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Top 3 Zoom Apps for Teachers

Educational Technology

Top-3 Zoom Apps for Language Teaching: Enhancing Interactive Learning

Zoom, a platform that has become synonymous with virtual learning, offers an array of apps that can significantly enhance the language teaching experience. Among the hundreds of available tools, there are three simple apps that facilitate interaction, assessment, and engagement in a language learning setting without evoking tech fobia. These are the Timer, Fathom, and Slido. To add apps to your Zoom, just click the "Apps" button in the menu and follow the instructions on the screen. Here's a closer look at each and how they can assist language teaching.

Timer: keeping track of time

The Timer app is a simple yet incredibly effective tool for language teachers. It helps in managing class time efficiently, ensuring that various activities within a lesson are kept within their allocated time slots. This is especially useful in managing reading and writing activities, speaking practice, and group discussions. For example, I tell my students that they have five minutes to write a paragraph, and the timer starts running on the screen. This helps them stay focused throughout the practice. Also, when we have a session with multiple participants, we use the timer to limit the discussion responses so that all the students get a chance to express their opinions.

Key benefits:

  • Time Management: Enables teachers to allocate specific time frames for different activities, ensuring a well-paced lesson that covers all planned content.

  • Student Engagement: Keeps students focused and engaged, as they can see the time remaining for each activity, adding a sense of urgency and motivation to participate.

Fathom: AI notetaking

Fathom is a real game-changer. This app leverages artificial intelligence to provide a real-time transcription and summary of a Zoom meeting. It records, transcribes, highlights, and summarizes meetings and sends the meeting report to your email just minutes after the session is over. This report can be then shared with the students who wish to repeat the lesson material or have missed the session and need to catch up.

Key Benefits:

Fathom offers three key benefits:
  • Real-Time Summarization: Fathom can highlight and summarize parts of a video call with a simple click, making it easier to focus on the conversation without worrying about taking notes. All participants can stay focused on the conversation instead of spending time of writing things down.
  • Instant Access to Transcriptions: After a call, users get immediate access to the call recording and a full transcription, alongside any highlighted moments, supporting multiple languages including English, French, and Spanish. Students can immediately review the lesson's main ideas.
  • Seamless Integration: The app allows users to easily share perfectly formatted summaries and action items with various platforms like Google Docs, Gmail, or task managers, enhancing productivity and collaboration.


Slido: engaging students with interactive Q&A and polls

Slido takes student participation to the next level by offering an interactive Q&A and polling platform directly within Zoom. It's an excellent tool for language teachers to gather instant feedback, conduct comprehension checks, and stimulate discussions.

Key Benefits:

  • Interactive Quizzes: Teachers can create real-time quizzes to test language comprehension, vocabulary, or grammar rules, making learning fun and competitive.
  • Instant Feedback: Polls can be created to gauge understanding of a topic or decide on subjects of interest, helping tailor the lesson to students' needs.

To sum it up...

Slido, Timer, and Fathom collectively transform the Zoom lesson experience by enhancing interactivity, time management, and comprehension while requiring almost zero tech knowledge.
Enjoy your teaching!

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