As a matter of fact, competent teachers understand that education may be organized in multiple different ways. Due to the pandemic caused by the spread of the coronavirus, distant learning with the use of digital tools, such as Skype, Zoom, Google Hangouts, and others, has become highly essential. In general, they provide an opportunity to communicate in real-time using all types of electronic devices.
The use of Skype in a classroom setting provides multiple learning opportunities for students, especially for those who do not have access to the Internet at home. Via Skype, a teacher may organize virtual field trips and connect his students with experts from historical sites, museums, and national parks (GoGardian Team, 2020). In the same way, authors may be invited to discuss their books with classes. In addition, using Skype, teachers may conduct a shared lesson by connecting two classrooms even from different parts of the world for cultural exchange and sharing knowledge and experience.
In addition, a teacher may use Skype to connect with a student who has Internet access individually in order to help with learning. The tool is easily accessible from PCs, mobile phones, and tablets and may work even from W-Fi hotspots. Along with an opportunity to make audio and video calls, Skype allows sharing documents, spreadsheets, files, screenshots, messages, and photos. Moreover, with a group call, teachers may organize teacher/parent conferences in order to distribute information between a group of people simultaneously. One of Skype’s useful options in relation to groups is the tool’s opportunity to save these groups – once they are created, they are permanent.
Similar to Skype, Zoom also helps classes all over the world stay connected with each other, discuss various topics with experts, and work on projects. With a help of Zoom, students who do not have an opportunity to be present at lessons may still participate in the learning process. In addition, one teacher may monitor several groups of students occupied with projects to approve or correct the process.
With the function of gallery view, all students who participate in a lesson are visible. Zoom allows screen sharing, recording video calls, messaging, and content sharing. It facilitates teacher-student communication as well – with it, teachers may organize individual homework help, tutorial, and review sessions that may be saved and viewed by a student to understand a topic better. Finally, Zoom also supports the function of a group call – that is why this synchronous collaborative tool is highly useful for online meetings with parents and conferences among teachers that can be organized and scheduled automatically.
Google Hangouts provides great opportunities for classes to collaborate and learn together as well. Teachers may organize live lectures and involve hundreds of students simultaneously. With Google’s app Jamboard, they may graphically present a lesson’s plan, take a poll, place virtual sticky notes, and even play games. All these options help to vary the learning process and keep students involved. In addition, Jamboard may be used in the individual conversation between a teacher and a student. For example, some tasks may be prepared in a form of a quiz to help a student check his knowledge quickly and comprehend information directly.
Finally, Google Hangouts is highly useful for teacher-parent conferences, during which an educator may not only communicate with all parents but show students’ works or other essential written information using a document camera or via a slideshow.
Reference
GoGardian Team. (2020). Teacher cheatsheet: How to use Skype as your classroom. Web.