Digital Tools to Enrich Our Virtual Classroom for Innovative Teachers & Students

The year of 2020 has been a transformative year to play the roles of teachers. Everything has changed, including the way kids and university students go to school. During the pandemic, most of the world instated social distancing rules, 20-second hand-washing practices, and preventive mask-wearing in public. To say this affected the way educators and students interact is an understatement. In March 2020, millions of children transitioned from face-to-face classrooms to some kind of virtual education set up at home. During the first months of the pandemic, teachers had to scramble and find the best ways to set up a virtual classroom that would keep their students engaged. In these months, educators at every level tested tools and programs until they found their favorites. The goal of the present paper is to make a review about some tools of virtual teaching with the aim of identifying and analyzing the tools which potentiate the learning process. Digital learning is increasingly influencing both classroom/campus-based teaching but more important is leading to new models or designs for teaching and learning. Digital learning is an instructional practice that ultimately helps students. It makes use of a broad range of technology-enhanced educational strategies. It includes blended learning, flipped learning, personalized learning, and other strategies that rely on digital tools to a small or large degree. [This chapter was published in: R. Udhaya Mohan Babu (Ed.), "Technology Learning in Contemporary World" ISBN- 978-81-949205-7-1 (pp. 56-6). Krishna Publication House, 2020.]