For Your Video Conferencing Needs
1. Zoom: It is a video conferencing and web conferencing, group conferencing tool that offers complete security, user management and online support facility to users.
2. Skype: It is one of the first tools to provide video conferencing. They have a paid version with which you can accommodate up to 10 users. It also allows screen sharing that boosts its collaboration factor.
3. MicrosoftTeam: the features include an expanded audience view of up to 49 participants, custom backgrounds, class insights, and virtual breakout rooms, among many other useful features.
4. Google meet: You can host meetings with up to 250 participants, record for later viewing, or live stream to up to 100,000 people. The tool comes integrated with G Suite, so you can join meetings directly from a Calendar event or email invite. Supports real-time captioning, scheduling, and screen sharing.
5. StarLeafcreates quick and easy video meetings or point-to-point video calls. Maximum 20 participants can video-chat at one time in StarLeaf. It is currently offering its basic video and messaging product free of charge.
6. ZohoMeeting– the tool helps in conducting unlimited meetings for a prolonged duration. It comes with benefits such as desktop sharing, multi-platform support, instant meeting schedules and instant messaging facilities. You can get started with online meetings, share their desktop to anyone, anywhere and at any time without any inconvenience.
7. Join.me– the freemium version of join.me allows one to hold an unlimited number of meetings with up to participants per meeting by using up to five video streams. One can chat with participants, transfer files and join the audio part of any meeting through internet (VoIP).
8. Adobe Connect Now– A great tool to share ideas, discuss details and complete work with the others online. It basically operates inside a web browser and users do not need to install anything to operate to start using this tool.
9. NextcloudTalk, a self-hosted open-source audio/video and chat communication service. It features web and mobile apps and is designed to offer the highest degree of security while being easy to use. It is suitable for remote learning enabling teachers to give online classes.
For File Storage And Sharing
1. Google Drive
The one tool everyone familiar with internet would know of is Google and all its extended solutions. G-drive saves all your videos, documents, presentations and photos on the cloud. You can store, access, edit and share your files. It comes with a free capacity of 15 Gb which can be expanded with a monthly subscription.
2. Microsoft OneDrive
User can easily store all photos and docs online. Access them from any PC, Mac or phone. Create and work together on Word, Excel or PowerPoint documents. A perfect fit for educators that come power packed with various tools to fulfil all education needs.
3. Dropbox
Dropbox is a creative collaboration space designed to reduce busywork, bring your files together in one central place, and safely sync them across all your devices—so you can access them anytime, anywhere. And sending large files is easy, even to people who don’t have a Dropbox account. Features like the doc scanner, shared folders, offline access, and more make collaborating with others simple.’
4.BoxFor Education
User can securely store, manage and share all files, photos and documents with 10GB of free cloud storage from Box. This is one of the most common storage tool used by teachers. Not just for storage but the tool enables educators, administrators and students to easily share their work, collaborate on group projects and streamline research and innovation. User can set access rules for the way content is shared in the cloud.
Other Tools That You’d Find Useful
Handy Teacher Tools to Create Quizzes or Polls Quick & Flawless
Learnclick: A Versatile Tool for Teachers to Create Gap-filling Exercises, Multiple-Choice Quizzes and Others
myON – More Than Just a Digital Library for Schools
To get inspired, I highly recommend you to read Medium’s article on “Embracing change: My transition from offline to online teaching.” – Personal experience of Paul Chatham, an ESL teacher for 9 years who has been teaching online for the last two years now. This piece will give you direct insight and the much-needed inspiration & hope right from the horse’s mouth. Share your experience of transitioning from offline to online classes in the comments section below!
