Five Tools for Remote Learning

Remote learning was thought to be a thing of the future until COVID struck and shook the world. Most of us had no option but to get used to the “new normal”. And the new normal of education is remote learning. Remote learning is simply the learning experience enabled by technology where students don’t have to attend classes in brick and mortar rooms.

When it comes to the traditional classes, we’re familiar with all the techniques and hacks, but the remote learning world made them obsolete. We need to better equip ourselves with the tools that can be used to excel in the remote world too. This blog will look at five tools that will help in your remote learning.

Without any delay, here are five tools for remote learning in no particular order.

Microsoft Whiteboard

Microsoft Whiteboard is a cloud-based, freeform intelligent canvas where individuals and teams can visually brainstorm, create, and interact. It’s designed for touch, type, and pen so that you may write or draw as smoothly as ink, type in text, add sticky notes or a notes grid to convey your thoughts, and use reactions to communicate your ideas visually. It improves collaboration by allowing all team members to edit the canvas in real-time, regardless of their location.

Microsoft Whiteboard features

• Collaborate with your peers
• Different templates for brainstorming, strategising, project planning etc.
• Sticky notes for annotation

Zuperly

Zuperly is a learner-centric unified hub for all your learning and productivity needs. It helps you organise, collaborate, and analyse your learning all in one place. Right now, the entire learning stack is fragmented and scattered across several platforms, which makes us hop between multiple platforms leading to loss of productivity and time due to context switching. Zuperly offers the convenience of having all the tools in one place.

The toolkit consists of

Pathways — Go deeper on relevant topics and explore collections of related content to gain knowledge at your own pace. Discover sequential learning experiences with the help of these richly curated pathways. On a very simple note, pathways are a guided collection of books, articles, blogs, tools, tests, videos, podcasts, and discussion forums on a particular topic, all curated and organised under one platform for easy reference.

Coursestack — You can organise all the online courses you are currently enrolled in and not only set milestones for those courses but complete them with your “study buddies”. Learners can create study buddy groups as easy as making a WhatsApp group with their friends and sharing learning resources online with coursestack.

Zuperlyst — With Zuperlyst, curating links to important resources available online is as easy as creating a Spotify playlist with your favourite songs.

Superspace — is a powerful note-taking tool embedded into the Zuperly feature set. It can be grouped with the Calendar to form the most powerful sync up when it comes to the productivity aspect of Zuperly.

Flashcards — An incredibly versatile study/practice tool. It gives the brain a quick way to check if you got the correct answer or understood the concept. It’s like grading your work, and this self-reflection improves memory. Flashcards are small note cards where users can concisely write information. Flashcards are typically two-sided, with the prompt on one side and the information about the prompt on the other. This may include names, vocabulary, concepts, or procedures.

Pomodoro -Managing time and completing tasks is often tricky. People race against time to tick things off the list (especially when there are deadlines), which leads to stress. The Pomodoro Technique helps you resist all of those self-interruptions and retrain your brains to focus. Each Pomodoro is dedicated to specific tasks, and each break is a chance to reset and bring your attention back to what you should be working on.

Habit Tracker — Unlike a simple to-do list or a goal tracker, habit tracking can be used to build new habits or break bad habits. Habit trackers allow you to become more mindful of your behaviours and encourage consistency and self-accountability. The user selects a recommended habit /creates a habit and sets the number of days they will consciously try to build that habit. Every day, the user marks the habit as complete if done. This allows users to track their progress and check how diligently they have been trying to create that habit. The tracker also shows users their habit streak (successive days they completed a routine) and days that they missed.

Goal-o-meter — Setting goals doesn’t mean a thing if you don’t give it your everything to complete them or at the very least move towards them. Knowing what tools to use can save you a ton of time and energy. You just have to set your goals; Zuperly will assist you with what tools/features you should use to accomplish them.

Spark- Find your to-do list, Pomodoro, and quick notes at your fingertips. Spark is accessible throughout the platform, making it easier to navigate between features. Small things like this make all the difference while learning!

Slidesmania

Remote classes mean a lot of presentations, A LOT! And you need different templates of slides to stand out from the crowd; well, nobody wants to listen to a boring presentation. Slidesmania solves the visual bit of the problem for you! Slidesmania offers you a lot of creative templates and themes to work with. They even provide templates for daily agendas and different kinds of meetings. To put it in their own words, Slidesmania is much more than presentations.

Slidesmania features:

• Free PowerPoint templates
• Google slides themes
• Customisable infographics

Google Classroom

Google Classroom is a free service for schools, non-profits and anyone with a personal Google Account. Google Classroom makes it simple for students and teachers to communicate both within and outside the classroom. It saves time and paper and makes it easy to create classes, distribute assignments, communicate and stay organised. It is available for free for schools using Google Apps for Education., but there’s a paid G Suite Enterprise for Education tier that includes additional features, such as advanced video conferencing features, advanced security and premium support.

Google Classroom features:

• Start a video meeting.
• Create and manage classes, assignments, and grades online without paper.
• Add materials to your assignments, such as YouTube videos, a Google Forms survey, and other items from Google Drive.

Microsoft teams

Microsoft teams has been the go-to tool for most higher educational institutions. It makes it easier for professors to have the entire remote learning experience under one roof. Right from scheduling online classes to uploading notes and even submitting assignments online, Microsoft teams makes it possible. Although it has all these features, to experience the best version of it, you’ll have to pay for the subscription.

Microsoft teams features:

• Conversations within channels and teams
• A chat function
• Document storage in SharePoint
• Online video calling and screen sharing
• Online meetings
• Audio conferencing

Are you still having online classes, or have you gotten used to online learning? Then you should check out all the tools mentioned above. They will save you a ton of time and make your remote learning experience as smooth as the traditional one. Hopefully, you find them useful.

— Varun, Content Writer