The greatest apps and tools in the e-learning world

For many reasons during recent years, education has opened a large door to online classes as so to virtual lessons. There are two sides, people who enjoy it and prefer it and those that don’t like it so much. This is still a process in adaptation, there is a lot to reflect in order to create the best harmony possible in the remote classes. Having said that, this week was interesting to show our participants the best approach to this situation, which meant to experiment and absorb new learning platforms, digital tools and new technologies as a whole. The principal aim is to maintain students’ attention at a high level, for this to happen, the classes must be appealing and dynamic.

The new edition of the course and “Discover the best apps and tools for E-learning, Distance learning and Web Design” took place in Palermo from 26/03/2022 to 01/04/2022. The participants came from all across Europe, starting with Miroslav, Hristina and Paolina from Secondary Technical School Dr Nikola Vassiliadi in Bulgaria; Marita from WinNova in Finland; Ildikó, Enikő, Alexandra and Andrea from Budapest IX. Kerületi Weöres Sándor Általános Iskola és Gimnázium in Hungary; and Kristine, Melita and Karlis from Vidzeme Technology and Design Vocational School in Latvia.
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This days were based on a lot of digital tools. The participants had the chance to reflect and understand how they could use their devices in both type of classes (in-person classes and virtual ones) in order to make them super efficient.

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Kicking off this week, we started to see the point of view of our participants in terms of what they were expecting from this course, as well as the goals they wanted to reach by the end of the week, and we did it thanks to a great tool that allows you to create super intuitive presentations mixing up with the possibility of making an online questionnaire. We experimented with these tool by  checking the teachers' Sicilian stereotypes knowledge, very interesting to see!

Still related to authentic presentations, the others two platforms we explored were very dynamic. One was a big interactive board with a lot of designs to choose, the trial for this one was with the map of Europe. The teachers put a pin down in the location of their schools and created a small presentation. The other tool we practiced was the one with the most remarkable presentations and images in visual contents, great for those who care a lot about the design.

In continuation, we explored a tool thanks to which you can mix videos and questions in order to have a great weapon to deconstruct a lesson and make it more engaging, but also to introduce new subjects or review previous lessons.

Moreover, the participants had the chance to check a website creating program. This can be super useful for many things, since putting exercises, announcements, summaries from the previous classes as so for the e-learning method, because this is a pretty safe and professional place to create a great working and learning platform.

The participants dealt with a group of apps with different functions. This program is indeed extremely diverse, more seen as a collaborative workplace, that nowadays millions of people use. From writing a simple text in one white document to creating a spreadsheet, all these options give the opportunity to the students to work by themselves or in groups.

During the course, we also explored some gaming tools that can give to the students a sense of pure enjoyment. Once more, this is a great way to create a fun environment. The choice of the games is great. We saw how to easily create an escape room and at the same how challenging this could be for the students.
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In the end, the participants practiced and learnt about various new tools and programs that can be helpful for their teaching method, always beneficial to create motivation and engagement in learning for any type of classes. We strongly believe that, if used correctly, these tools can be really useful to increase the students performance and also to make them feel that learning can be something very enjoyable.

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​Discover more about this course here!