As we go through the pandemic, we see that it has affected almost everything around us. One of the things that it has severely impacted is education. Parents, students, and teachers are worried about the state of education. Right now, the only question in everybody’s mind is when will the schools open. Experts in the field think it is still not a good idea to open schools.
Why?
First of all, there is no way that we can practice physical distancing in classes. For example, if a class has 30 students, there is no way we can create the distance that we should between students. Also, there’s no way to create that kind of distance in the hallways, in recess, or in other places. What happens when all the students exit the school at the same time?
Also, virologists still don’t have much information about how the virus acts with children. They don’t have authentic and verified data about the frequency of children being infected and the percentage of children showing symptoms in any community.
That is why having a non-traditional method of teaching is vital at this time.
Distance learning has always been part of the landscape and people have been using it for home-schooling and other purposes. But when the Covid-19 pandemic hit the globe, schools and other educational institutes were quick to implement it.
This eagerness to shift the entire educational framework form a traditional infrastructure to a digital one was wrought with problems and failures. No move of this magnitude can be done overnight. It also showed us just how prepared we were for such events.
This caused a lot of stress and trouble for everyone involved in education: teachers, students, and parents. But the people who were used to distance learning showed no signs of stress or boredom. That is because they had been using the technologies for a long time.
Distance learning is not a bad concept. In fact, it is the need of the hour. When implemented the right way, it can yield amazing results and provide an experience better than traditional ways of teaching and learning. You can contact an agency that provides software and application development services to create your own e-learning app or you can use the software and apps already available in the market.
Here, we give you some of the best tools to make distance learning worthwhile.
Panopto
Panopto has become very popular among various education institutes for its user-friendly interface and other options. It is basically a video content management platform. It allows you to capture lectures, lessons, and training videos as well as live-stream lessons. You can also publish your lessons easily through a safe portal.
Right now, institutes like Stanford and Oxford are using Panopto for their online educational purposes. You can avail a free trial and if you want to purchase it, you will get custom pricing.
Bloomz
If a teacher-parent conference is on your mind then you need not look any further than Bloomz. An amazing app that allows teachers and parents to come together and discuss problems and come up with solutions. The best part is that it is free. Teachers can share messages as well as snapshots with parents easily and comfortably. Parents can stay on top of the school calendar as well as participate in other events. It also allows teachers to manage and monitor students and their behaviors and offer rewards to the students who are doing well.
Edmodo
Edmodo is one of the best apps that we tested. It is easily available for iOS, Android, as well as web. Think of it as a social network for teachers, parents, and students. If you are a teacher, you can easily create classrooms, add your students to the class, and share multiple types of content with them. You can even create quizzes for them. There is a built-in planner for all events and a class folder so you can keep a profile on every student.
Google Classroom
No conversation about distance learning software is complete without Google Classroom. It is a free software that allows you to conduct your classes for any K-12 class and higher. It allows teachers to collaborate with others, create and grade projects, and conduct assessments. Also, you get access to Gmail, Google Slides, Google Docs, Google Spreadsheets, and much more. You also have access to Google Calendar which allows you to set the project submission dates and set the dates for future events. You can add multiple types of media so that your students can benefit from it.
Canvas LMS
Canvas is a Learning Management System (LMS). It is open-source software that provides the perfect learning environment for all students. The main goal of Canvas LMS is to allow teachers to focus on their students and take away their routine, repetitive, tasks, and automate them. It offers dynamic videos. This means that students can make comments, share, and give feedback to the teachers within the video timeline. This makes Canvas LMS more engaging and interesting for students. It also offers analytics to teachers. They can view the analytics of a single video or view the overall data of the entire class.
Conclusion
Due to the pandemic, we have had to drastically change the way we do things. One of these is the way we learn and teach. Innovation was coming to this field, but thanks to the pandemic, it picked up its pace. If you want to teach students in the new normal then make sure that you use the software and tools mentioned above.
