What Interactive Teaching Programs Are Out There?
The old-fashioned idea of teaching, that the teacher talks and the students listens and takes notes, is long gone now. It's recognised today that all students — especially children — learn far better if the teaching is interactive, with the student's input as crucial as the teacher's. There are strategies to achieve this in the classroom, but what if you're teaching online, as so many private tutors are now? What programs are available to make interactive teaching easier to achieve? Here are a few.
STEM Learning offers a series of interactive teaching programs for Maths. These were originally developed by the National Numeracy Strategy for basic numeracy lessons, but they can also be adapted to use with Key Stage Three students. There are five programs, covering topics ranging from counting, colouring selected cells and calculating angles to measuring lines and investigating symmetry. Teachers will need an interactive whiteboard to make use of these programs.
While ezTalks is most associated with business meetings, it also has many advantages for interactive teaching. It provides the means to deliver a wide range of lesson types online, involving classes of all sizes. ezTalks offers a wide range of tools for teaching online, from an interactive whiteboard and screen-sharing options to instant messaging and a record feature.
This great resource for creating presentations online is equally valuable to teacher and student. Teachers are able to create effective presentations and send them directly out to their students. In the same way, students can use the app to put together their projects, which can then be sent straight back to the teacher. Projects can also be saved online, allowing them to be accessed at any time by anyone with the relevant clearance.
This is an app that allows sharing of HD video and each other's screens, among other tools. GoTo Training helps students interact with each other and their teacher, enhancing their learning experience. As teacher, you can set tests and make valuable materials available to your students, as well as sharing notes and handouts. You can also divide your students up into smaller online groups, so they can work together on projects.
If you haven't used Zoom over the past year, you've probably been living on the moon. The great success story of the pandemic, it's used for everything from high-powered business meetings to family chats, but it also offers valuable assets for interactive teaching. Zoom makes a great virtual classroom, offering screen-sharing, a chat section that allows questions to be asked at any point during the lesson, and the ability to record sessions. Like GoTo, it also enables you as teacher to divide your students into online groups of any size to work together on projects. Any teacher wanting to deliver interactive online training needs great tools, like the ones above. However, there's a lot more to teaching online, from content to marketing your services. Register with TutorExtra to find all the information and resources you need to operate successfully as an online tutor.
