World is being digital every day and physical reality is being digitalized too with the introduction of simulations and virtual reality. Thus in this age, even the teaching-learning methodologies have been rigorously improvised to address the digital needs. We all are fully aware about digital addiction and it’s negative impacts upon peoples particularly among students which itself is a demerit of digital platforms. Here we shall briefly discuss about few social platforms attempting to use them at their best as tools for teaching-learning activities, so that students can be engaged in their course works.
Quora: Quora is an amazing platform where questions can be raised and answers be rapidly provided by the users. It serves as a discussion platform for questions. We can create personal spaces and add participants to raise questions as well as allow interactions by means of answering those queries. We can find questions that are similar or exact to ours if they have been asked already asked which helps in avoiding repetitions of the same questions. Furthermore, the discussions are regarded as intellectual property and are indexed in plagiarism checker tools providing safeguard to opinions and answers. This not only shares knowledge, personal opinions and views, but also serves as a intellectual show-case whenever needed. Furthermore, it has embedded latex, due to which topics of physics and mathematics can be discussed in their generality with equations.
Medium: Medium is like a renewed form of personal blog. In medium, we can express our opinions and ideas in terms of texts and images that are associated with the texts. When it comes to physics and mathematics, equations can be converted into images as well as graphs and plots can be systematically shown. This serves as a place for explanations on particular topics with thoughts and views of an individual, that is essential need for a person involved in teaching-learning activities.
Substack: Substack is another platform like medium but has embedded latex which makes it more convenient to use in terms of mathematical works. It is suitable for peoples of all professions, and they can personally curate it. Like medium, we can provide explanations and descriptions here, which are essential for students to learn. It also supports video sharing which is another merit of it.
Slideshare: Slideshare is a platform where slides on particular topics are shared. This is best suited for persons who need regular presentations to be done. Peoples can share their presentations in slideshares and share the link through which interested persons can read and explore the slides, making it a essential tool in teaching-learning activities. Slides are short and effective way of introducing a particular topic where audiences are supposed to have some earlier knowledge on that topic.
YouTube: We all are familiar with video-sharing site YouTube. Here we can post our in-person experiences of teaching and delivering lectures or anything in terms of videos. Thus this serves as a platform where anyone can search and find videos to boost their knowledge.
Zoom: It is an online-video sharing platform where online discussions can be done in real time. This allows real time interactions which significantly boosts communications in teaching-learning activities. Google meet, Microsoft teams are other similar platforms.
These are the platforms which author would like to introduce to both teachers and students as well as for other candidates of professions who needs the above discussed features. It’s true that even in social networking giant Facebook, groups can be created and discussed, but the above mentioned platforms are easy and convenient to use plus they serve as a place where your work is valued as an intellectual property particularly for teachers, professors, and presenters.
As a tutor, I personally recommend to follow the methodology of delivering lectures and slides in classroom about which a video is made and posted in YouTube, slides are shared in Slideshare, further explanations are done in medium or substack, and question-answers are discussed in Quora, followed by online real time interaction in zoom. This would not only boost the personality and creativity of tutor but would also allow students to learn and revise from multiple sources as well as contribute to the global body of knowledge whereas author himself waits for a platform where all the features mentioned in above platforms would be available at one place that too for free. #nepal
