Waheed Shahzad

Department of Humanities and Social Sciences

An unpredictable and irregular change had taken place in the entire world. Every aspect of human life is changed or going to be changed soon. In general, every field of life had been changed or closed, especially educational institutes of the world. Because of the lockdown, more than 90% of students in the world are not attending educational Institutes (UNESCO, 2020). The major objective of this study was to provide useful and authentic sources and solutions to cope with the requirements of online learning and teaching.

There are requirements for the development and preparation of lectures and materials for teaching, its delivery and feedback are major aspects of online teaching. The online class is entirely different from physical class so preparation and presentation both require skills and techniques at advance level and use of the online resources is also required skill. The preparation of the lecture is also important. There are some very common instruments for online teaching and learning in which Google Zoom and Google Classroom are included but on the other hand, a lot of applications are available for mobile phones and some for laptops/computers. We can use some platforms that sport collaboration through live video communication; in which DingTalk, Lark, Hangout Meet, Teams, and Skype are included. These things are about sharing. So, today to cope with the epidemic situation the knowledge and information of these resources, and grip on its usage is very important. Whenever the teacher prepares lectures he had to take in his consideration some of the important aspects in which Immediacy and bandwidth of the internet are counted. So, in the preparation of lectures, low bandwidth and high immediacy must be observed. Some useful resources are as following:

1. Digital learning management systems

• CenturyTech – Personal learning pathways with micro-lessons to address gaps in knowledge, challenge students, and promote long-term memory retention.
• ClassDojo – Connects teachers with students and parents to build classroom communities.
• EkStep – Open learning platform with a collection of learning resources to support literacy and numeracy.
• Google Classroom – Helps classes connect remotely, communicate, and stay organized.
• Schoology – Tools to support instruction, learning, grading, collaboration, and assessment.
• Skooler – Tools to turn Microsoft Office software into an education platform.

2.  Systems built for use on basic mobile phones

• Cell-Ed – Learner-centered, skills-based learning platform with offline options.
• Funzi – Mobile learning service that supports teaching and training for large groups.
• Ustad Mobile – Access and share educational content offline.

3. Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) Platforms

• Alison – Online courses from experts, available in English, French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese
• Canvas Network – Course catalog accessible for free for teachers to support lifelong learning and professional development.
• Coursera – Online courses taught by instructors from well-recognized universities and companies.
• European Schoolnet Academy – Free online professional development courses for teachers in English, French, Italian, and other European languages.
• EdX – Online courses from leading educational institutions.
• iCourse – Chinese and English language courses for university students.
• Future Learn – Online courses to help learners study, build professional skills, and connect with experts.
• Icourses – Chinese language courses for university students.
• TED-Ed Earth School – Online lessons about nature made available continuously during
• Udemy – English, Spanish, and Portuguese language courses on ICT skills and programming.
• XuetangX – Online courses provided by a collection of universities on different subjects in Chinese and English.
• YouTube – Huge repository of educational videos and learning channels. 

4. Collaboration platforms that support live-video communication

• Dingtalk – Communication platform that supports video conferencing, task and calendar management, attendance tracking, and instant messaging.
• Lark – Collaboration suite of interconnected tools, including chat, calendar, creation and cloud storage, in Japanese, Korean, Italian and English
• Hangouts Meet – Video calls integrated with other Google’s G-Suite tools.
• Teams – Chat, meet, call, and collaborate features integrated with Microsoft Office software.
• Skype – Video and audio call with talk, chat, and collaboration features.
• WhatsApp – Video and audio calls, messaging and content sharing mobile application.
• Zoom – Cloud platform for video and audio conferencing, collaboration, chat and webinars

These resources can be used for teaching and learning in the current situation, some of them for self-learning as well.