All About Teaching Online
Teaching online is becoming an increasingly attractive option for those looking for work. Whether it’s the freedom and flexibility of choosing your own workplace, the reduction in costs for an organisation, or having the space to allow for personalised learning, it’s easy to see why many are integrating online teaching into their lives. We understand that it can be a little overwhelming to take your first steps into teaching online, but don’t worry! We’ve put together some of our favourite online teaching resources that will enhance your virtual classroom. To further help you on your journey, we’re introducing our brand new Teaching Online Course, which has everything you’ll need to hit the ground running with your online teaching!
Why teach online?
Teaching online offers a host of useful benefits to both teacher and learner. One of, if not the most, desired benefit is the flexibility that comes with online teaching. A virtual classroom allows for both teachers and learners to have complete control of their environment and their schedule. For learners, online teaching provides the opportunity to learn outside of other commitments. For teachers, it allows for freedom to choose working hours, and to take advantage of those precious free hours. This is especially beneficial for digital nomads - spend the day exploring new cities and delving into new cultures, but be home ready to teach a 7pm EFL session.
Teaching online plays a role in developing technological skills. There are so many tools available to enhance an online learning experience (keep reading to find out some of our favourites), and exposure is key to becoming confident in using them in your teaching. Technical literacy is crucial for any teacher in today's digital world, and becoming familiar with a virtual classroom and all it has to offer is a vital part of this.
Virtual classrooms are interactive and dynamic learning environments. We know that engagement and motivation are both key elements for creating successful students. A virtual classroom allows for teachers to integrate digital tools and chat with students, creating the perfect environment to keep students engaged. The virtual classroom enables students who might find a traditional classroom intimidating to fully participate and engage with the lesson. Chatboxes and private messaging helps students to find their voice and participate, where a physical classroom might not have allowed this to happen.
Online platforms or resources
Now we know some of the benefits of teaching online, let’s look at how we can make it a great experience for our students. If you really want to enhance the learning experience in an online environment, you might want to think about integrating some technical tools into your lessons.
Canva
Graphic design platforms such as Canva allow you to create interesting materials for your lessons. Create infographics, videos, presentations and worksheets for your students to watch or complete. There are so many ways you can create engaging materials on Canva. The platform is user friendly and there are hundreds of templates to get you started.
Kahoot!
You’ve probably used this at some point as a student yourself. Kahoot! Is a game-based learning platform with user-generated multiple-choice quizzes that can be accessed via a web browser or the Kahoot! App. Create quizzes based on the subjects you’re teaching and have students complete the quiz from their phone or laptop.
Padlet
Padlet provides a cloud-based software-as-a-service, hosting a real-time collaborative web platform in which users can upload, organise, and share content to virtual bulletin boards called "padlets". Padlet is a really useful tool for collaborative learning. Students can work together to create padlets on subjects they’ve been learning in the lesson.
Socrative
Socrative provides free exercises and learning games that engage students across all devices. In addition, receive instant feedback on learner progress and adjust your approach based on the results.
Wordwall
Wordhall is a great tool for creating your own learning resources for your students. Create custom activities and vocabulary games for your students. This includes quizzes, match-ups, word games and more.
Jobs
There are endless jobs available for online EFL teaching. We’ve included a few of our favourites here. You can also check out our jobs board!
Preply
Preply is a fast-growing tech company shaping the future of effective learning. They are an online learning platform that connects students with tutors, primarily focusing on language learning. Preply hire fluent English speakers who have a teaching credential or licence, and at least 2 years of teaching experience. WIth the role, you’ll be teaching English as a foreign language one-to-one with students at all levels, up to university.
TeachAway
With TeachAway, you can search for K12 online teaching jobs, online English teaching jobs, online elementary teaching jobs and adjunct online teaching jobs for certified teachers, and roles for ESL instructors. There are currently over 7000
Tell me more
We know that it can be overwhelming if you’ve never taught online before, so we’ve created the perfect course that will take you from beginner to pro in as little as 10 hours. We’ll look at how to effectively manage an online classroom, how to keep learners engaged, and how we can use individual feedback and differentiate between students in our lessons. In the course, we take a more in depth look at the best ways to integrate tools into your lessons, and which tools we’d recommend. And if that wasn’t enough, we’ll also take a look at some frameworks and models that you’ll want to consider during the planning and delivering of your lessons. Lastly, we’ll look at ways of incorporating reflection in an online classroom.
If this sounds like something you’d find beneficial to your teaching, you can sign up here! Our teaching online course is also included as one of the specialist modules in our 180 Hour Interactive Online TEFL Course!
