Teaching online is less of a challenge than it ever has been. Modern teaching software has been consistently streamlined over the last several years so that it’s at least as good of a learning environment as a traditional classroom.
It starts with the proper selection of teaching software. There are several options available for teachers.
It is possible to do virtual classes through Skype, Zoom or even Facetime. You can certainly get together and deliver out your lesson plans in a real time environment as if you were face to face with your students.
The only problem is that those options are video conferencing solutions. They don’t offer a learning environment – and software that’s purpose-built for online courses are more than even that. They are that and learning management systems.
A true virtual classroom functions very similarly to a traditional classroom. You will be able to record and re-use lectures, schedule live sessions for your students, illustrate your ideas in real time with online whiteboards, and keep your course material organized in one place.
Not only that, but with a learning platform the students also use the same software suite to interact and engage with each other. The class functions as a class. In one virtual place, rather than as individuals each using conference software, which can be a little disengaging for students.
Samba Live is a software suite that is designed for use in any courses. It seamlessly incorporates all the tools that a virtual classroom could need into one package that is intuitive to use and entirely customizable yet usable right out of the box.
Samba Live is professionally developed and maintained by industry specialists, so you’re not restricted to using consumer software products; you have all the freedom to customize or tweak any feature that you may find suitable for your class. But this doesn’t come at the cost of usability. The default settings are completely viable just as they are.
Most importantly, because this software is professionally maintained and supported, this means that Samba Live is apt to have less of your worst problem when teaching online: Technical issues.
Samba Live can be used by end-users straight from the browser, and can be administered from a full on desktop environment. Getting tech support is much more likely and available for this professional solution than it would be if you were to try and use mainstream software products.
The platform is designed for institutional use – so while you can try it on your own, odds are your school district or university department will have an IT administrator with whom they will have a direct relationship which can prevent you from being alone in the dark when it comes to technical issues interfering with your class.
Modern students have online media baked into their skill sets. They speak an ‘online language’ in a way that often makes them more suited for distance learning than previous generations of students.
Traditional classrooms will probably always exist, but as technology continues to progress, an ever-increasing majority of actual learning will be online learning. For adults, this is already mostly true.
Adults typically only learn at their jobs and through online research. How many examples do you know of someone picking up a new skill by looking it up on YouTube? With Samba Live, your classroom becomes a topic-specific media suite that’s kind of like your very own YouTube for your students to use and learn your course material from.
This way you as an educator can have a versatile tool to systematically organize and deliver your courses directly to students in the digital age on a platform that they understand and can use intuitively.