enables you to track how students are watching your videos and if they understand the content.
4. Starfall
Starfall is an online service that was initially designed to teach children to read. Its phonics-based learning model supports online games and print series, which can be downloaded for use at home and in the classroom. Now, it also features animated songs, movies, and mathematics activities for Pre-K, Kindergarten, and Grades 1 to 3.
5. SpellQuiz
SpellQuiz is another online service that is mainly focused on helping kids and adults to learn phonics. The platform contains English spelling lessons for individuals from Grade 1 to Adult, as well as fun quizzes and word games.
6. Quizzizz
Quizzizz is a web-based assessment tool that allows you to present quizzes on science, social sciences, computer science, technical education, and art to students as a timed test or homework with a specified deadline.
. Plickers
Plickers is a card activity that lets you poll your class, without the need for student devices. You just need to give each student a card (a “paper clicker”) and use your Android smartphone or tablet to scan them to do instant checks for understanding, exit tickets, and impromptu polls.
10. Powertalk
Powertalk is a presentation enhancement tool that automatically speaks your PowerPoint slides. When compared to other common ‘text-to-speech’ programs, Powertalk can speak text as it appears and can also speak hidden text attached to images.
11. FreeOnlineSurveys
FreeOnlineSurveys is a tool for building online tests, surveys, and forms. You can create quizzes using the drag-and-drop builder and 22 question types and fields, share them with your students and staff members, and analyze responses with its data reporting tool right from your mobile devices.
12. JeopardyLabs
JeopardyLabs is an online service that enables you to build Jeopardy games without PowerPoint, by using a simple editor. You can also choose from ready-made games created by the platform users on such subjects as foods, cities, countries, books, and hygiene.
13. Edgames
Edgames is an edutainment tool that provides educational activities, including board games, scrambled word games, sports-based games, and cards. You can help your students learn and understand personal hygiene, nutrition, current affairs, and many other things through playing games.
CommonLit
CommonLit is a database of literary instructional materials that you can use to develop lessons. You can choose a lesson from the digital library, share it with your students, assign them text-based questions, and analyze their performance.
8. Quill
Quill is a platform that has a set of tools for teaching writing, vocabulary, and grammar and includes over 400 exercises. You can guide your students to learn by reconstructing sentences, proofreading passages, writing new passages, and more.
Quizizz is a free online learning game site that is incredibly easy to use, has zillions of already-made games on just about every topic that are fun activities for reinforcement and formative assessment, and has recently added a simplified Nearpod-like feature (for those of you familiar with that popular tool) called student-paced “Lessons.” My students love playing Quizizz games in teams divided into separate Zoom breakout rooms. Unlike other game sites, students can see the question and the possible answers on the same screen and don’t have to split them into two.
Baamboozle is another free online game site. Its main advantage is that it’s set up so that students can play online in teams, but they don’t have to go into different breakout rooms. In other words, students can select a question to answer and talk among themselves in front of others to determine the correct answer (other students are waiting for their turn to choose another question). If that explanation is a bit confusing, it will be very clear once you go to the site itself.
Quill is a free and amazing site where students can learn grammar in a nonpainful way. I use it with my English-language-learner classes, but students of all English-proficiency levels would find it helpful. I love that after periodic “diagnostics,” it recommends which exercises students should move onto for additional practice.
You can read more about how I use these tools, and others, in my recent post, First Quarter Report on What I’m Doing in Full-Time Distance Learning & How It’s Going.
Now, it’s time to move on to responses from today’s guests….
Online math tools
Theresa Wills, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of mathematics education in the School of Education at George Mason University, where she works with in-service mathematics specialists and preservice elementary and secondary teachers. Theresa has taught synchronous online classes and webinars since 2010 and researches teaching practices that are adaptable to the online environment. She is a former classroom teacher and math coach who still volunteers weekly in K-12 classrooms. She is the author of the forthcoming book Teaching Math at a Distance, Grades K-12: A Practical Guide to Rich Remote Instruction.
My go-to tools this year are grounded in collaboration, interaction, and student voice. They provide equitable opportunities for students’ access to the same kinds of mathematical reasoning, thinking, and discourse while learning remotely that they would if they were learning face to face. Here are three examples.
Google Slides – This quintessential, simple, and free tool gives teachers the security and flexibility to create interactive activities while releasing ownership to the students. By inviting students to the shared slide in edit mode, and practicing netiquette norms, students can type ideas into text boxes, paste images that express their opinions, manipulate game pieces, and insert screen shots of their work from third-party apps. The pedagogical magic is revealed when teachers and students can observe and modify each other’s responses, in real time.
This slide shows the work of four students in a small breakout room as they used models to describe a growing pattern.
Math Learning Center – This virtual manipulative website is a staple in mathematics classrooms where students interact with familiar manipulatives such as base 10 blocks. Teachers can customize the site by creating problems, saving templates, and sharing private links with students. The best part is that the tools encourage flexible thinking as students explore multiple ways to model their understanding.
Using this template, two students show unique ways to use the tools to solve the problem.
Image by Theresa Wills
Image by Theresa Wills
Student work #2
FlipGrid – You might be familiar with this website’s ability to capture short videos of students’ responses, but what puts it in another league is the ability for back and forth video dialogue between students.
This gives access to more students and opens possibilities for collaboration. A kindergarten student can count toys over video, and their friends can ask follow-up questions such as, “How many are pink?” and then upload a video response. English- and world-language learners can practice new speaking skills while previewing and editing their video responses as they master pronunciation. This tool gives students the ability to engage in rich peer-to-peer collaboration.
Peardeck
Laurie Manville is an ELD/AVID Excel teacher and ed- tech virtual tech-team coach at Brookhurst Junior High, as well as a 7th grade ELA teacher with Cambridge Virtual Academy, both in the Anaheim Union High School district in California. She enjoys helping her students figure out what they are meant to do in life and guiding teachers in lesson-design creation. In her free time, you will usually find her backstage (or near a stage) assisting with line memorization, costumes, or concessions; analyzing a screenplay; or at home journaling or mastering PiYo.
Laurie Manville blogs with Dr. Alva Lefevre at L&M Educational Consulting on their Facebook page and their new website Educators in the Know:
One of my top “go-to” online tools would have to be Peardeck.
Conclusion
As a teacher, you know what is important in your daily work: Providing your students with interesting and individual lessons and making the most out of class time. But for this, interactive whiteboards (IWB’s) are the perfect tool that will get you organized and give your students a visual learning experience. With online whiteboards or offline whiteboards, there are lots of effective methods to get the most out of your students.