In the present virus crisis situation the online teaching is coming to the front and it is imperative that teachers have to search and adapt to the online teaching tools for teaching to their students. This article details some of the teaching apps useful for the teachers.
Introduction
Before the Covid-19 era, the online education was existing but it was limited to the extent that mostly it was taken up by some employees who wanted to increase their skill levels while pursuing their jobs. In addition some unemployed people also joined it as an interim measure to remain in touch with their subject and add to their knowledge. Now the situation is different. The present virus threat does not seem to end so early as was being envisaged earlier. So it becomes necessary for the teachers to gear up themselves for teaching to the students online. They have to get some app which has all the facilities of giving assignment, getting feedback and preferably interaction with parents. There is a urgent need of adopting to these apps by the teacher for making their career successful in the online arena.
Various types of apps
Due to the urgent need of the teachers there has risen a demand for these apps and though there are many already existing, newer ones are being inducted in the market. Let us go through some of these apps and how they help teachers in educating their students.
Evernote: This is a popular app used by the teachers and is very convenient for passing the notes to the students who can study it and make some mini notes on their own and then thrash it. It is also a good app for quick feedback on notes and hands out. Parents can also share the notes and see the progress of the children
Slack: This is a good tool in the hands of the teacher and it can be integrated with Google docs and hangouts. Many teachers can coordinate and participate in this in a project being undertaken by the students.
Schoology: This is a cloud based app and includes security based architecture for the students. Here the students can post their homework or views or videos etc. It is a versatile tool. Teachers have to get accustomed to it before using it fully for their purposes.
ClassDojo: This is a good app and engages the students and they can be engaged in it through reward system based on their performance. So there is some motivational element in it.
Edmodo : Some teachers like this tool as it has good facility for student feedback on 1 : 1 basis. Students also find this app as easy to handle. It is a popular tool.
Socrtive: It has a quiz feature for assessing the understanding of the students and it has also a continuous grading system and assessment schedule.
Hopscotch : This one is basically for teaching the computer programming skills to the students through the interesting mode of game designing. It is a specific app for this purpose and teachers who are engaged in these tutorials can use it.
Instructables : This is an ideal app for science project sand do it yourself (DIY) projects. Students can participate in these projects and give their ideas continuously throughout the project execution.
Animoto : This app is for the animation and other such works being executed by the students and uploaded here for the scrutiny of the teacher. It is a popular platform for learning not only the animation techniques but also video making and captioning them. It is also a popular app.
Draw and Tell : This is basically for the children and helps them to create creative contents with the help of this platform under the guidance of the teacher. Children have to draw and create a story about it and then share it.
Duolingo : This is an app for learning languages and has got good reputation for this purpose. A teacher engaged in teaching particular language can definitely go for it.
Ted-Ed : In this platform the teacher can create lessons or presentations and then students can go through them and gibe their feedback. Videos and questions can be included for references. This is a popular app and is used by many teachers
Conclusions
There are many apps available in the market and can be downloaded from their sites or play store etc and some of them have free versions also but will have limited capability. So it would be desirable to go for premium versions. A teacher has to select an app from this wide list as per his area of education and need for his students. So once he chooses a program out of this he can use it fully in the specified ways for the benefit of his students. The success of the teacher would lie partially to the tool or app he is using to interact and communicate with his students.
