In the
context of Covid -19, when unprecedented uncertainties are prevailing everywhere,
when all domains of work are affected and people and organizations are under
transformation, the traditional ways of working are being replaced with
digital ways and practically everyone is struggling to adapt to new ways, to me
one of the most impacted segments due to corona virus is the community of students
and teachers.
We, the
entire teaching community, have two challenges.
One - to keep the students
constructively busy and engaged, and
Two - to adapt to the digital ways of
working and mostly without any organized support.
I believe,
most of the teachers, over the world, have been quick enough to accept the
reality and accepted the challenge. We all are learning on the go with Digital
technology. Our classes have started functioning though we are no longer
working in the traditional classrooms -that physical space associated with the
mental picture of classrooms.
Almost one
and a half month in to our classes, explaining the concepts to children,
sending audio notes, taking help of videos, sending assignments through various
means, like WhatsApp, mails, entire school digital platforms; we are right now struggling
as to-
o
How to be effective, thinking of how
to conduct formative tests and provide effective feedbacks to learners for concept
building and reinforcements?
o
Which sites to visit to prepare the teaching
and learning content?
o
Are there any platforms where already
prepared material is available which can be used by both the children and the
teachers?
o
How to engage students in extra-
curricular activities?
Being an
educator, all these issues have been bothering me as well. I have been talking
to a good number of people, in and out of the school systems, reading a lot and
researching all this while, I came to know about a good number of available
tools, portals and platforms which can be effectively used by the teachers,
students and the entire school systems. I am sharing with the entire teaching
community the outcome of my efforts with an intention to provide support to
them so that the teaching learning process can be more effective and
meaningful.
Tools for Formative Assessments
All these
tools can be very effectively used by teachers to check the concept building
during the lesson and even after the lesson, provided teachers;
Choose
to be creative in their uses,
Remember
the objectives of teaching learning of any particular concept,
And
apply Bloom’s Taxonomy while creating questions.
· Free online surveys
·
Google Forms
·
Poll Every where
·
Poll Maker
·
Profs profs
·
Survey Monkey
·
Zoho Survey
·
Crowd signal
·
e-Survey creator
·
Micropoll
The best part about using all these survey tools is that most of them present response data in a very analytical form and teachers can effectively adjust their teaching as per feedback and further build on the concept if needed.
I would
specially mention the following tools.
· Edulastic:
It allows teachers to create standard aligned assessment quickly and get
instant feedback from students and adjust learning.
· Peergrade:
This platform can be used with senior students. It allows teachers to create
assignments and upload rubrics. Students upload work and are anonymously
assigned peer work according to the rubrics.
· Buncee: A
creation and presentation tool that helps students and teachers visualize,
communicate and engage with classroom concepts and ideas.
· Naiku: A
tool that teachers can use to easily and quickly create quizzes, great for
checking understanding before and after a lesson.
· PlayPosit :
An interactive video and assessment tool that allows teachers to add formative
assessment features; like pauses and questions, to check what students know about the topic.
Teachers can choose from a library of video content from popular sites such as
Youtube and Vimeo.
· Quia: A platform
where teachers can access a database of existing quizzes from other educators.
· Quizlet: A
platform where concept wise and subject wise quizzes are already available and
more can be created.
· Verso: A
feedback tool which can be used with Google classes.
· Animoto: A
tool which gives students the ability to make a short 30 seconds video of what
they have learnt in a given lesson.
Tools for Entire School Setup
· Peerdeck:
It can be a good choice for entire school, wherein teachers can plan and build
interactive presentations that students can participate in via their smart
devices.
· Seesaw: A
platform that is a powerful loop between students, teachers and families. Here
teachers can create their own classes and students can use the platform and
document their learning.
· Google Classrooms: A tool to set up virtual classrooms.
· Formative:
As the name suggests, a very good tool for formative assessments. It is an
online all student response system that provides the teachers to assign
activities to students, receive the results in real time and then provide the
immediate feedback to the students.
Digital Platforms by MHRD – Ministry of Human Resource Development
(The Government
of India’s initiative)
These are
portals where a lot of content is available for teacher and students which can
be effectively used by the teachers to raise their effectiveness.
· DIKSHA:
This is a portal where more than 80,000 e-books by NCERT, CBSE and State Boards
are available.
· e- Pathshala: On this portal NCERT has deployed some
1886
audio,
2000
videos,
696
e- books and
504
flipbooks for classes I to XII.
· NROER:
That is the National Repository of Open Educational Resources, where lots of
conceptual content is available.
· SWAYAM:
This is a platform that hosts a number of courses for classes IX to XII.
· SWAYAM PRABHA: This platform has 32 DTH TV Channels transmitting educational content
on 24 by 7 basis. The channel covers both school (IX to XII) and higher
education on various subjects.
· YouTube Channels: NIOS and CBSE also run YouTube channels which have content for classes
IX to XII.
Note: This list of digital platforms and
portals is available on CBSE site. I believe many of us already know and are
using it to our cause.
It gives me
pleasure and satisfaction in sharing with my fraternity whatever I could
discover. We teachers had been super quick to adapt and learn the digital
technology and as is the feature of technology, it will keep changing and
evolving as per the needs of the day. It also will keep throwing challenges at
us, that is to quickly learn, unlearn
and relearn.
The entire
paradigm is shifting, the old ways are crumbling down very much in front of our
own eyes. Our very own mindset will need an overhauling. Why not to teach children the responsible ways of using technology where
it can be an assistance in their growth and development? As Amish propounds through his book series Shiva Trilogy that nothing is really good or bad. A time comes when the coin flips.
That coin of technology has flipped. Rather than being in a constant denial,
let us all accept it wholeheartedly and leverage it for the right causes.
Corona time is showing and teaching us the new ways of living and working and
digital ways of working is just one among many other new ways.
Let us all
embrace it and reinvent ourselves.
More power to
you my fellow teachers.
Proud of
myself for being a change agent.. a TEACHER, an EDUCATOR!!
Anju Arora
Disclaimer: Though full
care has been taken by the author of this blog to mention relevant and
effective tools yet she cannot be held responsible for any of it not matching
to your needs and expectations. Before using any tool to your benefit, a
careful overview of the tool must be taken.
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