Collaboration has become faster and easier than ever before. Teachers can collaborate with others within district or across the globe. Parents and community members can collaborate with a classroom through a variety of platforms. These tools can open a classroom up, removing the physical barriers of the classroom walls.
AnswerGarden A tool for online brainstorming or polling, educators can use this real-time tool to see student feedback on questions.
Backchannel Chat – This site offers a teacher-moderated version of Twitter. An extension of the in-the-moment conversation might be to capture the chat, create a tag cloud, and see what surfaces as a focus of the conversation.
ClassroomQ - Cool site created by two teachers that provide an easy way for students to ask questions without stifling the flow of the lesson. Think of it as a digital hand raising tool. Very simple to use. See tutorial HERE.
Padlet is a website that allows users to collaborate with others on a variety of projects and posts. Create a board, ask a question and student add posts that can include text, media, and links. Padlet has the feel of a bulletin board with digital and interactive post-it notes.
VoiceThread is a platform that allows users to collaborate around a piece of multimedia such as videos and images. See overview here.
Google Hangouts is a communications tool that allows members to participate in text, voice calls, or video chats, either one-on-one or in a group. Easily invite participants using email addresses from directory.
Google Meet Google Meet is a video conferencing app that integrates with G Suite versions of Google Calendar and Gmail and shows the complete list of participants and scheduled meetings. It shows a "join" button for users to connect to the meeting and provides options to mute and turn off the video during the meeting.
Zoom is a very user friendly video conferencing tool. Schedule your meeting and invite your participants using the link Zoom creates for you. Copy and paste the invite to your Google Classroom or email.
Boost student collaboration and engagement with Jamboard — powered by Google Cloud. Users can access a suite of rich editing tools to collaborate with classmates and teachers. Easily create backgrounds in Google Slides that you save as an image file and upload to Jamboard for engaging backgrounds for Jamboard activities.
Lots of FREE Jamboard templates are being created by teachers and shared online. Here are a few sites to check out:
Folder of templates from Distance Teaching & Learning https://mrspark.org/free
https://www.weareteachers.com/jamboard-ideas/
Math Whiteboard is a brand new site that allows teachers to create and share interactive and collaborative whiteboards with their students. The biggest difference is, as I'm sure you can guess, is that it is math-focused. It's great for equations, graphing, and many other topics and skills related to math. Best of all: it's completely FREE for teachers and students.
Whiteboard.chat is another FREE online digital whiteboard tool. Sign in with your Google account and get your kids on board with the link, join code or QR code. Some cool features are that you can upload your lesson ahead of time. Create workbooks with multipage PDF or image files. Each student gets their own copy when they join the class. Some key features that make this tool a keeper are whiteboard management, student question/hand raise tool, built-in timer, breakout rooms, and more.
A product of Kahoot.com, Whiteboard.Fi is a FREE online digital whiteboard that is super simple to use. Create your class and have students join with a link, room code, or QR Code. Students receive their own individual whiteboard that they can draw on, add text, annotate images, etc. Teachers see each student's board in real-time whereas the students only sees their own board and the teachers.