Flat

Whether we wanted it or not, online classes are now a thing. Developers have quickly acted on it, bringing professors more possibilities to host their classes over the internet. While popular solutions like Google Classroom and Microsoft Teams are well-equipped to handle the load, embracing an open-source alternative is never a bad idea.

If you were looking for such a thing, Flat has got you covered. It's a virtual classroom software application that empowers professors by giving them many ways to interact with their students in real-time, as well as several other facilities to make it smoother and more convenient for everyone to partake in online classes.

The easy-to-go-through setup process means that students and professors alike won't have any trouble getting the software to work. A WeChat or GitHub account is required to authenticate, and the virtual room can then be created.

There are options to create rooms for large, small, or one-to-one classes. Upon choosing the one that best fits one's circumstances, send the invite link to your students and the class can commence. If the students don't have the app installed, they can instead join through the browser.

As for the virtual classroom, everything revolves around the whiteboard's functionality, redoubled by the cloud-syncing feature.

The whiteboard gives professors the ability to be more proactive with their online classes. Drawing tools are available, making it easy to annotate and explain course material.

To further bolster course material, the cloud-syncing feature greatly contributes to enhancing the whiteboard. Simply put, you can upload your documents, videos, and music to the cloud, which then allows you to introduce them on the whiteboard. This way, you can have video playback, a PDF document, as well as a PowerPoint presentation, all on the same screen.

Flat is a powerful tool to empower online schooling. It requires virtually no time to set up, and everything is easily comprehensible, which means that less tech-savvy professors can still take advantage of the toolset on offer.