Whether you’re looking for the best online teaching tools to get your courses, classes and workshops up and running or you want to explore new software and platforms, all teachers can benefit from using online teaching tools. Distance learning and virtual online classes are becoming increasingly popular, as students are free to work at their own pace in the comfort of their own home or any location that inspires them.
Now more than ever, technology plays a core role in education. There are many interactive online teaching tools, education software and visual teaching materials that aim to help teachers communicate and students learn. Here is what we believe to be the top 10 best online teaching tools out there at the moment.
The top 9 best tools for teaching are:
- ClassBento
- Zoom
- Visme
- Edmodo
- Twinkl
- Google Classroom
- Socrative
- Teachable
- Thinglink
1. ClassBento - An All In One Teaching Platform
ClassBento believes in making learning an incredible, fun and informative experience for both students and teachers! Their all in one teaching platform gives teachers the tools to share their knowledge with students efficiently. Not only does ClassBento's teaching platform help teachers run their classes, ClassBento's booking system also helps teachers manage, schedule and organise their classes!
ClassBento is the UK’s leading platform for art, craft, and culinary classes, helping top professionals reach a wide online audience. With millions of website visitors each year, it provides a simple way for teachers to showcase their skills, increase their earnings, and make a meaningful impact.
ClassBento is a great platform for teachers who want to expand their audience and grow their income. Teachers can offer in-person or virtual classes, catering to individuals or groups. The platform makes it easy for customers to book, request private sessions, or purchase gift experiences.
One of the biggest advantages of using ClassBento is its automated admin features, allowing teachers to focus on their craft rather than handling bookings and reminders. The platform manages transactional emails, SMS reminders, review collection, and more. Teachers can also use the ClassBento widget to accept bookings directly from their own website.
ClassBento’s mission is to support mental wellbeing through creative experiences. Every booking includes a donation to Mental Health UK, and over £30,000 has been raised so far. Creative workshops help reduce stress, fight burnout, and promote mindfulness.
There are no upfront costs to joining ClassBento. Teachers only pay a competitive 20% commission (inclusive of VAT) on bookings through the platform. For direct bookings through a teacher’s own website, the fee is just 3.9% + £0.25 per order. The platform also provides marketing support, with expert content writers optimising listings for SEO and visibility.
ClassBento is a great option for teachers looking to grow their audience, increase their income, and make a real difference in people’s lives.
2. Zoom - Video Calls/Conferencing & Teaching Tools
Since the pandemic, Zoom is probably no stranger to you! Many people used Zoom during lockdown to have face to face calls with loved ones and to attend virtual work meetings. What you may not have known is that Zoom can also be a great online teaching tool.
Zoom is a popular online teaching tool for teachers that host live online classes. Although you are probably already familiar with this online teaching tool, we have outlined the main features Zoom boasts,
- This teaching platform allows for multiple attendees and has straight forward screen sharing, so teachers can share information with the whole class.
- Breakout rooms are great for promoting constructive discussions within online classes. This online teaching tool encourages interaction between students as well as between the teacher and students.
- Zoom's digital whiteboard tool allows teachers and students to annotate the digital whiteboard. This means all students can contribute, add educational insights and feedback.
- Although this platform is designed with live online classes in mind, the session recording and transcription feature means teachers can uses this online teaching tool to create pre-recorded class content.
- On top of that, Zoom can seamlessly integrate with a learning management system.
- Their app also means teachers and students can join or host the class anywhere and everywhere!
Although the audio quality on the mobile Zoom app for iOS could be improved, on the whole, Zoom is a great online teaching tool for teachers hosting online classes.
Teachers can benefit from using this online teaching tool in many ways. Not only is Zoom easy to use, many students and teachers are already aware of how to make the most of this platform!
3. Visme - For Presentations & Infographics
Visme is a design tool that is great for teaching online. Teachers can create amazing looking content for teachers they collaborative with as well as their students in online classes.
Visme helps teachers create visual teaching materials with ease. However, Visme has many other online teaching tools which make interacting and sharing content online a breeze!
- What's most impressive about this teaching tool is the built-in analytics feature which measures your content's performance (usually you need to pay an analytics service for this).
- Visme's preliminary design helps users to be able to easily create presentations, infographics, concept maps, schedules, reports and more.
- For those who have a formal and traditional teaching style, Visme has a syllabus and lesson planning tool.
- Visme also has the ability to sync with MailChimp allowing you to collect email addresses from users who view your content.
- Students can enjoy a personalised learning experience as teachers can create customised report cards.
It's not all bells and whistles though, the huge downside to this platform is that you are only able to create 3 projects free of charge before you need to upgrade and pay for a monthly subscription.
However, Visme is a valuable online teaching tool for teachers who share technical knowledge and run formal educational classes. Their report cards and lesson planning tools make teaching in a traditional teaching style easy with Visme.
4. Edmodo - Create A Social Network For Your Students
This is a fantastic educational tool connecting teachers to their students online in a similar way to a social network.
Edmodo's online teaching tools make it possible for teachers to create online collaborative groups, provide educational materials and measure individuals performance.
This, along with other functions has led to huge popularity, as Edmodo has 34 million users!
What makes Edmodo stand out, is its ability to enhance online communication between students and their teacher. The layout of their platform is similar to popular social media platforms, making it very easy to use for students. This online teaching tool has other helpful features,
- Students can make posts which the teacher as well as other students can comment on. This makes learning online interactive and fun!
- With this online teaching tool, students can see an overview of their class topic and schedule.
- Edmodo has a wealth of resources for teachers to get inspiration from when planning their classes. They have a large and friendly community where teachers can share their advice and encouragement.
- Teachers can set assignments for students to complete which makes tracking their progress very easy!
Although loved by most users, there are a few issues with bugs and glitches. Students are also able to chat to each other during a session which can be distracting, especially for younger students. Despite this, Edmodo is a popular choice for school teachers to communicate with students and set homework assignments.
5. Twinkl - For Lesson Plans, Work Schemes, Assessment, Interactive Activities & More.
Twinkle is the ultimate teaching tool for saving you valuable admin time! Experts from around the world create and upload lesson plans and teaching activities, making them available for you to download and use in your own classes. This is a huge time and headache saver!
This online teaching tool has a huge amount of amazing resources for teachers. Their main goal is to help teachers organise and share their content in a clear and beneficial way to students. Here are some of the ways Twinkl helps teachers reach this goal!
- This online teaching tool provides class outlines and structures for teachers to follow. This means teachers can organise their content in a clear and exciting format.
- Twinkl provides key content for teaching primary school children and secondary school children.
- This online teaching tool also has resources to teach parents how to help their children get the most out of learning.
Twinkl would probably benefit tutors who teach children classic school subjects. It does come with a monthly subscription fee, but you can try it for free, so it's a no brainer, go and check it out yourself to see if it can help you! Another down side is the inability to send custom quotes, for that you will need to use a separate piece of quoting software .
6. Google Classroom - For Free Teaching Tools
Google Classroom is an easy and free virtual classroom helping teachers manage and assess progress of their students. This teaching platform is well suited to live online educational classes.
There are a number of pros to using this classroom; accessible from all devices, effective sharing, user friendly and a wonderful commenting system. There are also plenty of other useful tools & features for teachers,
- Teachers can check, mark and grade students work using this online teaching tool.
- Use a mixture of different media to teach! Google Classroom allows teachers to include YouTube videos and much more.
- Students can submit assignments when using this online teaching tool.
- Discussions and specific feedback can be given during classes from both the teacher and the students.
There also happen to be a few frustrations amongst users; there is a lack of both automation for notifications and integrations (such as Google Calendar). The software is totally free of charge to use, so it's certainly worth trying out, especially for tutors or school teachers.
7. Socrative - For Gamifying Your Classes & Providing Instant Feedback
Socrative allows teachers to create games and exercises to be used during a live lesson. Students can solve these via their personal devices while the teacher views the activity and results.
Teachers can also provide instant feedback to students within the app, making this a truly novel approach to running a class, allowing for fast and efficient learning.
Engaging children and younger students can sometimes be tricky! However, Socrative makes it easy! This online teaching tool has many features that will keep students focused.
- Teachers can create fun yet educational quizzes for students to complete. This helps teachers understand how their students are progressing.
- Use other tools to assess students, such as polls, true or false questions and more.
- Socrative allows teachers to see who is logged in and using their virtual classroom. Each classroom has a maximum of 50 students.
- As well as following the format of quizzes on Socrative, teachers can also make their own personalised quizzes and activities.
Although a fun tool for students, it does take a lot of time to analyse an individual students data. It's also maybe better for more learning intensive classes rather than hobby based workshops, again making this online teaching tool beneficial for tutors and traditional teachers.
8. Teachable - For Selling Your Pre-Recorded Courses Online
Teachable is an all in one, online platform for pre-recorded course content and more. It's used by educators to easily create an online course or coaching business.
It provides an excellent way to monetise your teaching content long into the future. Record your course once and watch the class bookings roll in.
Teachable are determined to give teachers the tools they need to make exceptional online classes. Here are some of the features this online teaching tool has for teachers,
- Users have access to customisation tools to curate and personalise content to create unique classes. This stress-free platform makes it easy—tech skills or no tech skills.
- Teachers can include a range of teaching materials and resources in their online classes such as videos and lectures.
- This online teaching tool is compatible for integration with different platforms that teachers may already use.
- Teachers can host live one-to-one workshops to give specific feedback to a student.
The downside to Teachable is that they struggle with caching which provides a somewhat imperfect user experience. Although, as Teachable has a range of features which benefit students learning in pre-recorded classes, this teaching platform is a good fit for teachers who use this teaching format.
9. ThingLink - Teach Through Interactive Visualisations
This is a teaching tool designed so educators can create and share interesting visuals and interactive images. Create a 3D or 2D course board with clickable points so that students can learn in their own time and in a fun and interactive way.
Like Obby, ThingLink is always trying to find new ways to make teaching a rewarding and exciting experience for teachers and students. Below are some of the many features this online teaching tool has for teachers sharing knowledge online,
- Both students and teachers can add audio, videos and photos to an image easily.
- ThingLink has both a website and an app, however an image can not be edited in iOS mode.
- Again, like Obby, this online teaching tool has a useful dashboard for teachers to manage their students and schedule.
- This online teaching tool can also integrate with other platforms such as Microsoft Office 365.
Although this online teaching tool offers many different features for online learning, ThingLink isn't for those who aren't very tech savvy. However, if you feel confident in your tech abilities, then ThingLink could be the ideal online teaching tool for you!
Need more teaching advice?
With the growing popularity of virtual workshops and online course creation tools, many teachers are planning and delivering pre-recorded and live online classes. However, for teachers that are used to teaching in-person, looking for the best online teaching tools and platforms may be quite bewildering.
Obby provides an efficient and effective booking system and teaching platform that can help teachers with both online and in-person classes. As an all-in-one teaching platform, Obby has many impressive features that help make online classes interactive for distance learners. If you want to create online classes that are fun, informative and interactive then Obby has the best online teaching tools for you.
Take a read of some of our other amazing guides and top 10 round ups below. We're sure you'll find something useful, oh - and don't forget to share the love.
Obby out.
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