Did you know that the US spends just over 6% of its GDP on education, which is close to $1.2 trillion? But less than 3% of the money spent on schooling goes to technology. Even though the education industry has been slow to add new ways to learn using technology in the classroom, a lot has changed in the past few months.
The COVID-19 outbreak has caused lockdowns all over the world, so teachers have had to move their classes online. This, in turn, has caused the number of educational technology tools and apps to grow at a very fast rate. Most of the time, these tools are made to make learning fun, engaging, and enjoyable for students by giving them new ways to learn and remember things.
Student Resources for Online Classes
Since the Coronavirus outbreak started, students have been keeping up with their education by taking online video classes with their teachers. Even though there are a lot of new tools coming out in this area, here are the three most trusted ones for online classes.
- Zoom
Zoom was named the 2018 Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice for meeting solutions, and it is our top choice for online classes that need video conference tools. Zoom has temporarily removed the 40-minute time limit on its free basic accounts for elementary and middle schools hit by the Coronavirus. Zoom offers secure video conferencing for hybrid classes, admin meetings, office hours, and more.
Zoom makes audio and video calls with HD quality so that kids can learn better. Zoom has many features for working together, such as sharing material with one click, real-time collaboration, annotation, a digital whiteboard, and more. The ability to record lessons and transcribe them is a great feature that lets students take the lecture with them and learn at their own speed.
- Skype
Skype is a very popular app for video chatting, and it’s been around for more than 18 years. “Skype Meet Now” is a new feature from Skype that is a lighter option to “Zoom.” Meet Now lets you host a video conference without joining up for a service or downloading software. Teachers just need to set up a meeting room, send the link to the kids, and then start teaching.
Skype has a lot of functions that students will find useful. Students can go on virtual field trips with experts from historical places, museums and farms through video calls. With Mystery Skype, Skype instantly connects two different classrooms for one big video conference. This encourages cultural exchange and team building by bringing people from different backgrounds together. Teachers can also bring in guest speakers to help students learn more about a subject.
- GoToMeeting
GoToMeeting is another great video option that makes distance learning possible by making it easy for teachers to host classes. Teachers can easily give online classes to groups of anywhere from 25 to 250 students and work with them. Students can use cloud recording and transcripts, which are made possible by natural language processing, for virtual office hours and on-demand material.
GoToMeeting has a lot of tools for students to work together, like sharing files, instant chat, on-demand video conferencing, and screen sharing. GoToMeeting is a good choice for online classes and a worthy competitor to Zoom and Skype. It runs more than 50 million meetings every year.
List of Student Presentation Tools
Every modern classroom has a place for making slideshows and lectures. Presentations give students a chance to show how they think in front of the class. This helps them organize their ideas and explain them in a logical way.
- PowerPoint by Microsoft
We’re sure you’ve heard of Microsoft’s Powerpoint, which is used to make slideshows. Powerpoint has been around since 1987, before the internet, and is still the most popular way to make presentations and slides around the world. The slide creator in Powerpoint is easy to understand and use. Students can add images, text, fonts, and even 3D items to their slides and let their imaginations run wild.
Students can make presentations with Microsoft PowerPoint by using a stylus, touch, or even their voice. They can also use a mouse or keyboard. PowerPoint also has a tool called “Presenter Coach” that uses AI to help students parties their speeches and get advice on how to pace themselves, what words to use, and more.
- Prezi
Try Prezi, a new age presentation programme, if you find Microsoft Powerpoint too business or boring. Prezi is used by teachers to create fun and interactive presentations for their students. By allowing teachers to be there with the content on the screen at the same time, Prezi makes it simple to construct presentations and slideshows that students will actually pay attention to. Teachers, whether live or recorded, can teach content while keeping a human connection with their pupils, which other presenting techniques lack.
