The most used distance education resources

A few years ago, distance education was viewed with a certain reluctance and its implementation, as in the case of the UNED, was indicated for students who, due to personal circumstances, or distance from the educational center, had no choice but to study, in some way, on their own.

The face-to-face class, the traditional one, has its advantages: the first of all is that, in all levels of education, it is much less difficult for the teacher to capture the attention of the students, intervene or interact in a personalized way with them to quickly and effectively solve any difficulty in understanding or to implement or reinforce any aspect of what is taught.

The pandemic that is ravaging us has forced schools to close and, with them, the need to teach online has arisen. If distance education was seen as a solution for the somewhat distant future, in the current circumstances, online education is the only one that can be taught. Although there are many centers that have been launched (in all grades of education), we have asked ourselves and we have looked for the most used resources (technological and not).

1. A new pedagogical concept: altering the learning system in an almost intuitive way. Make the content more interesting for the student and to do this try to combine as many activities as possible, make education more practical and use more examples and more experiments to visually show everything. For this , technology is essential.
2. Canva: To move from the concept of face-to-face class to online/virtual class , it is necessary to alter its narrative. This tool helps teachers to squeeze audiovisual resources, prepare presentations, place infographics. In its free version it can be shared by up to 10 people at the same time, that is, it allows all the teachers of the same course to be organized.
3. Microsoft learning tools: free tools for learning in reading and writing. It can be used for all learning grades and can be customized.
4. G Suite Education: Google has brought together all its educational platforms and all its resources aimed at this sector in G Suite Education. From its tool to create virtual whiteboards, Jamboard, to Google Classrooms that is used to organize tasks, homework, classes and aims to improve information between student and teacher.
5. Instant messaging: both Whatsapp and Telegram have been used these days to organize work groups, debate or share various information. Both platforms, which have video, photo, video call and voice messages, were already incorporated into our normal lives and, therefore, it is not necessary to teach the student how they work. The fact that some students lack Internet at home, but enjoy data on their phones, allows them not to lose their footing and can continue learning.
6. Jitsi: fans of open source can use this platform that is articulated through video chat groups that are accessed by invitation. The application is fast, it can be downloaded on any mobile or used directly from the browser. It gives very good results, even if the wifi or the fluidity of the data rate is not the most optimal.
7. Zoom: it is being the star in terms of video calls due to its good capabilities, its simple handling and the fact that it is only necessary to connect to the browser to make it work. It is free, has a good instant messaging service and, best of all, a virtual whiteboard that can be shared by all those connected.
8. Quizalize: aninteresting tool that allows students to be evaluated and turn tasks into a competition between students, that is, it opens the way for teachers to gamify their classes and increase student interest.
9. GoToWebinar: Compatible with Windows and Mac. A very complete tool that allows you to create a virtual space to give online classes. From there it has a great multifunctional service that allows us to use email, share presentations, computer screens, files, etc.
10. Microsoft Teams: This is an app that is included in the Office 365 suite. Although it is paid, the fact that the American company has a large number of licensing agreements in our country makes it one of the most used and widespread. You can share work and correct it online, it supports the operation of simultaneous chat rooms that allow students to organize into groups or customize online classes, etc.
11. Youtube: already in the beginnings of distance education, the most universally used video platform, it was quickly incorporated due to how easy and widespread its use was, because of its enormous content and, above all, because it was possible to create private channels to serve content.
12. Cassgap: an application designed solely and exclusively for online classes. That is why its creators thought of even the smallest details: from founding virtual classrooms, managing interactive whiteboards, document sharing, screen sharing but also, in case the teacher is a private individual, articulating the forms of payment, planning and reservation of classes.

Although face-to-face classes will return, the truth is that, after the pandemic, we will see the concept of education altered. In reality, the implementation of a blended learning system was already in our future thanks to all the technology we have developed. This trance has only done to bring it forward and, therefore, make its implementation a system where we work with more intuition than practical knowledge.