ClassIn: one Interactive online platform for the blended learning classroom

One year ago, I used to be one online English teacher in China and taught English phonics for students whose ages were from 8 to 14. I would give them the lesson every Monday evening after they came back home and on Friday, they will meet me one by one at a certain place for homework check. This kind of classroom was called 'Flipped Class' by other teachers. In the ICT class, it is called 'Blended Learning Classroom'.

Whatever one chooses to call it, this method of learning which combines classroom and online education is very popular nowadays and successful especially in Chinese primary schools' education.

So Why 'Blended Learning'?

According to Singh and Reed (2001), there are four benefits using a blended learning solution in the corporate sector:

1. Improved learning effectiveness (providing a better match between how a learner wants to learn and the learning program that is offered). 

2. Extending the reach (ability to playback a recorded live event).

3. Optimizing development cost and time (by combining different delivery modes).

4. Optimizing business results (reduces travel costs and learning objectives are obtained more quickly).

Today I want to share one Interactive online platform that I used before for blended learning classrooms: ClassIn.

Key Features of ClassIn

1. Group video and voice calls: Up to 16 participants per teaching session with video windows that can be dragged or zoomed; suitable for group learning, interview and presentations.

2. Various teaching tools: Learning in an immersive environment by pre-editing, drawing, sharing content and multi-page scrolling with multiple users, including interactive whiteboards, quiz tool, responder, timer, dice and more. Users can also develop their own gadgets for more teaching scenarios.

3. Multiple courseware formats: Supporting courseware formats including PPT with animation, video, audio, MS Word, and PDF; formats can be combined for each teaching session.

4. Collaboration and competition: Students can raise hands, compete to answer questions, be awarded, get on the class stage, or be silent. 

Here is one class video in which activities are designed to help students practice the skills of Collaboration and communication. 

5. 'TeacherIn' online community: In my opinion, compared with other online teaching platforms, like Tes blendspace and H5P, this online community can provide popular topics of teaching for Chinese teachers to discuss and share a large amount of teaching materials. It is more suitable for teachers in China. 

Recently, ClassIn has prepared to launch its own online teaching classes which are recorded by famous teachers in different subjects.

(All pictures are screenshots of ClassIn website)

However, not all students can learn well in online classroom. They might be distracted by the Internet. Therefore, face-to-face meeting after this online class is important. Teachers can find what students are good at as well as their weakness. During my teaching period, I found some colleagues would ignore this part and only meet with their students in Wechat or QQ, not real face to face. But at last, students who exposed to both face-to-face and online education were more successful than students entirely in one camp.