Examples of digital applications to foster interactive teaching activities

In the wake of the schools’ shutdowns due to widespread outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic, teachers had to shift to an online teaching format. This sudden shift forced many educators to face the challenges of how to continue teaching their students, and hence left them with many challenges and questions. Such unprecedented challenge was deemed a daunting task for educators. In response to such challenge, Ministries of Education in the South and East Mediterranean (Lebanon, Tunisia, Morocco, Jordan, Egypt, Palestine, and Algeria) relied on technology to ensure learning continuation, as technology enables students to access education remotely through different types of platforms and applications. In that context, schools in this region shifted to remote teaching and learning. However, rolling out remote learning requires training and supporting teachers on using and technological applications to create content and share it with students.

This blog shares with you a plethora of free technological applications adopted by the Ministries of Education in the South and East Mediterranean to upskill teachers. Teachers in this region used them to design interactive videos, activities, quizzes, and games which proved effective in providing students with constructive feedback, and hence played the role of electronic tutors.

Kahoot:

Teachers in the South and East Mediterranean used Kahoot to make their online classes interesting, engaging and fun, as Kahoot is a game-based learning platform that sparks competition among students and unleashes fun in the online learning process. Some teachers in this region created games using a set of ordinary questions along with their answer keys, while others embedded videos, pictures and diagrams into a set of questions to amplify student engagement and make the learning process more lively. At the end of the game, Kahoot displays a scoreboard reporting student rank and scores. The teachers delivered these games in two modes of learning: synchronously during the online classes and asynchronously when students stayed at home. The teachers used Kahoot for maintaining productive formative assessment, as it helped students master lesson concepts via games and fun tasks.

Padlet:

The main obstacle teachers encountered in South and East Mediterranean was the way to sustain personal interaction, communication, and group discussion among students during remote learning. The teachers raised a very important question: “How can we adapt to this challenge?”. The use of Padlet was one of the initiatives they took to mitigate the disengagement of their students during distance learning.

Padlet is an online application that initiates conversation, discussion and collaboration among students. In fact, when implementing Padlet, teachers of the South and East Mediterranean used to divide their students into groups, post critical thinking questions, upload video, pictures, texts, and diagrams pertaining to concepts previously taught. When responding to the questions, every student used to contribute their thoughts and ideas and comment on their colleagues’ inputs, and hence they learned from each other’s inputs and experiences.

Below is a screenshot of an example of a lesson implemented on Padlet.

Ed Puzzle:                                                                                                                   

Another challenge teachers of the South and East Mediterranean faced was student provision with tutorials that support their learning remotely. The only way to provide such tutorials was via creating videos. However, having students watch the entire video doesn’t ensure student learning, as questions are required to check student understanding. Further, questions should be raised at the end of multiple tracks of the video rather than at the end of the video, as students, especially primary, have limited attention spans. In this context, teachers in this region utilized Ed puzzle application to create interactive online videos and deliver them asynchronously. Ed puzzle enabled them to create interactive online videos by splitting them into tracks or smaller segments and embedding, at the end of each track, a variety of questions that range from multiple choice, open ended to audio based. Also, the tool provided students with corrective feedback on their answers to each question. Not only does Ed puzzle provide students with the correct answer, but also explains to students why the other options of the question distractors are wrong. As such, teachers viewed Ed puzzle as a very effective formative assessment tool.

Having proven the effectiveness of the above-mentioned applications in mitigating the hassle of student disengagement during remote learning, the question now is: shall those applications be adopted just in distance learning? As teachers were thrust into online learning during COVID, they gained technological skills on using these applications, and as these applications were proven successful during on line teaching and learning, teachers should not go back to the solely print-based text learning process. They are advised to keep on using these applications during face-to-face classroom as parts of blended learning or flipped classroom approaches.