Remote Education Solutions
Posted by: Kim Gunn, Marketing Communications Specialist
This blog was originally posted on Grandstream.com
The “new normal” following the COVID-19 pandemic is going to challenge us more than ever before to adjust the way we live. One of the biggest adjustments is likely to come in education, where there is a growing need to provide online learning options. However, with the correct tools and modern technology, remote education is not only possible but it offers the potential to expand the reach of education around the world. To be able to provide online classes and remote education, the main tool that a school needs is a web meeting and video conferencing platform. This blog will highlight the main web meeting features that schools are using to create remote online learning solutions, all of which are available through Grandstream’s IPVideoTalk Meetings platform.
Utilizing Web Meetings & Webinars for Remote Education
Webinars: Though a standard meeting room is a great tool to connect on a more personal level, many teachers may find using it to teach a lesson distracting and should consider hosting their class as a webinar instead. This allows the teacher to have sole control of the class session, and only they can speak, show video, share their screen or other content, record the lesson, respond to Q&As, and more. The teacher can also give out and remit this permission to other students or teachers. Students can use the hand raising function which notifies the teacher that a student may have a question or comment, and the teacher can unmute the specific student and/or allow them to share video or their screen. At the end of the lesson a teacher could unmute the students so that they can have a live Q&A session.
Meetings: The standard meeting room is a great feature for a teacher to communicate one on one with students. This provides a private setting for the teacher and student to connect whether it’s a weekly sit down, or if a student needs additional help with homework. Meetings could also be used for parents and teachers to chat about student progress, group projects, small sessions and more.
Recording: Another great feature that online meeting platform offer for education is recording. Teachers can save the recording of a class session so students don’t have to be online at the exact same time as the lesson in order to watch. This is great for families who don’t have dedicated devices for each student due to the high cost of such devices. It also allows teachers to and students to keep a library of class recordings to review or reuse in the future.
Activity Reports: A challenging aspect of remote education is being able to gauge participation and attendance levels. Web and video conferencing platforms, like our IPVideoTalk Meetings, provide built-in meeting and webinar attendance and participation reports to help teachers measure attendance. These reports would allow teachers to confirm who attended, when they joined and left, how engaged the were, what questions they may have asked, if they raised their hand, and even where they joined from and what device they used.
Share PDF Documents/ Whiteboard: Recently enhanced features of IPVideoTalk include the ability to share local PDF documents within IPVideoTalk meetings. For education, this allows teachers and students to collaborate and draw or highlight directly on any document. The teacher can choose whether to allow or prevent participants from using the toolbar to draw or type on the whiteboard or document. Teachers can also use the whiteboard feature and its’ drawing tools to demonstrate content virtually. The whiteboard toolbar includes brush/brush type, text, eraser, background images, undo, recovery, whether they want to allow other participants to draw or not, and more.
IPVideoTalk Meetings: Grandstream’s video, audio, and web-conferencing platform provides a virtual meeting and webinar room that coworkers, teammates, classmates, or any group can come together in to collaborate. For education, IPVideoTalk offers a powerful and secure online communication platform with hundreds of features, including all those mentioned above, that any educator can customize to their personal classroom needs. Sign up for a free account at ipvideotalk.com
Utilizing Dedicated Video Conferencing Endpoints
Room-based video conferencing devices allow schools to use the physical classroom and broadcast it for students to attend online as well. This will be especially important as schools adjust to hybrid models where some students are at-home and some are in-school. Room devices also provide remote teachers with a dedicated video endpoint with much better video quality than a laptop or webcam.
Our GVC series of Video Conferencing devices empowers teachers to extend the classroom learning environment online by connecting directly to the IPVideoTalk Meetings platform or other cloud collaboration platforms for a seamless remote education solution. A GVC device could be deployed into school facilities or at home, allowing teachers to utilize the resources of their physical classroom, hands-free. Teachers can adjust the camera and the zoom as needed while also connecting computers so they can share videos, documents, and other important content.
Remote learning may not be ideal, but with the correct tools teachers and students can connect on levels they never have before. Interested to hear how Grandstream solutions helped schools in China to create remote classrooms.
