Breaking Boundaries of Traditional Classroom

Not so long ago, school education was confined within the four walls of a classroom and teaching time was restricted to 6-7 hours. But not anymore. Today, many schools are adopting digital teaching solutions in their curriculum making education more engaging and fun. Here in particular, we will talk about the role of virtual classrooms in redefining the way education is imparted at the school level.

Breaking-Boundaries

Let us start with a particular example of Westmoreland Intermediate Unit #7 (WIUeAcademy), one of the 29 educational agencies in the state of Pennsylvania, that serves seventeen school districts. These schools were looking for a flexible environment where a student could be in a brick-and-mortar school and yet have an option to take advanced online courses offered in other schools. They wanted a platform that allowed real-time interactions between students and teachers, along with advanced content sharing tools and the option to record classes.

Their search soon lead them to WizIQ. Tim Hammill, Director of WIUeAcademy says, “With WizIQ Virtual Classroom, we could see the possibilities straight away. We wanted something where teachers could connect with students in real-time and teach classes just as they would in the traditional classroom. They could even record their classes. All this without teachers or students having to download any software. The quality of the support really helped us in going forward with the implementation and the response from the teachers has been enthusiastic.”

Here are a few ideas that can be used by schools in India to integrate virtual classroom technology in their teaching system:
Live teacher- student interaction after school hours and during vacations: Virtual classrooms provide a unique opportunity to enable real time teacherstudent interaction even after school hours. Students can get homework help from teachers and even participate in real time doubt-clearing sessions during exams. Also, during summer vacations and situations where schools have to be shut down due to extreme climatic conditions, virtual classrooms provide an excellent means for teachers and students to remain connected and involved in educational activities.

Access to teachers from all over the world: Virtual classrooms allow schools to arrange guest lectures by superior faculty available across the globe. This enables students to get more exposure Even teachers, reluctant to travel or shift to the school location, get a chance to pick up the teaching opportunity that they wouldn’t have done otherwise.

Virtual exchange programmes: Virtual classrooms enable schools to conduct web-based exchange programs that are much more affordable and sustainable than their traditional counterpart. These cross-cultural education programs allow students from different parts of the world to interact with each other, gain exposure and increase their understanding and tolerance of other cultures without having to travel anywhere.

How WizIQ makes it possible

WizIQ Virtual Classroom is the best online software for conducting highly engaging live online classes from anywhere, anytime. Teachers can easily use the platform to explore ideas or share curriculum with students. The classroom is equipped with:

  • Interactive whiteboards to write or draw anything
  • 6-way video and unlimited audio channels for real-time audiovisual communication
  • Breakout rooms and screen sharing to enable peer collaboration and synchronous learning
  • Intuitive feedback methods for students
  • Content library to store and share files of almost any format.
  • Online tests to assess understanding of students
  • Video streaming for teachers to share videos with students
  • Multi-lingual interface supporting 19 different languages

WizIQ is being used by over 290,000 educators and 3.7 million learners in more than 100 countries across the world. The platform hosts more than 4500 live classes daily and has already served over 1 billion minutes of live online learning.
In case you have any query or interest to adopt WizIQ in your teaching, you can reach out to Kalyan Sarkar, Director, Academic Liaisons, WizIQ.com at kalyan@ wiziq.com.

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