See below for a brief overview of what’s on offer from Google, Microsoft and facebook to support remote teaching and learning both during the current COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. The resources are free of charge, although Microsoft Teams requires you or your organisation to have an Office 365 account.
Google have produced a Teach from Home hub to support remote teaching and learning.
The hub has online tutorials on Google tools that will help you teach remotely, and includes how to:
- Set up your home for video calling
- Start a video call with your class with Hangouts Meet
- Use Audience Q&A in Slides to get real time questions from learners which can be upvoted by the rest of the class
- Livestream your lesson and create a calendar appointment and invite your class to watch
- Use Google Classroom to set assignments, encourage collaboration, and support communication with students when teaching from home
- Use Google Sites to create a private class website to host lesson information, worksheets, videos and more
- Create online quizzes
- Make your lessons accessible, including using voice typing
- Set up 1:1 appointments using Google calendar
- Work on Jamboard, a virtual whiteboard
- Share resources and updates with colleagues
Microsoft
If your organisation uses Office 365, you’ll find that Microsoft Teams is available to you for free. Teams allows you to create your own class, add selected learners, share lessons, create assignments, collaborate virtually in real-time, do marking and provide personalised feedback all in one hub.
Facebook WhatsApp allows you to:
- Deliver lessons in the form of text and voice messages, and facilitate discussion by creating a group for each class
- Use broadcast lists to assign work to lots of learners at once
- Provide real-time learning opportunities with group voice and video calls
- Use WhatsApp Web to manage a large number of WhatsApp messages quickly and efficiently from your desktop
Facebook Messenger allows you to communicate updates or check in with your learners with group voice and video calls for up to eight participants.
You can also host webinars or organise live sessions on Facebook and Instagram
