7 Essential Tools For Teaching Online

 

Do you have time to keep up with advanced teaching tools online? It is possible that you might feel encouraged but still a little befuddled.

For providing students with an improved digital learning experience, online classes are conducted with advanced applications. Moreover, when we start tinkering around to find these new teaching tools, we feel like our head is constantly whirling.

For teachers, keeping up with all the online tools out there looked like a challenge. However, the unexpected turn to remote teaching has left many teachers, and students suffered various challenges, from not having the internet to getting the proper tools to succeed the limits of online classes.

So how do you overcome all these issues and determine which will be the best-fitted teaching tools for your online classroom? Read further to see some exciting applications for teaching online that benefit you in every other way.

Enhance Your Virtual Classroom By Utilize Best Online Teaching Tools

- Online Whiteboards

You missed your whiteboards when you are not present in your classrooms. Isn’t it true? They are handy as everyone can easily see them, and even you can write and draw anything and then erase it in a second.

The concept of using a physical whiteboard goes away when you are teaching in an online classroom, but the need for a whiteboard never ends.

Digital whiteboards are the substitutes for physical whiteboards in online classrooms. They replicate the experience of a physical whiteboard for teachers as well as students.

These digital whiteboards offer shape libraries and premade templates that can be used to create content (visuals, charts, posters, diagrams, etc.). They also make it easier for anyone to access the online content created from their devices.

Some of the online whiteboards also offer built-in video conferencing and real-time collaboration features. It helps both the teachers and students to work together and track the changes made by each other.

Same as in a real classroom where everyone communicates around a whiteboard (or a blackboard), an online whiteboard also makes it possible to do so by :

• Making your online teachings more interactive 
• Writing, visualizing and drawing the theories online as you explain them to the students
• Allowing your students to participate actively
• Making presentations, posters, and other learning material for the online classroom

If you are already familiar with the online whiteboards, you must also know the steps that need to be followed. However, the ones who newly started their online classrooms didn’t know anything about it.

So here are some much-needed steps to be followed to study through Online/Virtual Whiteboard.

- Tablet, and Digital Writing Pad

You can access the online whiteboard on any device, whether it is a tablet or an iPad. However, when you use a laptop, it should be a touch screen, and if not, then any configurable digital writing pad can come in handy, such as XP Pen Digital Drawing Tablets and Stylus.

- Internet Connectivity

Working on an interactive whiteboard in the online classroom requires a high-quality internet connection for uninterrupted communication.

- Webcam and Headphones

Most of the Laptops have built-in webcams and speakers, so they do not require any 3rd party devices. But if you use PCs that don’t have a built-in webcam, then you need the one.

- Screen Sharing

You can use a screen-sharing feature that comes in online whiteboards to write & view an idea on the shared board in real-time with your students.

- Annotation Tools

Annotation Tools allows you and your students to read, write, edit and erase anything from the whiteboards.

- Work Planning Tools

The central part of the teacher’s job is to prepare learning and engaging exercises to demonstrate and meet the specific standards or objectives for the students.

The outline of teaching and learning has experienced a transformation, yet the primary role of lesson planning remains the same. Across the globe, all the teachers spend countless hours preparing the content to achieve a valuable outcome.

However, keeping a work plan is even more essential when you are teaching in an online classroom. A solid routine can benefit in maximizing the use of your precious time. 

For this purpose, you can use advanced lesson planning tools to plan the lessons efficiently and lighten the pressure of lesson planning.

You can use different digital work planning tools to-

• Create plans on which you have to work on further your online classes
• Create strategies for online courses and have everyone informed of dates and times  
• Create lesson plans and sharing them with students, supervisors, and collaborators

- Online Quiz Makers

With the growing competition, teachers and students demand to keep working out new techniques to teach and study.

One of the main goals as a teacher is to encourage students to absorb and learn as much knowledge as possible. Designing interactive lessons where they are fully engaged in the learning is one of the challenging tasks to overcome.

But what is backbreaking is if you are teaching virtually and your students are sitting on the other side of a computer screen.

While interactive lessons may look strange from virtual learning, they are not difficult to achieve. Thanks to technology, through which we can make education and learning fun.

Teachers can create assignments easily and quickly on tablets, laptops, or any other devices with the help of online quiz makers. These quiz markers also enable the teachers to create an answer sheet while preparing quizzes for the students.

- Communication Tools

The latest technology is allowing affluence of choices today for anything from communication to project supervision.

You can see that every developing business, either it is the standard education area or corporate area, is analyzing the eLearning method to encourage advanced learning beliefs.

Eliminate the separation of online education by allowing your students to communicate with you and each other while you’re taking lectures on a tablet, laptop, and other devices.

However, if you are using a desktop where the inbuilt webcam is not available in that case you need to use a webcam device to communicate with the students through which you can ask a question and also clear their doubts-

- Live Chat

You can do a live chat with the students, which permits them to make the actual conversations of the classroom into online education. Make sure that you fixed some instructions to confirm that everyone is listening.

- Social Media Tools

Social media and technology are essential parts of every day, and blending the value of these into studies is more common than before.

Social media platforms allow diverse ways to use in the classroom, from taking live lectures to sharing news, and so much more.

It provides a more direct and smoother communication tool between teachers, students, and their parents, who can stay in and ask or reply to questions.

Social media sites like WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. enable the formulation of particular communities or groups on which teachers can leverage for :

• Communicate and keep attendance after online class  
• Save and share valuable data, presentations, and other things related to lessons
• Manage Q&A sessions
• Carry live events such as webinars
• Urge students to keep communication among themselves and with each other while studying or doing homework 

- Fast & Reliable Internet Connectivity

The significance of a stable internet connection requires no redundancy. Some tips are given below, which helps you to choose the best internet service provider for the network connection-

• A connection should support at least 500 KB to 2 Mb per second bandwidth that helps in live chats and content upload. If you plan to proffer HD live classes as a portion of your online course, then you must go for tremendous bandwidth, i.e., 1.5+ Mb per second.
  
  
• If you get a Wi-Fi connection it sometimes serves to collapse due to various reasons like TV, microwave, and many more, so you should remember to keep your router far away from these gadgets.
  
  
• For a live online course, 3G and 4G networks give sufficient bandwidth.
  
  
• If the Wi-Fi signal is collapsing and you cannot bear to neglect your class, then, in that case, you embed the Ethernet cable immediately into your device’s port, considering a wired attachment is also reliable.

Graphic Tablet Or Display Tablet

Online teaching has instantly enhanced the unique pattern that permits you to join with your students from the convenience of your residence and a graphic tablet is something that’ll make your lectures seamless.

Be it drawing diagrams or solving equations, graphic tablets make everything easier.

Also read if you want to know, online design tools

FAQ's

1. Do I need any specific software to use pen tablets for online teaching?
- While some pen tablets come with proprietary software, many are compatible with popular online teaching platforms and whiteboard applications.

2. Can pen tablets work with different devices?
- Yes, pen tablets can be used with computers, laptops, and even some tablets, offering flexibility in your teaching setup.

3. Are pen tablets suitable for subjects beyond art?
- Absolutely. Pen tablets are versatile tools that can be used across various subjects, from mathematics to science and even language arts.

4. Do students need their own pen tablets to participate?
- No, students can follow along and engage with the content even without their own pen tablets. Educators can share their screen and interact using their tablet.

5. Are pen tablets user-friendly for educators who aren't tech-savvy?
- Yes, many pen tablets are designed with user-friendly interfaces, making them accessible to educators of all tech levels.

XP-Pen Tablet

XP-Pen offers a wide range of tablets for teaching online and is used by educators extensively across the globe. One of the favorites for online teaching is Deco 01 V2 as it’s priced economically and comes with some great features.

E-Learning renders possibilities for every student; especially those students who live in distant places or regularly move can also take advantage of technology and remote learning awfully.

Hence, the teachers improve their teaching techniques and find a new tool to linger on top of everything.

In case you’re just starting out online teaching and not sure where to start from, we have created a guide that you can download. Download Online Teaching Guide.​