Engage Online Students With Kiddom’s New Distance Learning Tools

This week, we are excited to announce a new, easier-than-ever way for teachers to keep distance learning students engaged – without ever having to leave their classroom platform.

In this article, we’ll cover:

• Connecting With Online Students: The Old Way vs. The New Way
• At-Your-Own-Pace Distance Learning Tools (Free in Kiddom Classroom)
• Face-to-face Distance Learning Tools: (Upgrade to Kiddom Live)

Connecting With Online Students

There is no question about it, distance learning is hard. 

Thanks to COVID-19, most educators are all-too familiar with what it takes to get a remote class up and running, and the general consensus has been: 

A) distance learning takes a lot of time, patience, and tools to set up, and 

B) even then, it’s really difficult to keep online students engaged. 

So we made it our mission to make things easier in the form of less tools, more connection. Let’s take a look at what that looks like.

The Old Way to Do Distance Learning

In order to create moments of genuine connection online, most teachers have opted for a healthy mix of at-your-own-pace and face-to-face (see also: asynchronous and synchronous) activities, but this takes a lot of “distance learning” tools. 

For at-your-own-pace activities, teachers have been pre-recording videos with one tool, making screenshares with another tool (to show students how to use a content tool like, say, Geogebra), then uploading all of these items to a learning management tool where students can view and then complete their assignments, which might take – you guessed it, yet another tool.

For face-to-face activities, teachers and distance learners might use a meeting tool like Zoom, or Google Hangouts. But they still have to use a separate tool to communicate meeting times with students, and yet another to assign and review assignments, and did we mention lesson planning and curriculum – wouldn’t it be nice if all of these were in the same place?

The New Way to Do Distance Learning

With our new release, you can do all of these things in one platform.

It’s that simple.

At-Your-Own-Pace Distance Learning Tools (Free in Kiddom Classroom)

If you use Kiddom Classroom, you already know you can build and edit curriculum (which helps when an in-class lesson plan needs to be changed last-minute to a remote lesson), assign lessons, students can complete assignments, you can grade them, and both students and teachers can review standards-based or grade-based reporting, all from the free platform. 

But let’s take a look at some of the new features you can access for free too.

1) Classrooms now have an announcement feed where teachers can record and share videos and audio, directly in the platform.

a

2) Teachers and students can now record videos and audio when chatting, assigning or completing work, or making comments around assignments.

3) A new easy-to-access student roster allows teachers to communicate with individual students and student groups, via chat or with new recording tools.

Face-to-face Distance Learning Tools: (Upgrade to Kiddom Live)

If you use Kiddom for Schools and Districts, you can now choose to upgrade to Kiddom Live and access our synchronous distance learning tools as well. This means you can:

1) Host smaller student groups via Kiddom live for a more manageable experience full of classmate interaction.

2) Chat in real-time with 1:1 video capabilities; simply start a call directly from your student roster.

3) Attend a virtual real-time class from the announcement feed, and be notified when a session has started.

There you have it!

We hope you’re just as excited about this release as we are to share it with you.

To see the new distance learning tools for yourself, you can download our free Classroom app here. And if you’re interested in bringing Kiddom Live to your school or district, request a demo by clicking the big red button below.