Create Your Online School with a Great Virtual Classroom

Webroom has to be one of the best free virtual classrooms for online synchronous teaching I’ve seen. It’s very easy to set up a class. Just type in your email address and name and the classroom launches.

Once the class opens there’s a very easy to work through on-boarding task that ensures anyone entering the classroom has the correct browser (Chrome works best) , sufficient connectivity, and has set up their video and audio so you can be sure everyone can see each other.

Once you are set up you can invite students by email or share the link to the classroom.

Webroom has a lot of really great easy to use features including really simple to set up breakout rooms for getting students into pairs or groups, screen sharing, an interactive whiteboard for sharing images and text, file sharing and best of all link sharing.

As well as sharing links to websites, the link sharing feature allows you to share links to videos from the web and collaborate on Google Docs, Google Slides or Google Spreadsheets. This takes Webroom beyond the usual presentation and chat type class and enables teachers to do work on writing skills too.

Webroom also has a number of features that can help students takes notes and remember their classes. When using the whiteboard students can download any screen they see and keep an image of it by simply clicking the download button and then at the end of the class students get an email summary that includes any of the links shared during the lesson as well as links to any files that were uploaded.

You can use Webroom very simply by creating a new class session each time or you can register for free and log in to set up class schedules.

If you find this type of class is effective for you and your students then it is well worth looking at: https://iteach.world/ This is the commercial version of Webroom and it enables you to set up online course and to start charging for them. With this tool you can launch your own online school.

There is a free (forever) account that enables you to get started and build your courses, but you can only use this for one teacher and two students. Scaling up isn’t expensive though and the fees are a flat monthly rate, so this is a great way to open your own online school without too much risk.

I hope you enjoy using Webroom and that it helps you to get your own online school launched.

You can find 100 + more tools and resources like this in my ebook Digital Tools for Teachers - Second Edition or if you want to train other teachers to use these kinds of tools check out the Trainers’ Edition.

My Books:

• 20 Tech Enhanced Activities for the Language Classroom
• Digital Tools for Teachers
• Thinking Critically through Digital Media
• Exploiting Infographics
• 10 Lessons in Digital Literacy
• Digital Video – A Manual for Language Teachers 

 Best

Nik Peachey

Collaborative Text Editing Tool

If you have ever seen PrimaryPad or EtherPad, then Sync.in will probably look quite familiar. It's an online collaborative text editing tool, that allows multiple users to work on the same text synchronously.

It's very simple to use, you just click on the 'Create a New Public Note' button and it launches the text editor and gives your text a unique URL. You then just click on 'Share this Note' to send your URL to any of a number of different social networks or by email.


Once visitors click the link they can start editing the text. The edits of each visitor are colour coded and they can even communicate with each other while they edit by using the text chat window that opens by the side of the document.

It isn't clear exactly how many visitors can work on the same text (PrimaryPad supports groups of six) but having too many people working on the same text can often lead to chaos. Sync.in has very hand desktop launcher though, so you can create multiple pads and then get different groups of people using them, just by clicking on the 'New Note' button.

One of the other interesting features is that you can use the 'Time Slider' feature to 'replay' the development of the text. This shows you how and who has developed the text, added and edited parts. This is a great way to track how much work each of your students did on the text.


This is a really useful tool for a connected classroom or computer lab where you can get students developing texts and peer editing together. It's also great if you are running online courses and you want students to work together on a text. I've also written about how it can be used within presentations to make them more interactive here: 3 Tools for Exploiting the Wifi During Presentations

I've added a pad below so you can click the link and try adding ideas on how to use Sync.in and editing other people's ideas. I'm not sure how long this will stay live though.

• Ideas for using Sync.in

I hope you find this useful and manage to add some ideas or leave some comments.

Related links:

• 3 Tools for Exploiting the Wifi During Presentations
• The Web 2.0 School of the Present
• Quick Twitter Video Activity
• Write Your Own Quick Biography
• Social Networks and the Web 2.0 Revolution: Part 2
• Creating Social Polls and Questionnaires Using Urtak
• Survey Creation Tool for Students
• Create Quick Online Polls

Best

Nik Peachey

IATEFL Online Conference 2008

Well apologies to any regular visitors who have noticed the lack of activity her over the last week. This is mainly because my time over the next couple of weeks is being consumed by one of the biggest meetings of English language teachers in the World. The IATEFL annual conference.


I've been working as part of the online editorial team for the event and there are now some very active, discussion forums going on a whole range of ELT related subjects. Over the next week, the face to face event will begin and when it does we hope to be broadcasting and archiving a whole range of the live events including video and audio of interviews, plenaries and workshops.

So if you don't have the time and money to get along to Exeter UK from now until 11th April, then come along and sign on for the free online conference and get the opportunity to share experiences with teachers from all over the world.

Come and join us at: http://exeteronline.britishcouncil.org/

And if anyone is going along to the face to face event.
Hope to see you there.

best

Nik

Real time collaboration

I've just spotted this really nice real time collaboration tool called Twiddla. It's a free tool which doesn't involve any downloading or installing any software.

It allows real time collaboration through voice, or text chat and has a shared white board space which all users can annotate, drag pictures or text onto etc.

You can browse through websites upload documents and images to work on collaboratively or just use a blank background as a white board space to write or draw on.

There's a live sandbox so you can go in and try the real thing without registering.
If you do register you can then have either a public space or a private space that you invite selective people along to.

• Try it here

This looks really ideal for delivering synchronous distance learning sessions.

Hope you find it useful

Nik