Steve's ELT Blog

One of the most useful little tools I've been using in my online teaching so far has been Telegram Polls. If you have a group of students in a Telegram group, you can send polls in a "quiz mode" to students in order to check their knowledge. This can be done during class or even after or before to utilize a TTT type lesson. Here's how you set up a poll. If you're using your phone with Telegram, open a group chat or channel. Then tap on the paperclip in the lower left-hand corner. Select poll. Then you can write your question and include up to 10 possible answers for students to select. Before you post it, make sure you select "quiz mode" if there is only one correct answer. In group chats, you also have an option for making your quiz anonymous or not, so you can see who is struggling the most in your class. This is also a good way to replace monitoring in your normal face-to-face class since you can't always see if they've gotten the right answer...

  Online Teaching Resources Jit.si If you're still keen on having lessons face-to-face, but video conferencing software is just too much, you can try  Jitsi . This is a free open source software that allows its users to connect directly to a specialized link. It allows up to 50 participants to join the call for free. There is no extra software needed, however you do the option of downloading some software to make things run a bit smoother. It has all of the necessary capabilities as Skype like sharing your screen, a chat box, and even a raised hand feature that allows students to show you that they want answer. I highly recommend trying it out at least once. Zoom If you want a bit more of a traditional classroom approach, you can try  Zoom . Zoom is a software that you can download for free. Aside from everything that Skype and Jitsi can do, it can also allow you to break students up into smaller groups. This is good if you still want to utilize pair work and group work f...