5 Innovative Tools That Can be Used in Education

There hasn’t been a precedent for COVID-19 in education. Certainly not with this impact nor for this version of the education system.

Both teachers and students are challenged to keep going without protocols.

How technology changed the education world?

Education and technology have always had an intimate relationship. The blackboard, the printing press, the pencil, and the ballpoint pen. At a certain point in history, these were all groundbreaking, novel innovations – to us they’re ancient history. A given. A starting point. The new frontier is the digital world.

We already have PowerPoint presentations and student movies, but thanks to mobile applications and the improvement of video recording, we’re at a new precipice. Processes that may have taken a while to naturally develop have accelerated thanks to COVID-19.

When schools first shut down in 2020, it was a matter of do or die. Many schools managed to adapt to the challenges of social distancing through the implementation of e-learning, and it looks like the changes made during the early months of the pandemic are here to stay even now as some parts of the world are able to reopen.

What are some of the useful tools which can be used by students?

I’ve narrowed down my search to tools that help both students and teachers to make the remote school one idea easier. The list contains tools for learning, quizzing, researching and presenting, which overall makeup for a student’s day and responsibilities in the classroom and out.

Prezi

I don’t remember enjoying my time crafting presentations on PowerPoint in my school days. Ask any student today and they’d tell you it’s probably the only thing that has crossed the generational divide. There’s only so much you can do with PowerPoint and it’s not like our lives are becoming less dependent on multimedia.

Prezi shakes things up. It’s suddenly fun to create presentations just as much as it is to watch them. Students have more freedom in how to creatively express themselves and the fluidity of each slide and animation leaves PP in its dust. Say goodbye to export files. Just publish your presentation on your account and it’s there until you decide to delete them. Not to mention it’s useful for students who were not able to attend the presentation at the time.

Best of all students can present during video calls, because Prezi integrates effortlessly with Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Cisco Webex, GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar, Google Meet.

Chrome Classroom

The digitalization of the classroom has been happening way before the pandemic, but COVID-19 certainly speeded up the entire process. Google saw the opportunity to bring digital solutions to teachers as early as 2014, which is when Chrome Classroom made its debut.

Everything regarding the classroom has made the jump from analog to virtual. Teachers create classrooms, add students and have numerous capabilities that make support tasks such as class announcements and returning student feedback on their homework streamlined and centralized. A lot of labor is shaved off teachers’ itinerary – a miracle during the past two years.

Inoreader

Every student should use an RSS feed reader during their school career. It’s the easiest way to get the latest updates from your school administration and follow the school’s social media accounts. But the main use for RSS feed readers is research. Other than textbooks, you’ll have to do additional research on a topic whether that’s through a news site, blogs, social media accounts. RSS readers make the process effortless, because you consolidate and filter everything you need in one master feed that’s updated chronologically.

Inoreader is top of the line when it comes to research. Users gain access to popular RSS feeds in every major area of interest in its discovery zone. Add the Chrome extension to then save articles and subscribe to the site’s RSS feed while you’re on the tab. Plus, thanks to the tagging and folder functions, you can leave notes on articles and better structure your research.

Kahoot!

Class participation and engagement can be incredibly challenging when you’re teaching a class remotely and you have thirty people on a Zoom call. Communication suffers and much of the true spontaneity flies out the window. Kahoot! makes up for the limitations of remote learning. This tool creates in-class questionnaires and quizzes. Thanks to a minimalist and colorful UI, Kahoot! keeps students’ attention on your class.

Teachers can find multiple applications. Are you new to your class as a substitute? Use Kahoot! as a way to break the ice. Do you want to host a pop quiz? It’s what Kahoot! has been made for. Just as it’s suitable for creative interactive lessons and monitors who’s actually paying attention in class. Truancy presents a much bigger temptation for students when they’re studying from home and you can’t exactly know what they’re doing on their devices.

Quizlet

We’ve all made flashcards to help us study for an exam or practice new language vocabulary. It is a fairly traditional study tool, but rather than leave the heavy lifting to your students, spare them the effort with Quizlet. Quizlet is a wonderful, easy-to-use tool for creating flash cards. Users can create whole sets from scratch, but best of all is taking advantage of the presets.

Look, students are just as stressed as teachers by remote schooling due to the pandemic. It’s best to have resources pre-made and ready for use. Quizlet has 10,000 ready-made study sets covering 24 GCSE subjects – all done by verified educators. No extra work for teachers. Also students are additionally supported thanks to the seven different study modes that help the job get done. The best part of Quizlet is that the teacher has all the data from student activity to see what areas need reinforcement for which students.

Quizlet Live is another way to encourage studying and practice between accounts. Gen Z thrives on all-digital platforms and this features takes their comfort with digital cooperation into account.