Whether we teach in person or remotely, whether for direct work with students in the classroom or for meetings or day-to-day management, there are some tools and platforms that usually come to mind easily. These include Google Classroom or virtual classrooms developed specifically by the education departments of each autonomous community or educational center.

However, we have also experienced situations in which widespread failures of these platforms leave teachers without support for several hours, with the need to resort to other solutions to cope.

When we talk about these great educational services, whether they are those of an autonomous community or those belonging to certain companies, in the event of a temporary system failure it can be very positive and convenient to have other options to be able to continue forward. Without forgetting that, obviously, we can also give a class without technology, or more than one.

In any case, the more tools we know, the easier it will be for us to adapt to possible setbacks and the more prepared we will be. In this case, we will focus on free digital tools (we are not referring to free software ), which do not require student registration and whose learning curve is basically non-existent.

A must-have: Vocaroo

Vocaroo is a simple web-based audio recording tool that neither teachers nor their students need to register for. All you have to do is go to the Vocaroo website and press the record button. You can download the audio, embed it on a page, or share the link or QR code, among other options. But that’s not all: you also have the option of uploading already recorded audio (there is a small space in the top right corner that offers this option). Likewise, before saving the audio, you can listen to it and decide if you like it or record it again.

What will all this be useful for? As I always say, it will depend on our imagination, but the fact of being able to record is not only useful for teachers, but also for students: they can send us audios in language classes, they can leave us questions in audio format, we can send them our spoken feedback instead of written feedback, etc. And all this without the need for heavy downloads.

Working with PDF files and images

When we talk about PDF files, we probably all think of the ILovePDF page , a reference space, free and without registration, which is often used to work on or transform our files. Fewer people know about its twin sister ILoveIMG , which is very similar but, in this case, very practical for working with images. Due to the ease of use of these two pages, they are highly recommended for teachers and students.

When we talk about images, there are other free tools that are very useful for our daily lives, to remove backgrounds, to blur or to erase specific objects, among many other options.

One thing to keep in mind when working with these types of tools is that they are not exactly free, in the sense that, even if we do not pay, the documents or images we upload can be used by third parties. For certain processes, we recommend using offline tools or working locally.

For a sporadic collaboration

If we want students to collaborate quickly during a session (we are not thinking about medium or long-term projects, but rather sporadic collaboration in the classroom), there are two little-known tools: Slices by wbrain and Fastboard.io.

The first is a collaborative mural that can be given many forms. You can change the colours and even add a timer. Meanwhile, Fastboard.io is a collaborative whiteboard that allows you to upload images, PDF documents and download the result. The level of difficulty of both is minimal, you just have to enter, without needing to register, and start using them. Both teachers and students can do it without prior knowledge.

These two tools have been highlighted by students at an online university in a recent study for their ease of use and collaboration capabilities. Of course, there are many more free tools to discover, but we’ll leave that for another article.

Finding the middle ground

Research has pointed out possible negative effects of using digital tools, such as the excessive competitiveness of some recreational resources. However, these same tools also stand out in the same study for their high motivational component. From this double aspect, positive and negative, we can deduce that it will not depend on the tool itself, but on the use we make of it: should we always use tools like Kahoot or Quizizz for a competitive purpose?

Knowing the tools is essential. Many of them offer more options than those we usually use. In addition, we can look for other ways to use them in the classroom. For example, playing in groups instead of individually. In this way, we will contribute to reducing the anxiety that can be associated with this competition, among many other possibilities.

Ultimately, we must always bear in mind that tools are not an end in themselves, but rather a means, another resource that should complement our task. The use we make of them will depend on whether we are able to find the right and appropriate balance.

Author Bio: Ingrid Mosquera Gende is a Senior Lecturer at the University. IP of the TEKINDI Research Group at UNIR – International University of La Rioja