This Pandemic has been a great teacher for all of us. We teachers will agree that technology is not here to replace us but to enhance our teaching experience so as to help our learners learn better. A teacher without the knowledge of technology can be easily replaced by the one who embraces technology .
When I first started as a teacher , I was considered pretty tech Savvy with respect to my use of power point and making interactive video presentations . Free EdTech tools have the power to empower our learners and help in democratizing education .
The importance of Technology can no longer be undermined especially for us educators, Technology came as a boon to survive this pandemic and connect with our learners.

Before the pandemic many of us were at the mercy of our spouse, children, friends and family to do technology related things.
From booking an online ticket, to finding out your favorite restaurant, to doing online shopping to making online payments or to manage our digital needs, many of us always feel fearful and need a helping hand.

Taking a helping hand is totally ok and acceptable but being totally dependent on someone is definitely a BIG problem.

Presently, just like mobile apps , there are educational apps which help make the job of teaching easier than ever, provided one has the knowledge of the right tools to be used and the objective for using them.
Few EdTech tools that every Teacher must try in their virtual classroom are as follows:
Seesaw- is an amazing digital portfolio app that captures student work through the use of photos, videos, and audio. It enables students to showcase their work and collaborate with their peers. This tool is ideal for young learners

Socrative: is one of the digital tools for classroom that will help you assess your students and get immediate insight on students’ knowledge. At the same time, using Socrative is fun for you and for your students, so basically, they can have fun while taking a test! You can launch various types of assessments and follow the results in real time
Padlet- effectively a digital pinboard, was another game-changer in my teaching. I used Padlet in two ways; first, to create an anonymous question board where students pin up virtual sticky notes with questions that both the teacher and other students can respond to, and second, to save articles and web content that I have curated for particular topics.

MindMesiter- leads the pack of free mind mapping apps that helps students visualise their thinking. It is mobile friendly and allows students to share maps and build them collaboratively in real-time.

Canva is a super-cool drag and drop graphic design tool that is 100% free for teachers and students. Students can play with a huge library of professionally designed infographics and posters to visualise their learning, and for adding a ‘wow factor’ to their presentations. It’s also a super-handy tool for teacher handouts!

Mentimeter– is another app that generates live polls in the form of creative visualisations. It is also a word cloud generator, which is great for brainstorming sessions and pre-discussion prompts. Very often used in presentations to summaries . You can even try Slido.com as they help to solve similar purpose .

Random Lists
Random group generators like Random Lists are a godsend when you want to arrange a class into different types of groups— not only do students end up working with different members of the class, but it saves a truckload of time getting students into groups in the first place.

Wheel Decide
Spin wheels such as Wheel Decide are another super simple way to gamify learning, either by picking random names to call on class members during group discussions, or to create your own ‘Wheel of Fortune’ style revision games.

Online Stopwatch
online-stopwatch.com has a range of fun classroom timers that turn task oriented or any timed activity into a game. Do check this out as there are some really cool online stopwatch to try

As a community of Educators across India, THT has conducted webinars in all the above topics and the videos for the same are available on our youtube chaannel

-Rakhee Chhabria- (Mother of two boys, Founder of TeachersHelpTeachers, A special Educator and an Early Childhood Educationist .)