Schools, colleges and universities too are part of the battle of survival along with businesses in this COVID-19 global pandemic. Students and teachers stuck at home with instructions given that classes must continue online. And in this endeavour to keep lectures and classes ongoing, educational institutes are finding that given the resources and software available, online education may be a possible way to get around this pandemic for the following reasons:
The Pros:
Institutions don’t have to face closure if classes can continue online
Students and faculty don’t need to travel, so they’re safe indoors during the pandemic
Students coming from different cities and countries will find it easier to keep studying from home
Material shared online can be constantly updated
Students can study in their own pace rather than trying to keep up with the rest of the class
However, with benefits also come some drawbacks. Many teachers are now on places like Quora seeking for solutions that could make remote teaching and studying easier because of certain issues like:
The Cons:
Students may not get questions answered by professors as promptly as they would in a classroom as interaction is limited
Students must have plenty of self-discipline to keep up with assignments and quizzes
Students may not find audio and video resources effective for learning as compared to the live experience
Students must find the technology easy to use to ensure the online system works properly for them
Conducting fair examinations may not be easy as preventing students from cheating becomes harder online without a way to monitor their activity.
It is difficult to able to tell if a student is legitimately paying attention to lectures or is busy with other things
But as the world is pushed into staying at home, technology has risen to aid with the difficulties created by the outbreak. Numerous applications and services have become popular now such as:
Zoom
Zoom is a cloud-based video conferencing platform that helps make meetings, audio conferencing, webinars, meeting recordings, and live chat easier even if the number of participants is 100 at a time. Its technology can help make live video lectures easier for teachers to do for a whole group of students at a single time.
Google Classroom
Google Classroom is a free service for schools that helps them in creating a paperless way of creating and distributing study material and gradable assignments. It makes it easier for teachers and students to share files with each other.
Coursera
Coursera is an education platform that partners with top universities and organisations worldwide, to offer courses online for anyone to take, and recently they have made their courses available for free to help people stay productive at home.
Remind
Remind makes it easy for teachers to communicate with students and their parents in real-time outside of the classroom. You can make class announcements, initiate group chats, or contact people privately through the app. Your messages, which can contain files, images, and links, can even be translated into more than 90 languages, making it possible to communicate with parents who are non-native English speakers.
StaffTimer
Although the name suggests its made for offices, its features are so extensive they can be used to help teacher and lecturers with lessons and quizzes. Here are a few features to explain how StaffTimer can be used for education:
Teachers can see in real-time what students are up to. Gone are the days where students think they can be busy watching other things or playing games on other tabs during lectures.
Intelligent Reports
StaffTimer makes it feel like being in a classroom again with in-depth reports showing students’ tasks and the amount of time they spent on them along with url and app usage reports. Their idleness and productivity can be tracked as well by noting how many keystrokes and clicks they’ve done per minute.
Instant screen capture
Teachers can make use of setting screenshots to be taken at the intervals of their choice. StaffTimer is capable of taking screenshots every passing minute. Even if a student’s internet connection is lost and in order to ensure genuine work, the software will keep capturing the screenshots and upload it to the work diary once the internet is back online.
Voice Notes
Video conferencing is already data consuming as it is so it’s useful for teachers to be able to send instructions or small notes through voice notes when assigning students with tasks.
With these features and more, teaching won’t be a difficult task to do remotely as institutes and parents can take a sigh of relief that this academic session won’t go to waste.
Time management apps are becoming increasingly common due to rising demand. Every business enterprise or startup is concerned about maintaining productivity levels, and that is only possible through an efficient time tracking or project management system.
It gives an accurate picture and insight into employee’s productivity and manifests their peak performance levels. Time monitoring apps bring-in more cost efficiency and transparency into businesses thus generating more revenue than ever before.
Here we are detailing 10 best time management apps in 2020 that you will need to save and manage your time:
Slack – collaboration and communication
Slack is one of the most used management apps that companies prefer. It is basically a tool for communication and collaboration. Slack offers shared channels with search options. It can be integrated with numerous other project management app(s). These are some of the features that make the work convenient and staff members located around the world can connect with each other.
You can pin messages and refer to channels
Manage and track documents
Advanced search option
Shared channels to streamline work activities
It’s especially good if you are located in workspaces scattered around the country or world even. You can communicate and coordinate across businesses or units of the same business that require secure communication. Not only this, you can easily streamline your sidebar through it.
For instance, if you need to send frequent messages to some channels more than another. You can make them ascend in the sidebar to ease the process for you. Google calendar app can be integrated to keep your schedule on track.
Stafftimer App is one of the best time management apps available in this competitive market of time trackers. It assists global teams and also remote workers to track their productivity.
There are some unique features offered on this app which include the following:
Real-time monitoring
Task assignment via voice clips
Intelligence reports
Daily work image & video logs
Instant screen capture
Keystroke & mouse activity
The screenshot feature is optional for example if an employee is involved in fieldwork and employers can simply opt-out of screenshot capture feature and just track the time alone.
With audio clips process of assigning tasks is expediated in an unprecedented manner. Lengthy emails are outdated now. Even feedback is given via this method. This saves time for both an employer and an employee. On the other hand, Real-time monitoring is a live screen sharing with an employee. An employer can actually visualize, what his staff member is up to? Similarly, intelligence reports will provide insights into how much time was spent on different URLs.
Above all, daily work videos provide employees with an overview of their whole day’s progress. It has a user-friendly interface and convenient for every significant industry like legal, healthcare, accounting, designing, accounting or even freelancing. So if you want to make time tracking your habit, it’s for you.
Staff timer app provides on-demand integrations with any software of your choice.
Asana is one of the most commonly known and popular products available for project management. It helps you monitor and track your goals and projects to further your business. It helps you decide, and handle your priorities and projects in a structured way.
You can assign tasks and then watch them progress. Never miss deadlines by creating a timeline so you never miss out on anything. There are 100 integrations that help you bring every useful file and document in one place.
Activity feed
Automatic updates on emails
Track tasks and add followers
Comment on tasks
You can track the most important or urgent tasks based on customized preferences. Create projects and teams private to protect sensitive information.
Evernote is one of the best time managing solutions for note-taking especially if you are not organized and feel lost when you are unable to locate your required document. No matter what device you use, it will store and retain your most important information.
There are various methods through which you can store your information with Evernote:
You can type notes, take photos or even add voice notes
Less hassle in organizing or searching the notes
You can create notebooks that are folders precisely
It does offer an interesting feature of tracking data with the help of geolocation which means you can trace data based on the location when you entered it. Asana has an optical character recognition function that caters to images you upload with text on them. For example, a handwritten note whose image you took and added.
Remember the milk is a kind of virtual assistant for managing your time and tasks. It offers a smart list option that sets a distinction between personal and professional tasks. It helps you to:
Update task
Create subtasks
Set deadlines ranging from days, months, & years
You can share tasks and lists with others. It’s a free-to-use app unless you subscribe to its premium features. Pro users can add unlimited users, restrict access to edit, and can work in offline status as well.
Platform: Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Microsoft Edge, Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android, Blackberry, Fire, Apple Watch
Todoist is one of the strongest task managers that can handle things from simple domestic task to an important and professional one. It’s one of the most suitable time management apps for both business teams or individuals like freelancers. It can handle both basic and advanced level tasks.
Some of its key features are:
SSL secured connection
Task priorities
Projects and subprojects
Active projects can be 80 with 5 members at maximum in each
It offers more than 100 integrated tools. Todo-ist is available on most of the devices with the consistent design shown on all of them. You can pin your important projects, label or filter them accordingly.
Platforms: Mac, Windows, Android, Chrome, Safari, Linux
Basecamp is one of the most popular project management applications. It doesn’t only keep to-do lists, but also keep notes, files and events’ schedules as well. This app holds central importance for task organization. It has a user-friendly interface with a one-month free subscription.
Its benefits include:
Transparent management and accountability
More efficient communication and coordination
Updated customizations and integrations
Every project depicts outdated to-do tasks and stores all the files associated with each of the tasks even if the deadline has exceeded. Basecamp is suitable for companies of all sizes and even for remote workers.
Many renowned multinationals are its clients. This task manager is supported in multiple languages and an ideal fit for globally sparsed teams.
Trello is an extremely user-friendly task management software that gives an impression of a whiteboard. It’s free of cost and you can create multiple boards with your to-do lists, along with ‘doing’ and ‘done’ task cards.
Quick overview
Drag and drop function
Easy to organize with tags and labels
There are cards within boards where one can add tasks and set the due date as needed. Collaborations are simplified with this software. With the free version, one can have an unlimited number of boards, cards, checklists, and attachments. You can remove or delete the cards from the boards and can rename them anytime. Besides you can add as many members as you like into them.
This software provides seamless integrations with google docs and dropbox.
Dropbox is one of the most widely known and popular file-sharing options. It’s considered the most prestigious document storage and sharing software. It is suitable for both businesses and individuals’ needs.
With the help of cloud storage, it makes the entire process extremely convenient for accessing, storing and retrieving files.
Simplified link sharing via email, chat or even a text
Provide offline access
Online backup and file retrieval
Manually determined bandwidths
Accessible from any device
Dropbox offers a successful and trend-setting referral program. Through which 500MB storage is obtained with every referral. There are numerous software that allows data sharing but not as efficient as dropbox even that, for free.
Proof hub brings in many features to eliminate the need of subscribing to numerous apps for task management solutions. It tries to develop a centralized location for communication, project management, and handle teams efficiently.
Workflows and boards
Mobile and tablet compatibility
Advanced search
Multiple languages
It helps you upload your documents easily from a centralized location. No more hassle to manage documents through email. It is a reporting software that presents a report on how the resources were used and give the insight to track the progress of various projects.
Remote members can use it to discuss and share ideas with each other as it also serves as a communication tool.
Companies are delivering exceptional customer service to their clients, by actively investing in business solutions, that utilize the latest technology and time tracking apps. Businesses also enhance their productivity as well as streamline operations by implementing such solutions.
Whether you manage a big company or a startup, wasting operational costs are not acceptable. Even a minor hiccup can lead to devastating disasters if not managed right. Thus, time tracking apps are a great way to increase profits and reduce costs, altogether.
Companies successfully reduce their costs, by following the new trend of automating daily operations. Every minute and every task is valuable for the final project delivery no matter how minor they are. Through time tracking apps, you can easily manage invisible billable hours such as time spent on emails, phone calls, project management and communication, meetings, and fieldwork.
If you are working with freelancers or remote teams
Knowing what your remote employees are doing and how much time they are spending on each individual task can give you a better idea of how well they are utilizing your resources. Even though outsourcing employees can reduce costs but managing them can be a hassle. It’s important you organize them strategically and in a profitable way.
No matter how many freelancers you are dealing with every day, time tracking will remember how much time they spent on your project and generates a report so that you can calculate idle time. Therefore, time tracking apps can make every billable hour important. You don’t even have to hire in-house teams when you can outsource talent.
Through automatic time tracking, you can also know which projects are worth your time. You can easily estimate project ROI and know which projects to prioritize more. Win-win!
Increased productivity equals increased profits
Upgrade your workplace with a time tracking tool especially if the process is outdated. This can help your employees be more productive throughout the day, and understand roadblocks through real-time monitoring. You can easily tell which tasks turn into profits and track the performance to see if your team is successful when they spend time on that certain task. This will not only help you set goals but clear expectations to gain profits and identify the idle time.
Time tracking apps reveals invisible work and inefficient workflows. But it also helps you keep a proper check and balance on priorities, and overhead costs. Justify employee inefficiency and efficiency by identifying the tasks that drain your time, consequently your budget.
Every good time tracking app has an admin dashboard that shows trends of each individual employee, allowing you to make informed future decisions when it comes to hirings and resources.
As Artificial Intelligence is making its way into our businesses and tools, we have more opportunities to automate and streamline almost every administrative task such as expense management, accounting, meetings et al
Evaluate what you really need
Technology is evolving at a rapid pace. Deploying too many tools so quickly is a bad strategy. Don’t go for the products, or subscriptions that you know you will never actually use. This is one of the ways through which you can cut additional costs. Run a quick audit if need be.
Choosing just one right time tracking tool can go a long way. Not only will this save money but also helps streamline workflow.
Check out the Staff timer app that offers a comprehensive time tracking solution for global teams. Available for mac and windows!
To run a business efficiently, sheer productivity is required and there are many ways to asses it. Calculating your company’s revenue would be the most basic indicator of productivity. But when it comes to measuring the productivity of a single employee, owners need to resort to some specific ways. Besides Stafftimer, there are few employee time tracking apps that provide keystroke counts.
But, if an employer wants to honestly judge how productive an employee is, only calculating keyboard and mouse activity will not give the whole picture. With Stafftimer, business owners get a statistical view of keystrokes combined with mouse activity, total progress, and idle time percentages. An employee engagement activity graph is also available.
Difference between keylogger and keystroke counter
Both keylogger and keystroke counter is based on the same working mechanism. But the main purpose of both tools is very different. The basic reason for developing these tools was to study human-computer interaction.
This software is legal but some people use it for malicious activities such as to steal passwords and confidential information.
For the sole purpose of employee engagement activities, this tool was tweaked and been made more secure. Now it only counts the number of keystrokes along with mouseclicks without recording any text or work information.
There exists another type of keylogger called hardware keylogger. It is a small device used as a connector between computer and keyboard. Its design resembles an ordinary PS/2 connector or USB adapter. Making it easier for someone to monitor activities and stay unseen at the same time.
How Stafftimer use keystroke counter
To best get an idea of employee engagement activities, Stafftimer integrates idle time, mouse clicks, and keystroke counts. It combines all peripheral uses and calculates an employee’s progress based on previous keystroke number over idle time. It does all this while still maintaining the transparent relation between an employer and an employee.
In addition, Stafftimer allows even an employee to see his or her own progress and keystroke counts so that they may increase their productivity in the future.
To have some statistical view, both employer and employee have a bar chart on their dashboard. This chart shows an employee’s history regarding active and inactive time, based on the use of keystrokes and mouse clicks. Employers can also view the progress of their employees on a daily and hourly bases.
Other obscure uses of keyloggers
Both small and large companies ethically use keyloggers. Most companies have a system that can detect some particular keywords.
Nowadays, there is a conspiracy floating around that suggests that Facebook is eavesdropping its users through their microphones. But that doesn’t seem likely. Facebook’s official statement reads, “Facebook does not use your phone’s microphones to inform ads or to change what you see in your newsfeed.”
But, why does it feel like Facebook and its advertisers are in the same room with you?
This is because they are so good at tracking you online and offline that it feels like they have access to your conversations. With a legal and ethical use of keystroke logging and AI algorithms, Facebook can track your interests and show you advertisements that might catch your attention. This article on the Wallstreet journal goes into the gritty details.
There is a term called Corporate keylogging. It refers to tracking and recording the computer activities of employees and contractors for three purposes.
Real-time monitoring and alerting
This is especially used for IT and security personal. Why? So that they can immediately notify any suspicious or dangerous behaviors and/or activity.
After fact investigation
To help administrators investigate system failures and data breaches. Also used to look into malicious activity during root cause analysis.
Compliance auditing
To help auditors determine how well the company is complying with laws and regulations. It also helps identify violators.
A corporate keylogger is not used manually. It is used to search for keywords and get real-time alerts.
Like any other tool, keyloggers can be used for legal and illegal purposes. Many parents use it on their children’s smartphones for surveillance. Stafftimer also provides daily work videos. When an employee’s keystroke counter combines with video recordings, video quality dramatically increases.
