2020 is the year everything changed. Offices moved into living rooms. Couches turned into stores, coding spaces, and classrooms. Remote became the operative word that drove companies and schools alike. The online space stopped being just about the social form of media and turned into a virtual arena for companies and educational institutes as they strove to make sense of this brave new world. Virtual classroom software that manages and controls classes has become increasingly important in this new online world.
If the future is now, it is virtual. And if you are an educator looking to empower the end of the world virtually — i.e., the youngsters of today — with knowledge, you need access to virtual classroom software and tech that can transform remote learning into an experience that does not limit but inspire growth, collaboration, and communication. But, with so many different applications and software currently vying for every online teacher’s attention, how do you even begin the process of choosing your tools? Worry not, for we’ve got you covered.
Best apps for classroom management and control
While probably a thousand different companies and apps out there are currently claiming to be the best virtual classroom software, not every application is made the same. So, it is rather important to understand your requirements before venturing out and choosing digital classroom management tools and tech that best suit your needs. But, if you still need help choosing, here’s a list of what we feel are 10 of the best tools that educators have at their disposal to help manage their online classrooms better:
Wise App
First up is WISE App i.e., a comprehensive application designed to inspire effective management of online classroom spaces. The app’s main goal is to empower educators with tools that inspire communication, collaboration, and an effortless teaching experience.
Where most apps and digital classroom management software currently in the market target specific areas and pain points, WISE prides itself in providing teachers with all the tools and features they could need and imagine to provide their students with the most interactive and engaging online classroom experience possible. No matter where you, as a teacher, or your students are located, WISE provides access to uninterrupted live classes during which you can:
- Address the doubts of your students (or schedule a doubt clearing session for later)
- Share real-time student-specific feedback and track the performance of your students
- Share media and resources with your students to make each session more interactive
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. An app that works across devices and multiple platforms, WISE is intuitive enough to help you manage your time better by providing you access to:
- Homework and assignments that are graded instantaneously and in real-time
- Automatic attendance reports after every class
- Cloud storage that securely keeps track of all your precious lesson plans, notes, and media
Further, if you manage an institute, WISE equips you with tools that allow for easier, more effective classroom management for online teaching— from the option to visit classes as a guest teacher to tracking the performance of each student and every educator.
Visme
A designing tool more than anything, Visme has a lot of fans in the business world. Simply put, it makes creating any reports, slides, infographics, concept maps, presentations, etc., easy as cake. Whether you are a professional designer or just someone creating a presentation for the next class lecture, Visme ensures you have a host of useful tools — customization options, a range of free graphics, and an intuitive drag and drop editing panel — right at your fingertips. And it offers solutions that target both educators and their students.
To help teachers plan their lessons and create all the various study and activity materials for their classrooms, Visme offers features like customizable grade cards and certificates, printable worksheets, tools for arranging online lectures, interactive schedules, options to embed third-party forms and quizzes, and so on and so forth. Basically, if you have a design need as an educator, Visme almost definitely has you covered.
Google Classroom
Can Google be far behind when it comes to making ripples in the virtual world? Arguably one of the most versatile and easy-to-manage tools designed solely to help people manage their online classrooms, Google Classrooms is included in the G Suite for Education. This creates almost a self-sustained cloud-based environment where educators can use each of the functionalities of the different Google Apps and do it all from the convenience of Google Classroom. You can create assignments, quizzes, exam papers, and lessons using it and use the inbuilt message board to contact students (unless you prefer emails). There is also the option to import media created using other apps and tools not to limit your options.
A popular option amongst schools and educators, especially since the world shut down due to the pandemic, the Google Classroom is created to have an easy learning curve – especially if you are already used to using Google products. It integrates easily with Google Meet – making it easy to set up and run an online class.
Class Dojo
An app that is free for teachers to use, ClassDojo is another effective virtual classroom software that focuses on student engagement and communication with families. To use the app, you can sign up as a teacher, a parent, a student, or a school leader.
The app’s main focus is communication and community engagement. To promote that, it offers various functionalities that allow educators to help families participate in a student’s daily school life. It offers a private feed that allows educators the option to share media like photos from school trips, lessons, and other such files with not just the students but their families too. A tracker also lets you see who has viewed your post so you can understand who is participating and following your lessons and important announcements. Students and parents can also comment on posts — which further inspires communication.
Other features include the option to create events with reminders, the class story, and school story tools, which can be used to share media with students and parents of a particular class or send out school-wide updates. To further inspire communication and understanding, an automatic translation system is built in to remove any language barriers.
Obviously, all of these incredible tools and features — from media sharing systems to options that allow students to interact and create media on the spot — make classroom management and control easier. But ClassDojo took it one step further by partnering with Harvard, Stanford, and Yale to create interactive videos and guides that work on introducing social and emotional concepts to students.
LanSchool
LanSchool is a virtual classroom software that has been in this business for over 30 years now. The software is backed by Lenovo and focuses on offering solutions ensuring student safety, focused learning, and overall classroom management and control. Educators can use the software while teaching students in the offline or online classroom space.
LanSchool is available both as a locally hosted or as cloud-based software. It works with multiple operating systems, including Mac, Windows, and Chrome. It also offers the option to use a mix of devices, so it is not a problem if a few of the connected devices have a mac system. In contrast, the others run on Windows or Chrome — and it does it all while ensuring the safety and security of the school and student networks.
LanSchool prides itself on the ease of its onboarding process, ensuring systems are up and running in record time. It also comes with a host of features that make classroom management easier. Educators can use a filtering feature to ensure student safety using threat detection. It has a dedicated parent portal to inspire greater collaboration and understanding between educators and parents. Other features include Blank screen, Screen Monitoring (but only during school hours. Other features include Limit Web, Share Screen for better collaboration and access, Snapshot, Push Website, etc.
Socrative
A classroom management software that focuses on the importance of immediate feedback, Socrative is a great option as a virtual classroom software.
Almost every feature that Socrative comes with is designed to inspire communication and interaction among students and educators. It presents easy ways for students to learn and for educators to evaluate and monitor what they have learned. Teachers can choose to build quizzes, engage the students with customized polls, and create assessments and tests using the range of tools that Socrative places at their disposal. Each activity can be created and launched in separate and secure rooms — be it when you are teaching in offline mode or when the students are learning from their living rooms. When an activity — for example, a quiz —is created, a few clicks ensure all the students in question have access to the same.
Once they submit their answer sheets, the papers are graded and results are produced in real-time. A completely free software for students, Socrative places a huge emphasis on this instant feedback feature that allows teachers to understand where and which students need help with what and tweak their lessons accordingly.
AWW – A Web Whiteboard App
The idea behind AWW — or A Web Whiteboard App — is rather simple. For educators who enjoy showing students how something works by depicting it on a board, the AWW App allows the solution by offering up a virtual whiteboard.
This digital board can be used by teachers like a regular board i.e., one can write and draw on it live during online classes. Or they can pre-create their boards while they are planning the day’s lessons. But while writing by hand on a whiteboard is what AWW seems to be all about, it doesn’t mean it cannot work with other media.
Much like how you can project slides onto your whiteboard during an offline class, you can use AWW to show presentations and even PDFs. But the best part is perhaps the collaboration feature that allows students to interact with the board (much like they would in an offline class) even while sitting in the comfort of their homes.
Zoom
If you lived and worked through 2020, chances are that you will have heard of Zoom. Zoom rose to fame as one of the biggest contenders for the title of most popular video conferencing platform in the early months of the pandemic. But while zoom meetings may have become a trending term among professionals, the software works well as an online teaching platform too.
There are two options to choose from when hosting a class online with Zoom. You can go with either Zoom Meetings or Zoom Webinars. But, if it is an interactive online teaching space you are looking for, Zoom Meetings may be more suited for you. On the other hand, Zoom Webinars are great for hosting academic lectures. This is because Zoom Meetings has features like the breakout room(s). This feature allows teachers to divide students into teams for group projects and activities, much like they would in an offline classroom. Each of these rooms can act and work separately while also having the option to interact with other rooms. The groups can even reach teachers and ask them to intervene whenever needed.
Lumio
Once called the SMART Learning Suite Online, Lumio is a tool designed to empower educators with various features that let them transform online classrooms into interactive spaces. And all from the comfort of the platform they are already used to using. Lumio takes the materials that teachers have at their disposal in the form of Slides, PDFs, Powerpoint presentations, etc. and turns them into interactive lessons full of games, assessments, quizzes, and other interactive activities that put emphasis on collaboration and communication — be it between each student and their fellow classmates or between students and their educators. Each lesson or assignment can be shared on every student’s device via their default browser of Microsoft Teams or Google.
Further, the Lumio dashboard is designed to give teachers direct insight into each student’s performance during each assignment and activity so educators can provide feedback in real-time and tweak their lessons for greater classroom management and control.
Dyknow
Dyknow focuses on increasing student engagement, decreasing distraction, and empowering teachers with tools that allow them to manage their online classes effectively. Dyknow is a classroom management and control software that is designed to provide schools and districts that use devices issued by schools best monitoring solutions.
Using Dyknow, teachers can check the thumbnails of each student in real-time. They can also go so far as to block apps and websites on student devices to decrease distractions and inspire learning. After each class assignment and activity, they can check the history to see the performance of each student and the overall class.
But Dyknow goes beyond just empowering teachers and students. It also lets administrators check the usage history of every device and tech tool to understand what is actually being used and is working so they can direct funding accordingly. Dyknow is known for its system that integrates seamlessly with Student Information Systems. Dyknow supports Mac, PC, and Chrome devices.
