If you’re not in the same room, but still need to make sure students learn, there’s tons of technology to make this easier. With years of experience in instructional technology, we have put together a list of the best virtual training tools for you.
Slides With Friends makes online classes more fun and interactive. Its presentation capabilities give educators a tool that keeps students engaged and eager to learn.
Designed for educators, this platform excels in creating vibrant learning experiences. It allows for seamless integration of a plethora of teaching tools. You can turn quizzes, tests, and interactive elements like word clouds and live polls into presentations in a few clicks. The interface is user-friendly, promoting active learning through its interactive features.
Slides With Friends makes participation straightforward and accessible. Anyone can join by scanning a QR code or clicking a link. The only requirement is access to a device with an internet connection. And only the host needs an account.
This software is a boon for educators and trainers looking to amplify engagement and interactivity in virtual classrooms. Its focus on ease of participation makes it an excellent tool for fostering inclusive and dynamic educational environments.
EdPuzzle is a unique educational platform that allows teachers to create interactive video lessons. The result is a boosted student engagement and understanding.
EdPuzzle empowers educators to enhance learning through annotated video content. Teachers can use existing YouTube videos or upload their own. They can also add questions, notes, and voiceovers.
The platform includes a Gradebook for tracking student performance and planning future lessons. Students can provide textual and audio responses, encouraging creative and critical thinking. The live mode feature allows for real-time student participation in class, making it especially useful in remote learning environments.
One limitation of EdPuzzle is that it’s primarily designed for individual use and doesn't support group video activities. You can assign videos to your students, but they'll have to watch them by themselves. The reliance is fully on students' self-motivation to engage with and understand the video content.
EdPuzzle is ideal for teachers seeking to create more engaging and interactive video-based lessons. It's especially beneficial for those who want to assess student comprehension and offer individualized feedback.
Vedamo is a dedicated virtual classroom platform tailored to enhance real-time collaboration. It's made with educators looking for effective classroom management in online education in mind.
Vedamo's virtual classroom system offers a suite of collaborative tools. It allows for real-time interaction, supporting up to 25 participants in a single session, making it ideal for both small and large classes. Key features include multi-peer video conferencing, interactive whiteboards, and breakout rooms for group activities. All in a handy interface, catering to the needs of educators and students alike. The platform gives educators the means to manage educational content, quizzes, and exercises.
Sometomes, the platform suffers from technical difficulties due to frequent updates. These changes can lead to issues with scheduling classes and logging into the system. Such challenges can impact the accessibility and reliability of the virtual classroom experience for both educators and students. Additionally, mastering Vedamo's comprehensive features requires some effort.
Vedamo is particularly beneficial for educators looking to create interactive and engaging virtual classrooms. Its capabilities are well-suited for remote learning and online course delivery.
Flip offers an innovative platform that shakes up how educators and learners engage in the digital age.
This tool excels in offering educators and students a dynamic environment for video sharing and discussions. Flip enhances classroom experiences beyond geographical barriers. Easy video responses, group creation, and topic discussions all promote this goal.
Its design helps educators connect with their students, promoting creativity and active participation in educational settings.
Despite its many strengths, Flip faces several challenges. Its video processing times and initial setup complexity can be frustrating for users. The platform's plethora of engaging features, while beneficial, can sometimes distract from learning objectives. Educators will need to make sure to manage the platform effectively to avoid these issues.
Flip is ideal for educators and students seeking a creative, interactive platform for digital learning. It's especially beneficial in environments where engagement and collaboration are key, making it a valuable tool for both K-12 and higher education settings.
Miro revolutionizes educational collaboration. It does so by offering a versatile virtual canvas.
The platform stands out as an exceptional tool for brainstorming and interactive lessons. It enables educators and students to share ideas and resources on a blank canvas. Miro's diverse functionalities, like mind maps, sticky notes, and diagrams, make it a singular platform for various educational activities. Its intuitive design ensures ease of use, enhancing the effectiveness of virtual learning sessions.
In educational settings, Miro's rich feature set can be daunting for beginners. Its complexity is a byproduct of its versatility. Some users find the interface to become slow with extensive content, and importing data from external programs can be challenging. These aspects may hinder the seamless integration of Miro into educational workflows.
Miro is ideal suited for educators, students, and academic teams who seek a dynamic and collaborative platform. Its ability to ease visual collaboration and real-time interaction makes it invaluable in virtual trainings.
CanvasLMS is a dynamic learning management system. As such, it caters to the diverse needs of virtual education.
CanvasLMS's main asset is its organized structure. It simplifies course material management and enhances virtual learning experiences. The platform supports a range of multimedia file transfers. And it integrates with third-party apps like Turnitin, enhancing the educational process. Its navigation and content management system are ideal for both educators and students. These features simplify seamless course creation, assignments, grading, and class organization. Plus, Canvas's mobile accessibility aligns well with the evolving demands of modern education.
However, CanvasLMS is not without its challenges. One, the lack of an autosave feature, particularly when creating quizzes, leads to potential loss of work. Two, integrating Canvas with certain student information systems requires external services. Three, its design and user interface less straightforward compared to alternatives like Google Classroom.
CanvasLMS is particularly beneficial for higher education institutions and educators seeking a robust and flexible platform for online and hybrid learning. Its comprehensive set of tools and features makes it ideal for managing diverse course structures and catering to a geographically dispersed student demographic.
Brightspace by D2L stands as a versatile and intuitive learning platform. Educators will find it a solid solution to offer online learning, thanks to its robust functionality.
The platform offers an easy-to-learn interface. Educators and students will be able to navigate through assignments, grade submissions, and other functionalities within minutes. Plus, it offers an online classroom feature that supports lecture recording, screen sharing, and chatting. These features make the interactive learning experience more interactive, improving students retention. The platform allows for efficient file and image uploads, adding hyperlinks, and a student view mode. This way, educators can see the course from the students' perspective.
Brightspace has some less intuitive aspects. For example, navigating basic tasks like scoring quizzes or finding menus feels complicated at times. Plus, setting up individual courses can be time-consuming and needs technical skill. And some aspects of the user interface feel outdated and need aesthetic improvements. These issues can make using the platform challenging for educators without coding knowledge.
Brightspace is perfect for universities and educational institutions seeking an efficient tool to manage online courses. Its simplicity for students and comprehensive features for faculty make it a valuable asset in higher education settings.
TalentLMS stands out as a convenient and efficient learning management system (LMS). The platform streamlines the virtual learning experience for both educators and learners.
It offers a slick and straightforward learning interface, making it a solid choice for many situations. Its ease of use, combined with its cross-device compatibility, enhances the virtual learning process. Key features include an intuitive interface that is easy to navigate for learners, instructors, and administrators, a mobile app, and many customizable features. The platform allows for the creation of separate branches for training, enabling tailored access for different groups. Its simplicity in course creation and enrollment process is particularly appreciated by users.
However, TalentLMS does have some limitations. The chief one being its integrations that do not always work as expected. Additionally, some details within course building, such as content design and integration of advanced HTML, are not easily customizable. These flaws pose challenges for users seeking more sophisticated course design and organization.
TalentLMS is especially beneficial for businesses and educational institutions looking for an affordable, intuitive, and versatile LMS. Its user-friendly approach and cost-effective pricing make it ideal for those new to online course creation and management. But larger organizations managing extensive user bases can also find success with it.
Slack is a communication suite that might seem like an unconventional choice for virtual training. Yet, it offers a range of functionalities making it an effective tool in this domain.
Slack's value as a virtual training tool lies in its diverse communication features. It supports real-time chat, file sharing, and video conferencing. Features that make it an ideal tool for interactive training sessions. The integration with other software like Google Drive enhances its utility. Slack supports effective communication and collaboration through features like Slack Connect, threading, and screen sharing. These features make is particularly beneficial in a virtual training context. The platform's adaptability across devices makes it accessible to anyone, anywhere.
However, Slack also comes with limitations. It has poor video and audio call functionalities, especially when accessed from mobile devices. Features like screen sharing initiation and document preview miss from the web version. And the inability to download conversations for record-keeping is a serious drawbacks in a training setting.
Slack is beneficial for trainers and organizations seeking a flexible platform for conducting virtual training sessions. Its ease of use, along with the capability to handle various forms of communication and collaboration, makes it ideal for teams distributed across different locations.
TovutiLMS offers a dynamic range of features that cater to diverse organizational learning needs.
TovutiLMS is easy to use and friendly for users without technical knowhow. It's great for all kinds of groups, like small businesses, big companies, and schools. This software lets teachers make learning fun and engaging through games and different learning methods. It can change to fit different needs and helps make teaching and learning automatic and straightforward. The platform is also pretty to look at, easy for training staff, and can grow with your organization.
The platform's templates for customizing the site's appearance are limited. Moreover, some users find the platform disorganized, compared to more modern user-friendly alternatives.
Still, TovutiLMS is beneficial choice for a wide range of users. Small companies, individual classrooms, corporations, and universities alike will find in it a solid ally. Its adaptability and low cost make it an ideal solution for organizations seeking a scalable and comprehensive digital learning platform.
Virtual training is revolutionizing the educational and corporate landscape, offering unparalleled flexibility and efficiency. With new platforms leading the charge, learners and educators are experiencing a transformative shift in how knowledge is imparted and acquired. This digital evolution marks a new era in education, where accessibility, interactivity, and adaptability become key pillars in fostering continuous learning and development.
