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At Barton Peveril, we use a variety of technologies to make courses more engaging and improve access to learning for students. Online learning technologies like Google Classroom have brought exciting opportunities to reconsider how we teach, engage with or involve learners in different ways.

In this guide, we will look at some of the online learning technologies we have available that can be taken advantage of for distance learning in the event of a college closure due to Covid-19.

Live Online Lessons

Google Hangouts Meet is Google’s video conferencing tool that enables you to talk face to face with learners and engage with your class remotely. All your students need is Wi-Fi access and a device such as a laptop, smartphone or tablet. 

Lesson content can be shared in a live video stream with groups ranging from a few people up to hundreds. Hangouts Meet includes the ability to share your screen, ideal for displaying a presentation or other content with the class. 

Google has recently made it possible to record a lesson hosted in Hangouts Meet as a video in your Google Drive. All lessons must be recorded, and if you wish these recordings can be shared in Google Classroom afterwards for students who couldn’t make it.

To improve the remote learning experience for teachers and students using Hangouts Meet, Google have made several improvements:

  • Only meeting creators can mute or remote other participants in a meeting;
  • Students cannot start/stop a meeting being recorded.

Learn more about Google Hangouts Meet >>

Assignments and Feedback

Google Classroom is a well-established online learning tool at Barton Peveril that you can use to keep students engaged while they’re at home. For instance, start a virtual class discussion to explore lesson content and talk about what they’re learning. You can also give students feedback about their work in Classroom when marking an assignment.

Tracking student understanding and progress can be achieved through combining Classroom with Google Forms. Quizzes in Forms offer automatic marking and enable you to embed content such as images and videos. When you share a Google Forms quiz using Classroom, you can easily assign it as an automatically marked assignment.

Learn more about Google Classroom >>

Recorded Lessons

Screencastify allows you to record your screen, perfect for creating recorded lessons for a flipped classroom or distance learning. It is available as an extension in Google Chrome that can be used from a Chromebook, PC, or Mac. In addition to recording your screen, it combines annotation tools, adds a voice over with your microphone, while also including a picture-in-picture overlay of your webcam. Everything you record is saved to Google Drive so you can easily share the video with students in Google Classroom.

Screencastify is giving educators a premium upgrade to increase from the 5 minute limit in the free version. Go to account.screencastify.com/user/subscribe and use “redeem coupon” with the code CAST_COVID.

Learn more about Screencastify >>

Distance Learning Resources

Useful resources we’ve found from across the internet:

Access to premium versions of educational apps made free during the Covid-19 school closures:

We’ve set up a Flipgrid to share our distance learning and online learning experiences with one another. Click on the link below to go to the Flipgrid and record a short video ?.

? Say hello!
? Share how you and your students have been getting on with distance learning.

What is Flipgrid?

Flipgrid is a great example of the Social Learning model. It’s easy to create an online discussion between everyone in a class and because the students need to record videos, they speak thoughtfully and plan their responses. Students can also reply to others in the class using videos or images for a full, controlled, educational social media experience.

The best bit? It’s free for education! There is even a comprehensive Flipgrid Educator’s Guide available that starts at creating an account then goes through managing grids, collaborating and other innovative ways to use Flipgrid.

Spiral is a quick way to carry out formative assessments in the classroom or during distance learning.



Engage students in lessons and at home with simple to use everyday learning activities.

Spiral Lite is the free version of Spiral, within this you get access to Google Classroom integration, the Spiral Dashboard and many more features including Quickfire Lite, a tool that allows you to ask a verbal question in the class or on a Meet and the student can respond from any device.


Launch an activity or post an assignment to be completed asynchronously

Students connect with the activity using a simple code on any device

Students answers appear live so they can learn from each other

Or you can review, grade and feedback assignments off-line

Free Features

  • In Class
    • Run live activities with students, review and grade them
  • Quickfire Lite
    • Live assessments
  • Dashboard
    • Build activities and assignments
  • Feedback and Grading
    • Realtime feedback
    • Build evidence of student learning
  • Timeline and Exit Tickets
    • Record of each class session
    • Record of each student’s learning
    • Share results with parents
  • Google Classroom Integration
    • Import class list
  • Student Dashboard
    • Students can see all assigned work
    • Can see grades

Quickfire Lite

Take a look at the video below to see about how you can use Quickfire Lite for classroom based or virtual teaching.