Connect the Classroom to the world

Virtual Classroom 

A virtual classroom is an online classroom that allows participants to communicate with one another, view presentations or videos, interact with other participants, and engage with resources in work groups. A virtual classroom allows both learners and instructors around the world to participate in live classes to collaborate and interact. The low costs of virtual classrooms are considered to be a major advantage. Learners can save money by not having to worry about travel expenses. Participants also save time since all that is needed is an internet connection.

Virtual classrooms can be used to deliver lectures, or even tutorials online. They are also great options for impromptu meetings and group projects where members need to check-in on progress and bounce ideas of one-another. With the virtual environment, ideas and collaborators are never far away.

The ed tech landscape is full of various software and services which helps to achieve the virtual classroom requirements, We can discuss few offering by major software companies.

Skype in the Classroom

Skype in the Classroom allows students to experience new cultures, language, in or outside the classroom as well. Skype in the Classroom is “a free global community” that allows teachers to collaborate on classroom projects and share skills and inspiration around specific teaching needs. Teachers can use Skype in a variety of ways to enhance their students understanding of a certain topic in a way that will be more exciting and memorable.

After teachers create a profile that describes their interests, teaching specialties, and location, they can begin to create projects that act as a way for teachers to connect with other teachers and classrooms across the globe. On this global platform, teachers can either ask for help or offer help. Skype in the Classroom also provides the opportunity for guest speakers to be present in the classroom without ever having to take a  trip or even leave the office!

Skype in the Classroom offers

• Provides opportunities for students for social interaction with people outside of the classroom
• It offers the opportunity to connect people and objects that are not in the same physical environment
• Allows guest speakers to stay at the office or not travel in order to come speak to a class
• Improved learning strategies
• Greater perseverance, and reduced need for help from the instructor
• Social interaction provides critical opportunities for learners who are learning at a distance
• Internet technologies offer opportunities to connect people and objects that are not in the immediate physical environment. Using Skype in the online classroom improves social interaction and helps to create an authentic peer review environment.

Google Classroom

Google Classroom is a free web service developed by Google for schools that aim to simplify creating, distributing and grading assignments in a paperless way. The primary purpose of Google Classroom is to streamline the process of sharing files between teachers and students.[3]

Google Classroom combines Google Drive for assignment creation and distribution, Google Docs, Sheets and Slides for writing, Gmail for communication, and Google Calendar for scheduling. Students can be invited to join a class through a private code, or automatically imported from a school domain. Each class creates a separate folder in the respective user's Drive, where the student can submit work to be a graded by a teacher. Mobile apps, available for iOS and Android devices, let users take photos and attach to assignments, share files from other apps, and access information offline. Teachers can monitor the progress for each student, and after being graded, teachers can return work,along with comments.

Google Classroom offers

• Create a paperless classroom.
• Design digital team-building activities.
• Solicit daily, weekly, by-semester, or annual feedback from students and parents using Google Forms.
• Share data with professional learning community.
• Aggregate and publish commonly-accessed websites to make sure everyone has same access, same documents, same links, and same information.
• Use Google Calendar for due dates, events outside the classroom, and other important “chronological data.”
• Communicate digitally with students who may be hesitant to “talk” with you in person.
• Share universal and frequently-accessed assignments–project guidelines, year-long due dates, math formulas, content-area facts, historical timelines.

Microsoft Teams for Education

Teams’ rich, persistent conversation experience engages students and makes learning visible to all. Teachers can engage students in different ways with text, video and voice integrations, as well as with emojis, stickers and GIFs. This encourages natural behaviours and allows students to interact socially making the learning experience fun and fluid.

Educators can have enhanced control over their class environment, with the ability to delete posts, mute students or pause conversations. This builds a safe, productive learning environment within Teams. These controls are additional to the enterprise-level security and compliance features present for administrators in Office 365.The new features found in Microsoft Teams aren’t limited to classroom collaboration. Built-in professional learning communities (PLC) Notebooks enable sharing and communication between peers, enabling staff to collaborate more easily than ever before.

Microsoft Teams offers 

• Bring Accessible Learning to the Entire Class
• Connect Beyond the Classroom in a Single Hub
• School Data Sync automatically populates classes with student rosters connected to the school’s information system.
• OneNote Class Notebooks are built into every class, allowing teachers to organize interactive lessons and deliver personalized learning right from Teams.
• Apps integrate into the classroom experience, so teachers can quickly access the Office 365 apps they already use.
• End-to-end assignment management in Teams enables teachers to move quickly and effortlessly from creation and distribution to grading and feedback.
• Teams can bring together any group of students, educators or staff to work together on team or project-based activities.