Some of the best free tools and platforms to set up virtual classes and teach English online to kids

•  Introduction
•  Free platforms you can use for virtual classes
  •  Zoom
  •  Google Classroom
  •  Seesaw
•  Pre-recorded video classes
  •  Technical aspects of recording videos

Now that so many of us are faced with school closures, Facebook groups and teachers forums are buzzing with discussion about teaching online. The problem is that with so much information flying around it’s a bit confusing to know what the best option to teach English online to kids is, and how to go about making the transition from the traditional classroom to a virtual one, especially when you are teaching young children.

The first step is to decide how you’re going to actually set up your online classes, which I cover in this article. The next step is figuring out what activities to do with your students! If you need help with that, take a look at our article on ESL games and activities you can use in your virtual classes with young children.

I run after-school English classes for small groups of kids and I have groups of different ages, from 3-8 years old. Since our lockdown here in Spain, I’ve been looking into the different possibilities of how I can still carry on teaching my little students until this crisis is over, and weighing up the advantages and disadvantages of each. Having done all this research, I thought it might be useful to share all the information with you and provide you with a summary of the main ways other teachers are doing it as well as the pros and cons of each one.

Many preschool and primary teachers are using group video-conferencing platforms such as Zoom to continue their classes online, with great success. However, these seem to be mainly teachers who are teaching kids in their native language. To me personally it seemed like there would be a lot of potential for problems down that route with my little ESL students and I wanted keep it as simple as possible for the parents of my kids, for myself and for the kids themselves.

For this reason, I have decided to send parents pre-recorded videos of myself that children can watch in their own time, as many times as they want, along with support material they can print out if they so desire. I upload the material to my Google Drive and share it with the parents via Google Classroom. No meeting times to coordinate and schedule. No connection problems to deal with. Just access links that parents use to download the material. Having said that, there are technical issues that need to be considered when making videos, so I’ve included a section at the end to help you if you are thinking about doing it.

At the end of the day, the choice of how you move your classes online is a personal one that depends on your particular teaching situation, technological ability and personal preference. Take a look at the different options summarized below, and I hope that it will help you decide!

Zoom

Zoom is a video-calls and conferencing platform which includes a lot of features to support online learning. Many teachers are successfully using this to connect with their groups of young students in real-time, and I’ve seen rave reviews for it.

However, I personally had nothing but problems with the platform: links to join meetings didn’t work and I kept getting error messages when trying to share documents. This well could have been due to the dramatic increase in users that the platform has seen recently. Give it a try if you think it might be a good option for you – you might have better luck than me!

The free plan has a time limit of 40 minute per session on video-conferencing (although to be honest this is more than enough for a class with kids online). You need to pay to access unlimited time. During the coronavirus epidemic they have lifted the 40 minute limit in certain countries, but they do require an official school signature to qualify for this so it won’t be available for freelance teachers.

One word of caution, however: there have recently been concerns raised about the privacy and security of Zoom and some schools and districts are requiring parents to sign waivers or simply not allowing teachers to use the platform at all to avoid problems. You can configure the privacy and security settings, but it’s important as teachers of young kids that you are aware of this issue and take measures accordingly.       

Google Classroom

Google Classroom is a service that allows teachers to share files, add assignments and communicate with students via “classes”. Once you set up an account you can create as many classes as you want and add students (or their parents) to them.

If you work at a school and want to use Google Classroom, be aware that your school or district will need to sign up for a GSuite for Education account in order for you to use it with your students. This is to provide more privacy and security for them. However, you can still use Google Classroom and provide your students access to it if you are a freelance teacher or work in an academy. One thing to note is that parents will need a Google account in order to access (this means creating a Gmail account, although it’s quick and easy to set up from here).

I really like Google Classroom as a way to share videos and support material with parents because you can create different classes for your different groups and organize everything easily. However, at the time of writing the email notification feature is not working. In theory parents should receive an email notification whenever you post in Google Classroom, and you should also receive one if anybody else posts. This may not be a problem if you don’t have many students, but if you are trying to manage a lot of classes and assignments it may hinder your ability to work effectively.

Seesaw

Seesaw is not a video-conferencing platform like Zoom; there is no real-time interaction with kids. It’s more similar to Google Classroom, in that it’s a centralized online space specifically designed for teaching with features that allow you to design interactive tasks that you can assign students.

Once you set up an account you can create virtual classrooms, add students to those classrooms and create and add activities via your dashboard. However, the kinds of tasks you can create are a lot more interactive than Google Classroom, making it a much more kid-friendly option.

This is the method I have chosen to teach English online to kids. All you need is the camera on your computer or tablet and a way of sharing the files. However, there are some things you need to bear in mind when recording videos.

• Firstly, is the technical side of things. The longer your video, the larger the file size and the longer it will take to upload to online storage sites. Recording a 10 minute video at high resolution will give good quality but a massive file size. Recording at low resolution will give a more manageable file size but a much poorer video quality. You’ll need to play with your camera settings and do some tests before deciding if recording video classes will work for you. To help you, I’ve included a more in-depth guide to the technical aspects below.

• Secondly, be prepared for it to feel a bit strange at first! We are so used to teaching our kids face-to-face, getting immediate feedback and responding accordingly that staring into a camera and talking to nobody can seem awkward initially. You may also need to overcome any self-consciousness you have about seeing and hearing yourself on video! Relax, focus on the purpose of the videos and the value they have for your kids, and little by little you will get used to it.

• It’s a good idea to have a well-structured plan and maybe even a script for your first videos. I also recommend keeping them fairly short (in comparison to a normal class); aim for about 10-15 minutes maximum. Once you’ve done one or two you’ll find it a lot easier. One important thing to remember is to pause after any questions to give time for kids to answer at home. Although it may seem strange to do, young children usually react and comment when  watching videos, so try to leave them time to react.

• One important thing to remember is to pause after any questions to give time for kids to answer at home. Although it may seem strange to do, young children usually react and comment when  watching videos, so try to leave them time to react.

• Lastly, you need a way to share your videos with your students. One way is via Google Classroom. Other possible options are Google Drive and Dropbox, which are free file storage services that you can grant parents access to. However, I find it harder to keep everything organized well with multiple groups in Drive and Dropbox. Another option is WeTransfer, a file transfer service. With the free version you can upload even very large files and WeTransfer sends a download link to all the email addresses you enter. The download link expires after a week, however, so parents will need to download the material within that time.

Be aware that the larger the file size of your video, the more space it will take up on your device and the longer it will take to upload to online storage sites. I recommend recording at a resolution of 720p (1280 x 720p) or 480p (640 x 480p) in mp4 format. Stay away from avi or wmv file formats, as the video files will be too big. It’s a good idea to a test on your device first at different resolutions to see the difference in quality and file size.

Your camera software may also give you the option of changing the frame rate or flicker reduction. Most apps set the frame rate at 30 fps (frames per second), and you can leave it at that. Reducing the frame rate to 24 fps won’t reduce the file size much, but will make the quality poorer. On the other hand, recording with a flicker reduction of 50Hz instead of 60Hz will reduce the file size quite a lot without a noticeable difference in quality, so I recommend recording at 50Hz if you have that option.

I tested some different apps to compare the file sizes for each (Windows only, as I don’t own a Mac). For each app, I recorded a 10 minute video at 720p and 30 frames per second in mp4 format:

• Windows 10 native Camera App (50Hz flicker reduction): 575MB
• ManyCam (free version): 245MB
• YouCam (free version): 250MB

ManyCam

ManyCam is an intuitive, user-friendly app and it’s immediately obvious where to change the resolution settings. The quality of the videos is good, and the file sizes are amazingly small considering. The only problem is that in the free version your video will have a watermark stamped at the bottom of the screen, which some people may find bothersome.

YouCam

YouCam doesn’t stamp a watermark on the videos, but it’s not quite as obvious where the settings are and I found it didn’t record the video as smoothly as ManyCam. It also required me to register an account and integrated itself with my Skype, which I personally didn’t appreciate.

Please read our FAQ for full info about how you can use our materials.