The Best Online Teaching Tools for Engaging Students Remotely
The ongoing digital change has greatly affected education. More and more teachers and students are using new technologies to help with learning. With remote learning becoming common, it’s important for teachers to find the best online tools to make their virtual classrooms exciting and interactive.
To help you sort through all the educational resources out there, we have put together a list of the top 14 online teaching tools that can improve your virtual teaching.
Let’s explore the best online teaching tools
1. Visme
Visme is a design tool that helps teachers and students create amazing presentations, infographics, concept maps, schedules, reports, and more. It has an easy drag-and-drop editor, a large library of free photos and graphics, and many customization options.
This makes it super simple for anyone, whether they are good at design or not, to make professional-looking visuals for their virtual classrooms.
How this Online Teaching Tool Can Help Teachers
Teachers constantly create content to facilitate learning, including slide presentations, fillable worksheets, and more. With a Visme education license, educators and students can collaborate on a creative and interactive learning experience using the platform’s integrated design tools. Some of the solutions Visme offers for educators include:
- Interactive content like 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
How Visme Can Help Students
Visme also assists students in completing their assignments for online classes. Teachers can assign various tasks to be created using the platform’s versatile tools. Some ways students can use Visme include:
- 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
Google Classroom is an incredibly versatile Learning Management System (LMS) that is part of G Suite. It allows teachers to create lessons, quizzes, and documents all within one platform.
With integration between Google apps, educators can offer content for lessons, quizzes, assessments, and tests, while also communicating with students and parents via message boards or email.
3. Zoom
Zoom is not only a popular choice for business meetings but also an excellent platform for online teaching. With two different modes – Meetings and Webinars, Zoom caters to various teaching styles. Zoom Meetings are perfect for interactive online teaching, while Zoom Webinars are ideal for lectures.
Zoom Meetings offer practical features such as breakout rooms, allowing teachers to divide students into groups similar to a traditional classroom setting. Each group can communicate with one another, and the teacher can be notified to assist if needed.
As Zoom gained popularity for distance learning, many other online teaching tools incorporated seamless integrations with it.
4. Ted Talks
Ted Talks serve as a valuable repository of knowledge for online teaching. These 18-minute speeches by influential speakers on a variety of topics can inspire and engage students in unique ways.
Teachers can easily incorporate these videos into their lessons by embedding them or sharing a link. They are a fantastic resource to supplement the learning experience in a virtual classroom.
5. Dialpad
Dialpad offers a VoIP for education solution that provides an easy-to-use application for schools where teachers and students can meet, text, chat, and interact online. With features such as screen sharing, whiteboarding, and chat, students can engage with teachers within virtual classrooms.
Dialpad is accessible on various devices, including tablets, smartphones, computers, and laptops. It helps to reduce IT overhead for schools and eliminates the need for hardware. Teachers can meet students remotely and create online classes instantly from anywhere in the world.
Additionally, they can send out bulk SMS messages to check in with students on assignments and send updates, and announcements.
If you want to learn more about teaching online, read our blog here: How to Start Teaching Japanese Students English: A Guide to the Best Platforms.
6. LightSail
Monitoring students’ literacy progress can be challenging, especially in an online learning environment. LightSail is a program that has demonstrated positive results in classrooms and has adapted its solutions to cater to online education.
The LightSail app provides students with a variety of reading materials to improve their literacy skills. The app tracks each student’s reading progress and improvements, allowing teachers to create lesson plans tailored to their students’ interests and needs.
7. Remind
Communication with both students and parents is crucial for a successful online learning experience. Remind is an advanced messaging system that helps educators stay connected with their students and their families.
Remind offers three different ways to communicate:
- Reminders for upcoming lessons or due dates of projects and tests
- Email messaging with students and parents
- Direct messaging with parents of students
All notifications are sent to mobile devices, making it easier for teachers to interact with students and parents. Furthermore, the app can be integrated with Google Classroom and Google Drive for easy access to class materials.
8. Pear Deck
Pear Deck is an amazing add-on for educators who frequently use Google Slides and Microsoft PowerPoint. It enhances the interactivity and visual quality of teachers’ slides, making their presentations more engaging and effective.
Accessible from within the Google Slides or Microsoft PowerPoint editor, Pear Deck offers a sidebar with various features that help you create more interactive and visually appealing presentations.
Actively Learn is a specialized platform designed to teach ELA, Science, and Social Studies with seamless integration with popular LMS platforms like Google Classroom and Canvas.
The platform’s unique setup allows both students and teachers to access a variety of reading materials, questions, vocabulary features, and further reading resources. Teachers can also create lesson plans and additional assignments using Actively Learn’s comprehensive features.
10. Padlet
Padlet is a versatile platform that allows users to collect information, visuals, videos, documents, and more in a digital corkboard format. Teachers can use Padlets to build group lessons, work on group projects, compile research for lectures, and much more.
Padlet is a popular choice among online educators, as it offers great flexibility in creating and sharing content for a highly interactive learning experience.
11. Thinglink
Thinglink is a platform dedicated to the creation of interactive visuals. It enables users to add interactive elements such as audio, text popups, and map location labels to images, videos, and 360-degree media.
This immersive online teaching tool can even be used to create VR-ready environments for students to explore at their leisure.
12. Edpuzzle
Edpuzzle is an app that transforms any video 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 seamlessly with Google Classroom and several other LMS platforms, making it an excellent addition to the flipped classroom method in both face-to-face and virtual classrooms.
13. Quizizz
Quizizz is a free quiz maker that caters to students of all ages. Teachers can create their own quizzes or choose from a vast gallery of pre-made quizzes available for free. This is a top way to make an interactive virtual classroom.
Quizzes can be easily integrated with Google Classroom or shared with a link. Teachers can also share quizzes as games and send the link to the Remind app and other online teaching tools.
14. Talking Points
Talking Points is a communication platform for teachers and families that helps bridge language barriers. Similar to the Remind app, Talking Points sends messages translated into the family’s chosen language, supporting over 100+ languages.
This app works on all mobile devices and is free for teachers, making it an invaluable tool for maintaining open communication with students and their families.
Another great way to create presentations is by using Canva! We go in more detail here : How To Teach Online with Canva: A Guide for 2024
Conclusion
Online teaching can be fun and tough at the same time. With the right tools, making an engaging and interactive virtual classroom is easy.
The online teaching tools in this article have different features to meet every teacher’s needs. So, check out these great resources and change your virtual teaching experience for the better!
