This guide is designed to help you make confident, strategic decisions about the platforms that genuinely enhance your teaching and empower your students, saving you valuable time and effort.

This isn’t about adopting every new app that comes out. It’s about building a cohesive, powerful digital toolkit that supports your instructional goals and streamlines your daily workflow. The right online learning platform should feel like a partner, not another item on your to-do list.

The Teacher’s EdTech Toolkit: Foundational Platforms and Specialized Tools

Before we dive in, let’s clarify the two main types of platforms that form the core of a modern digital classroom.

• Learning Management Systems (LMS): These are the all-in-one digital hubs for your classroom. An LMS is where you organize your entire course, post assignments, manage grades, and communicate with students and parents. Think of it as your digital filing cabinet, gradebook, and bulletin board, all rolled into one secure location.
• Content Creation & Engagement Platforms: These tools specialize in making lessons interactive, dynamic, and fun. They are designed to plug seamlessly into your LMS and are often the secret ingredient for turning a static lesson into an engaging learning experience. These are your digital hands-on activities, quizzes, and collaborative whiteboards.

Tier 1: The All-in-One K-12 Learning Management Systems (LMS)

For most schools, the choice of an LMS is a major strategic decision. These platforms are the central nervous system of your digital classroom.

1. Google Classroom

• Why It’s a Top Choice: Google Classroom is the undisputed king of simplicity and seamless integration. If your district is already using Google for Education (Docs, Slides, Drive), this is your most logical and efficient choice. Its intuitive interface means the learning curve for both teachers and students is almost nonexistent.
• Standout Features:
  • Direct Google Workspace Integration: Create and distribute assignments using Google Docs or Slides with a single click. Every student gets their own copy.
  • User-Friendly Design: The clean “Classwork” and “Stream” tabs make it simple to organize content and communicate with your class.
  • Efficient Grading: The grading interface allows for quick feedback, rubric-based grading, and returning assignments digitally, which is a massive time-saver.

2. Canvas LMS

• Why It’s a Top Choice: Canvas is the gold standard for districts that need a powerful, robust, and highly customizable learning platform. It’s the ideal choice for secondary schools or districts that require advanced features for managing complex courses and providing in-depth analytics.
• Standout Features:
  • Modular Course Design: Organize your content into logical, sequential modules, ensuring students follow a clear learning path.
  • Rich Content Creation: The platform allows you to build rich, dynamic pages with embedded media, discussions, and external links.
  • Powerful Analytics: Canvas provides teachers with detailed data on student engagement, time spent on tasks, and performance on assignments, offering insights for data-driven instruction.

Tier 2: The Best Tools for Interactive Lessons and Assessment

An LMS handles the logistics, but these tools inject life into your lessons. They are perfect for delivering content that is interactive, engaging, and memorable.

1. Nearpod

• Why It’s a Top Choice: Nearpod is a game-changer for classroom engagement. It transforms any static presentation—whether a Google Slide or PowerPoint—into an interactive, real-time lesson. I personally use it to maintain 100% student participation, whether we’re in the classroom or learning remotely.
• Standout Features:
  • Live vs. Student-Paced Modes: You can control the pace of the lesson in real-time or assign it for self-paced student work.
  • Embedded Interactive Activities: Seamlessly integrate polls, quizzes, open-ended questions, collaborative whiteboards, and drag-and-drop activities directly into your slides.
  • Instant Formative Assessment: The teacher dashboard provides live data on student responses, allowing you to identify misconceptions and provide immediate feedback.

2. BookWidgets

• Why It’s a Top Choice: If you’re tired of static digital worksheets, BookWidgets is your answer. It’s an incredibly versatile platform for creating over 40 different types of interactive, auto-graded exercises. It’s a tool I constantly recommend for its ability to save time on grading while making learning genuinely fun.
• Standout Features:
  • Massive Widget Library: Choose from over 40 widget types, including crossword puzzles, memory games, image carousels with questions, and split worksheets with videos.
  • Seamless LMS Integration: It works flawlessly with platforms like Google Classroom and Canvas, automatically syncing grades and student data.
  • Automated Grading: Most widgets are auto-graded, and the dashboard provides a clear overview of student progress, allowing you to provide targeted, personalized feedback.

Tier 3: High-Value, Free Educational Resources

You don’t need a large budget to leverage powerful EdTech. These platforms are incredibly valuable and offer a wealth of high-quality, free resources.

1. Khan Academy

• Why It’s a Top Choice: As a nonprofit organization, Khan Academy is committed to providing a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere. It is an indispensable tool for student-led review, differentiation, and supplemental instruction in core subjects like math and science.
• Standout Features:
  • Personalized Learning Paths: The platform uses a mastery-based approach, allowing students to work at their own pace and master concepts before moving on.
  • Standards-Aligned Content: A vast library of video lessons and practice exercises for grades K-12 and beyond.
  • Teacher Dashboard: Track individual student and class-wide progress, assign specific content, and easily identify students who need extra support.

2. Edpuzzle

• Why It’s a Top Choice: In the age of video-based learning, Edpuzzle ensures students are active participants, not just passive viewers. It’s the perfect tool for holding students accountable for video content, whether it’s a short documentary clip or a lecture.
• Standout Features:
  • Embedded Questions: You can embed multiple-choice or open-ended questions directly into any video. The video pauses until the question is answered.
  • Accountability Tracking: The platform shows you exactly which students watched the video, how much they watched, and how they answered the embedded questions.
  • Content Library: Use existing videos from YouTube, Khan Academy, or upload your own. You can also explore a library of pre-made lessons created by other teachers.

The Final Word: Choosing Your Toolkit

Educational technology can feel overwhelming for many educators, with a constant stream of new platforms and tools emerging. The key to successful integration lies in starting with a clear purpose. It’s crucial to identify the specific problem to be solved, whether it’s the need for a more organized class management system or a way to make lessons more interactive.

Rather than feeling pressured to adopt every platform at once, a more effective approach is to select one tool and focus on mastering it. By exploring its features and integrating it into a few lessons, educators can become comfortable with its capabilities.

The right technology, when strategically chosen and thoughtfully implemented, will not only enhance instruction but also provide valuable time back and create more opportunities for a dynamic and engaging classroom.

You’ve got important career goals — we have the graduate program to get you there. Check out our available graduate degree programs to advance your career today!

The post The Best Online Learning Platforms for Teachers appeared first on Graduate Programs for Educators.

I had some uber organized traditional teachers, and their papers all went into trays. They had quick, fancy grading systems; on the left chalkboard were the assignments for the week, and in the tray at the right of the chalkboard were the previous assignments that we picked up when we were absent. Picture all of that in one place within eLearning, and you get the online learning platform!

What is an Online Learning Platform?

Based on some different searches for a common definition, an online learning platform (OLP) is a webspace or portal for educational content and resources that offers a student everything they need in one place. This holds videos, notes, previous and current assignments, etc. It is a one-stop shop for student learning.

For teachers, this place would need to have the storage and ability to organize, grade assignments for students, and have a way for students to turn in work online (like those plastic trays) and keep all of their lessons organized. Without the OLP, what happened in 2020 to education could have been a disaster.

How were Online Learning Platforms Utilized During COVID?

When the world shut down for the COVID-19 pandemic in March of 2020, the necessity of the OLP was fully realized. I remember conversing with a colleague during that spring break, asking her if we would need to have a Google Classroom refresher when we got back so that the teachers who had not used it could get ready. She laughed and said, “I hope not.” In February 2020, I should have bought stock in Google.

For most of us in education, the OLP became the primary delivery method of our lessons and content. Some teachers were already using Google Classroom, Canvas, or Blackboard to post assignments, videos, learning content, and more. When living rooms and kitchens became the schoolhouse, the OLP made getting the content home more manageable.

Where I was principal at the time in rural North Texas, we still had students without internet at their house. Thus, packets were still distributed and sometimes mailed or delivered to homes and then returned. However, over 70% of our students got their work and returned it through Google Classroom.

How are Online Learning Platforms Utilized Post-COVID?

Where I am now, post-COVID, and based on other principals I have spoken to around the country, many teachers hold onto their OLPs to be that one-stop-shop for students.

I have one teacher who now uses Google Classroom for his lecture math videos, the place the students check when they come in the class for their assignment and warm-ups, copies of written notes (especially for his students who need this accommodation), and a place to turn work in. His students can go back to the videos and class notes when they need to work at home or prepare for a test.

Even some lovable “dinosaurs” that I work with have kept their OLP to keep assignments and notes for students available through the year. The pandemic changed habits, some for good and some for bad; it pushed many teachers to grow more comfortable with technology in the classroom and changed some of their habits in how they use technology.

What to Consider When Choosing an Online Learning Platform

Teachers primarily need to have their OLP of choice be a delivery system for content, then come the bells and whistles. Some OLPs will do grading for you, have chat rooms, discussion boards, time logs of how long students were on the platform, and more. That was important to us in Texas and why we used Canvas for a while because it could tell us if the students met their number of required minutes on the platform.

Online Learning Platforms to Explore

There are many different online learning platforms. Let’s start with a couple of stalwarts here: Google Classroom and Canvas.

Google Classroom

Most of you have some knowledge of this free platform. I have taught numerous educators how to use Google Classroom, which means one of the pros is that it has an easy-to-learn interface to upload videos, papers, etc. You can even grade using Google Workspace. This is one of the easiest places to manage and organize your class content.

Google Classroom exceeds in ease of use, but it does lack heavily in the parent communication side. Parents can follow the class and see the information but have to scroll through many previously posted items to find the work. Basics are off the chart, extras a little harder come by.

Canvas

Similar to Blackboard, which many colleges use, you will also find numerous schools using Canvas; thus the argument can be made that this can help students become more college-ready. We used Canvas at our high school in 2020-2021. We went with asynchronous learning at that time, so kids were at home and in the classrooms simultaneously through video, but the teachers sent all work to students through Canvas.

Creating different courses and sections is easy to update and use. There is high information density in Canvas, but the platform makes assignment lists organization easy. Canvas also sends alerts about upcoming projects, assignments, questions, and more.

Some cons mentioned about Canvas are that it is not as streamlined as Google Classroom. It has many features and customizations that can feel overwhelming, especially coming from the basic Google Classroom.

My school liked some of the bells and whistles of Canvas, especially the time feature that could tell us how many minutes a student was logged in for, as it helped us with attendance. There is a free version and a paid version that has more options.

EdApp

EdApp is a learning management system that is free. Including simple templates, it helps make creating and sharing courses and quizzes efficient and straightforward. Unlike Canvas and Google Classroom, EdApp has ready-made courses that can be used for classrooms (make sure you check your standards alignment before using!) Another benefit to EdApp is its mobile capability that allows students to learn more easily on mobile devices.

Udemy

Udemy is another platform with courses taught by instructors from around the world. You can create videos, calculation sheets, documents, and presentations. A con of Udemy is in communication between teachers and students.

One of the most interesting items I found while doing research was how many OLPs have pre-made classes online. If teachers can find lessons that are aligned with their standards, their work is done.

In short, the key to finding the best online learning platforms for you is determining the delivery capability you want and which bells and whistles you are looking for.

Have a passion for technology or instruction and want to advance your career? Check out our available educational technology and curriculum and instruction graduate programs and get started today!

*Updated April 2022

The post Online Learning Platforms: What You Need To Know appeared first on Graduate Programs for Educators.