It had been a terrible day for Ms. Molly.

She had taken almost 5 hours of ONLINE CLASSES and the lessons were pretty monotonous with the same old format such as her regular lectures on zoom, sharing smartboard, and PowerPoint presentations.

Who on earth shall not be exhausted after these many hours of PASSIVE VIRTUAL TEACHING!

It is indeed a challenging time for her and many such teachers worldwide!

Moreover, students nowadays are getting bored with the same format of ONLINE TEACHING!! (Thanks to the long COVID era!!)

In the past (Pre-Covid times), our classrooms were bubbling with student participation and engagement as teachers were free to apply wonderful collaborative teaching strategies and assessment tools.

Students loved getting engaged in such group-work and they had shown a great passion for learning new concepts.

Unfortunately, time has changed!

Nowadays, most of the teachers and school leaders are pondering the same question:

“HOW TO KEEP STUDENTS PASSION AND INTEREST ALIVE FOR LEARNING”

WHY DON’T WE FIND AND USE ONLINE COLLABORATIVE PLATFORMS WHERE THE STUDENTS ENGAGE, INTERACT, AND PRODUCE AMAZING CLASS WORK WITH THEIR PEERS, JUST LIKE AN ACTUAL CLASS?

After that long research, I have finally made my list of the 5 best free apps for effective online class collaboration!

Jamboard

‘WATCH YOUR STUDENTS CREATIVITY UNFOLD’

Jamboard is G Suite’s digital whiteboard free app that offers a rich collaborative experience for virtual classrooms.

You can create a Jam (digital board), edit it from your device, and share it with your student groups. Your students can collaborate on the Jam anytime, anywhere!

What amazing things you or your students can do?

• Draw with various pens and colors to bring ideas to life!
• Share Jams and work together with others in the same Jam in real-time.
• Add sticky notes to brainstorm ideas together.
• Bring Jams to life by inserting stickers and photos through a camera or gallery.
• Highlight objects with the laser pointer tool.
• Import drive files from G Suite to annotate documents together.
• Share jams with people in your contact list.
• Access jam files and photos on your device.

How does it work for your online class?

1. This application could be used to do group work after dividing the class into zoom ‘breakout rooms’.
2. Share the link of the JAM you have created and ask each student group to use a specific FRAME to develop and display their collaborative work.
3. You can use these JAMS to let the students create stories, draw collaborative artwork or scientific diagrams, and show connections between ideas/concepts.

Wakelet

‘BRING YOUR LEARNING RESOURCES TO LIFE’

Wakelet is an application that creates visual, engaging collections that aim to educate, inform, and inspire your students! You can save, organize, and present multimedia content with your students, teachers, and learning communities globally. 

What amazing things you or your students can do?

• Create collections in collaboration with fellow teachers and students, and share them in one click!
• Built-in Immersive Reader for enhanced inclusivity and language translation.
• Works perfectly with hundreds of educational tools and LMS platforms.
• Change and update contributor permission levels whenever you like.
• Make unlimited collections and spaces, and invite unlimited contributors!
• Teachers can create interactive newsletters, lesson plans, and student-centered assignments.
• Students can use Wakelet to develop and present their group projects, research assignments, and portfolios.

How does it work for your online class?

1. On Wakelet, create a NEW COLLECTION for your lesson or activity and name it accordingly.
2. Copy and share the link with your students. Students shall be the CONTRIBUTORS on that Wakelet page and they can display their work on the same real-time platform.
3. Apart from many of the uses explained above, you can use Wakelet for a lesson starter or a closure; by asking them to share their feelings, answer content-related questions, and provide lesson feedback. They can express themselves by sharing a video, meme, image, or a quote from the internet.  

Mentimeter

‘IMPRESS WITH INTERACTIVE PRESENTATIONS’

An interactive presentation platform that is powerful yet easy-to-use with features that enable you to prepare, present, and analyze educational presentations. Mentimeter has a great upper hand on any other presentation tool as it fosters engagement and connects the remote students with their teachers.

What amazing things you or your students can do?

• Build beautiful interactive presentations quickly and easily with Content Slides.
• Collect polls, data, and feedback from students using smart devices.
• It has 13 interactive question types including word clouds and quiz.
• Select from different presentation themes or build your own.
• Integrated with free stock image and GIF libraries.
• Export data in a PDF or Excel file to analyze and take action

How does it work for your online class?

1. Create a NEW PRESENTATION and rename it as per your lesson/activity.
2. You can create questions as multiple choice, word cloud, ranking, etc. for the icebreaker, check-in, and check-out activities.
3. You can also post interactive quiz questions to see the students participate in real-time competitions.
4. Once done, share the link and code with your students. They need to enter the code and submit their answer to experience the real engagement and fun of sharing their voice.

Quizizz

‘GREAT TOOL FOR ONLINE LESSON ENGAGEMENT AND ASSESSMENT’

This is a one-stop app to teach, engage, and assess students’ knowledge and understanding. This app binds students together in a remote class with live quizzes and polls. Teachers can easily create student-paced assignments, and quizzes by using pre-created ones or create their own. Students use any device and progress independently as they engage at their own pace. It is easy to login with Google, share quizzes with your students, and instantly get results in Google Classroom.

What amazing things you or your students can do?

• Choose between presenter-led and self-paced live learning experiences.
• Use friendly competition, replays, powerups, and more to keep every student engaged.
• Set a deadline so your students can learn on their own time or create an evergreen link.
• Share via messaging tools, email, or your LMS. Participants join from any device.
• Retakes, flashcards and other tools enable independent study and promote mastery.
• Instantly identify problem areas by participant, class, question, and more.
• All reports are saved and can be accessed at any time. Share and export results.
• Remote friendly-Students can play on any device without logging into an account.

How does it work for your online class?

1. At the beginning of the school year, create your classes.
2. Send that link to your students to join this class.
3. You can add their parent’s email to send them the reports.
4. For an online lesson, you can create slides and multimedia with quizzes and polls.
5. For assessments, send/display the CODE for the participants and they work for an interactive quiz/assignment remotely.

Edmodo

‘ALL YOUR TOOLS IN ONE PLACE’

Simplify communication and improve student engagement in your classroom and beyond. Edmodo brings everyone in the education community together to help learners succeed. Edmodo’s technology, content, and platforms connect teachers, students, and parents to each other and help all learners discover their passions and improve their skills. Edmodo provides a flexible classroom space that lets teachers and their learners connect—no matter where they are.

What amazing things you or your students can do?

• It’s easy to share digital assignments, create quizzes, or bring your favorite tools onboard.
• Edmodo organizes your work with class folders and a built-in Planner so that you can stress less.
• With mindfulness activities, games, and more on Discover, you can find your next favorite topic on Edmodo.
• Classroom features give teachers a versatile space to conduct engaging lessons—complete with rigorous discussions, robust assessment and assignment tools, fun class challenges, and more.
• Use Edmodo Classroom features to measure progress, both on-the-fly and summatively. Dashboards allow teachers to monitor progress in real-time, and students can easily ask questions and get feedback.

How does it work for your online class?

1. Create a CLASS and rename it. You can have multiple classes.
2. Similarly, you can create a GROUP of educators to collaborate.
3. Use the calendar to create an event, task or agenda for your class or group
4. Discover and find free, high-quality educational resources such as quizzes, videos, apps, games, and a collection of activities that are shared by the Edmodo teacher community and other trusted education partners.
5. Zoom is integrated into Edmodo, allowing educators to facilitate synchronous instruction using a powerful video conferencing tool that’s perfect for remote learning.

Experience Real-time class engagement and collaboration where students are empowered to take ownership of their learning and you can have your breathing space!