Online teaching - ideas

Hi,

Lots of school are currently being closed because of the coronavirus epidemic. As a result many teachers have been forced to start teaching online - myself included. Perhaps it would be a good idea to share information about resources and software which could help us cope with this unusual situation.

At the same time let me add that
All the best to everyone,

Ania

Moodle is free and open source.
https://moodle.org/

Liveworksheets.com - free resources, teachers can create their own worksheets easily (for free!) and assign them as homework for their students. Then track their progress, send back annotations. You can use the worksheets during your online lesson too. A great website.

My school is using Zoom. Whiteboards is a great tool (playing games on it, letting students draw and write, presenting and illustrating language), sharing screen (your PowerPoint slides, docx or PDF documents, images). I also play Trivia quizzes with my students (check YouTube). You can also send files over chat (e.g. homework).

I still prefer to use Skype for online lessons to be honest although I have heard good things about zoom

Zoom is booming in these coronavirus shutdown days, and many security issues are being exposed.

Tdol said:

Zoom is booming in these coronavirus shutdown days, and many security issues are being exposed.

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Hi there,

I am currently writing a master's thesis on professional development for online teachers. If people have a few minutes spare, I would be extremely grateful if you could complete my online questionnaire. All responses are totally anonymous.

Many thanks in advance!
J

Post a link to it.

Bad Idea said:

OK, maybe I can start.

Zoom - that's whatI'm using to meet my students now. It's the leading platform for onlinemeetings - perfect for online teaching, it gives you access to a whiteboard andlets you share your screen with your students. You can find a couple oftutorials on Youtube which show how it works. At the moment Zoom is free forteachers.

I'm alsoplanning to learn how to use Skype's option to share my screen since Googlesays it's possible.

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BadIdea, please note the parts I have marked in red above. It looks as if you pasted the text in from somewhere else. When you do that, spaces can be lost. Just make sure you check your posts before submitting them if you paste text again. Thanks.

Hi! So, just in case any of you are ESL teachers, teaching kids that speak Spanish, or you have kids that speak Spanish and want them to start learning some English, I have a YouTube Channel where we teach English vocabulary and life values through play and stories. It's mostly targeted to kids from 0 to 6 years old, but pretty much anyone can watch it. Here it is if you want to check it out: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZ40B1nB86B7HSdDK2H8DBQ :-D

Hi,

I am new to teaching online and just getting things set up, what I notice is a trend towrads Zoom. Skype although still popular, just doesn't seem to cut it anymore.. Also Wechat is the number 1 app with Chinese students.

Hello everyone,

After trying to use Skype and Zoom for teaching I accidentally stumbled upon an educational platform called iDialogue and have been using it for several months. The platform lets you arrange class-to-class calls (it has inbuilt video conferencing tools) in order to foster collaborative learning and it also has tools for monitoring student performance. Moreover, what I like is that every Friday their ESL teachers organize virtual city tours and my students get to communicate with these wonderful experts and see various countries with their own eyes. Everything is free of charge. If you want to join them, find a FB group called iDialogue educators community and join it. I joined it 4 months ago and I do not regret it and always recommend it to my friends.

Janedelacroix said:

Hello everyone,

After trying to use Skype and Zoom for teaching I accidentally stumbled upon an educational platform called iDialogue and have been using it for several months. The platform lets you arrange class-to-class calls (it has inbuilt video conferencing tools) in order to foster collaborative learning and it also has tools for monitoring student performance. Moreover, what I like is that every Friday their ESL teachers organize virtual city tours and my students get to communicate with these wonderful experts and see various countries with their own eyes. Everything is free of charge. If you want to join them, find a FB group called iDialogue educators community and join it. I joined it 4 months ago and I do not regret it and always recommend it to my friends.

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Is it free?

emsr2d2 said:

Is it free?

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The Facebook group is free, of course. But it looks like iDialogue is not free and Jane's post is a promo. However I've not deleted it, pending concurrence from other mods.

Bad Idea said:

Hi,

Lots of school are currently being closed because of the coronavirus epidemic. As a result many teachers have been forced to start teaching online - myself included. Perhaps it would be a good idea to share information about resources and software which could help us cope with this unusual situation.

At the same time let me add that

I know teaching online can be a luxury. In some rural areas in my country people are still unable to access the Internet and some students cannot afford a good Internet connection or a computer/smartphone. I am sorry if this is something you experience.​

All the best to everyone,

Ania

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Hi!

I've been teaching online since feb now and apart from the internet issues you mentioned, one thing I miss about face to face classes is the ability to hand out material in the moment and have students be able to start working on material straight away without having to download or finding themselves trying to deal with ineditable PDFs etc.

So I wanted to share this webapp that I've developed with a friend. I've been using it for the last few months and it's really streamlined the way I share material. Basically you can share pdfs and pics via a url link via the chatbox on zoom etc and students can open it and start interacting with it (typing/drawing) instantly.

Hopefully I'm not breaking any rules here but if anyone feels like it might be useful, it's absolutely free and you can check it out at at www.thinkio.it

It's made by teachers for teachers!

Happy teaching

Dan

Why do you favour one browser?

Tdol said:

Why do you favour one browser?

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Hi Tdol. You can use any browser, but since we do most of our testing on chrome we're able to guarantee it.

We're actually about to release an update to allow teachers to view and mark students' work. I'd love to get some feedback from you if you fancy giving it a go It'll be available from tomorrow morning (9am GMT).

www.thinkio.it

I started using SonicLMS. You can build an entire website around it and it's relatively easy to use. You can create courses, lessons, exercises, quizzes, upload learning materials to lessons etc.
Oh, and it's free

Welcome back after 14 years, dtommy79!

Please check your profile information. It says your current location is the UK but your current IP address indicates that that's not the case.