Digital learning and technology use in the classroom are both ubiquitous but, like with all aspects of the high-tech market, online learning technology is constantly changing and it can be tough to stay on top of the available options.
Current learning platforms in education primarily focus on VLE (Virtual Learning Environments) or LMS (Learning Management Systems) where teachers can post homework and communicate with parents and students and where students can communicate with each other for project work and engage with digital content associated with their learning. The technology helps create community and ease of communication between students, parents, teachers and school leadership. Additionally, there are educational platforms that focus on teaching approaches or that can support particular activities. There are countless resources for enhancing education and making learning more fun and effective. From apps to online interactive resources and teaching platforms, there are many solutions that can help teachers increasing student participation and engagement. In this article we have compiled a basic introductory collection of platforms that are useful and that teachers can implement without major financial or time commitments.
Google Classroom
Google Classroom is a learning management system developed by Google for schools that aims to simplify creating, distributing and grading assignments in a paperless way. Its main focus is on streamlining the process of sharing files between teachers and students. It can be accessed through a free Google Apps for Education account.
Google Classroom combines Google Drive for assignment creation and distribution, Google Docs, Sheets and Slides for writing, Gmail for communication, Google Calendar for scheduling, and Google search to help with school projects. Students can be invited to classes through the institution’s database, through a private code or can be automatically imported from a school domain.
Each class creates a separate folder in the respective user’s Drive, where the student can submit work to be a graded by a teacher. Mobile apps, available for iOS and Android devices, let users take photos and attach them to assignments, share files from other apps, and access information offline. Teachers can monitor the progress for each student, and after grading work, teachers can return it with comments.