Education 2.0 & 3.0

First, I want to acknowledge what an uncertain time this is. As many of our jobs are shifting to virtual settings, I want to share tools that may be useful as you create online resources to provide information and work virtually with colleagues.

All of these resources have free options.

The entry of rapid authoring tools brought a change in the way e-learning courses are designed. They enable the quick creation of courses and are user-friendly. They support the HTML5 code, which means functionality on modern browsers and the ability to run courses on mobiles. Prior to their launch, Flash was popular owing to its features that helped produce visually-rich courses with stunning animations and complex interactivities. However, the inability of Flash to match up to rapid authoring tools and the announcement by Adobe to phase out Flash by the end of 2020 have urged organizations to convert Flash courses to HTML5.

"At last count, there were over 80,000 educational apps available to teachers. While many of these may be a dream come true for educators, the dizzying array of choices is also a nightmare. Teachers just don’t have time to filter through thousands of apps to find the one that works best for the needs of their students."

As a remote-first company, we love tools that let us collaborate in different, creative ways. We also find, for the sake of productivity, meetings are best avoided unless there’s a strong and clear reason for them. We wanted to share some tools that can be useful for different types of collaboration - for when the standard, janky conference call software won't do the trick. These are tools that are free and with a low barrier to entry.

A guest blog post from Sheffield Hallam University Business and Technology students working within the SMASH team. A student partnership group researching Social Media for Academic Studies at Hallam.