Technology for online teaching

Jane98

I feel thankful that I got through the past year, with everything that Covid 19 threw at us.

I'd love to hear how teachers dealt with online learning and in particular devices or apps they would recommend for making remote teaching easier.

I'm a Maths teacher so I'm especially interested to hear how other Maths teachers taught Maths remotely. Any recommendations or suggestions? I'm in the market for a new laptop or tablet so hoping that your advice might help me decide.

mr potato head

Are you are looking to develop live video classes or record content?

I teach everything from mathematical subjects to software and workshop classes. I use two tools very heavily, a visualiser and a graphic pen display. I'm lucky that I work from a home office with space to build a streaming setup and had a gaming PC already.

• I find the graphics pen display great because while they allow you to annotate, write notes, draw etc., it also acts as a second (or third) screen, and as I've discovered the more screens the better when live streaming. I have found them better than a tablet PCs like a MS Surface for live/recorded classes, but not as nice for corrections.
  
  
• A visualiser is good if you use a lot of props/examples or if you would prefer to write on paper.

I have spent a bit of time learning to use livestream software called OBS Studio, it can also be used to record screen captures. This lets me easily switch between sources (cameras, screen shares, visualiser etc.) without having to go through the slow process of switching in our VLE.
While this is nice to learn, it's not really necessary.

I've upgraded a few bits since these but this is my general setup (pen display on the lower right):


and the visualiser:

Pringles123

A tablet that has a pen and use micrososft one note app. Project it onto the board in class. It was great for online learning. You can also download your work as a pdf document to share with students or give them a link with live access to your notes.

jrmb

Pringles123 wrote: »

A tablet that has a pen and use micrososft one note app. Project it onto the board in class. It was great for online learning. You can also download your work as a pdf document to share with students or give them a link with live access to your notes.

Do you use OneNote to collect the students' work too? I've tried using it to differentiate (in languages), but I need to work around students deleting the pages I send to them individually.

Pringles123

jrmb wrote: »

Do you use OneNote to collect the students' work too? I've tried using it to differentiate (in languages), but I need to work around students deleting the pages I send to them individually.

I haven't tried that no. I only use it for my own classwork so far and share the pdfs with students afterwards. My school is not an ipad school so I cant share the actual notebook

cmssjone

Pringles123 wrote: »

A tablet that has a pen and use micrososft one note app. Project it onto the board in class. It was great for online learning. You can also download your work as a pdf document to share with students or give them a link with live access to your notes.

I do this as well but use a program called Explain Everything instead of one note. You can also record your work in the app and upload it to youtube/Google Classroom etc. Most teachers in our school are using this system now.

Jane98

cmssjone wrote: »

I do this as well but use a program called Explain Everything instead of one note. You can also record your work in the app and upload it to youtube/Google Classroom etc. Most teachers in our school are using this system now.

Will any tablet be ok or des it need to be a high spec IPAD?

Could I somehow record myself going through and answering exam questions

Leftwaffe

jrmb wrote: »

Do you use OneNote to collect the students' work too? I've tried using it to differentiate (in languages), but I need to work around students deleting the pages I send to them individually.

Why would they be deleting their pages? If it’s notes you desperately want them to keep just put them in the content library.

cmssjone

Jane98 wrote: »

Will any tablet be ok or des it need to be a high spec IPAD?

Could I somehow record myself going through and answering exam questions

As far as I know, you can use any tablet that you can use a stylus on. You can record your voice as you go through the exam question in the app not a bother. You can link it to your YouTube account and instantly share it if you want.

jrmb

Leftwaffe wrote: »

Why would they be deleting their pages? If it’s notes you desperately want them to keep just put them in the content library.

It's a fair point but I had a large, mixed group for a language and they couldn't all manage the same tasks.

jam17032010

Pringles123 wrote: »

A tablet that has a pen and use micrososft one note app. Project it onto the board in class. It was great for online learning. You can also download your work as a pdf document to share with students or give them a link with live access to your notes.

This ^^^^

Except our school gave us laptops with touchscreens and pens. Write on OneNote, do remote learning via Teams, all Notes are saved on OneNote and students can access them whenever they want. No more wiping the whiteboard and all the work being lost.

Jane98

jam17032010 wrote: »

This ^^^^

Except our school gave us laptops with touchscreens and pens. Write on OneNote, do remote learning via Teams, all Notes are saved on OneNote and students can access them whenever they want. No more wiping the whiteboard and all the work being lost.

Can I ask which laptop ye got. I was looking a buying a 2 in 1 laptop. Our school gave us a chrome book which I hate.

jam17032010

Jane98 wrote: »

Can I ask which laptop ye got. I was looking a buying a 2 in 1 laptop. Our school gave us a chrome book which I hate.

Sorry, only seeing this now. We got Lenovo Thinkpads. But a quick look on Curry's/PC World amd there are other brands. Just make sure they come with a pen that can write on the screen.

grassylawn

I made interactive pictures with Exd Pic.
It is a Windows app.
[Third level] students did well on exam questions related to interactive pictures I made with it.
You can publish the pictures to the web (on the site itself).
It is my own project. It is free. It might have bugs as it is new and I am the only person to have used it.
I'd really appreciate feedback on it (via PM) actually.

https://exdpic.com

noplacehere

I would never have considered it but my husband is in tech so he insisted I take his spare monitor and plug it in. The difference working on a large screen over a laptop is amazing. So much so I’ll be leaving it in place in the spare room and plugging in for corrections/planning etc going forward