Online workshops are not easy to conduct. At least not if you really want to give your audience a stellar experience. When we attend a workshop, we are quick to judge how good or bad it is. We fail to realize that workshops are not created in a day. A lot of effort is spent on the backend to create interactive workshops. Designing and creating a workshop can interfere with your preparation. Without proper organization, you will end up feeling overwhelmed. You start remembering pre-corona days with nostalgia. This transition to online meetings and workshops is not a piece of cake. Thus, to facilitate the process, we’re presenting a list of some tools that can be used to conduct live workshops effortlessly:
Tools for taking notes
The first step to create interactive workshops, perhaps, is taking notes. You research, gather content, and add your own comments to the notes. For this bulk work you need a tool. Some of the best tools for taking notes are:
- Google Docs– Google Docs autosaves everything you write in your Google Drive. You can edit text, add hyperlinks to your text, insert images, search the web from the document, etc. It is an online tool which means it requires consistent internet connection to work. It is absolutely free to use for an unlimited amount of time.
- Evernote– The next most famous tool for taking notes is Evernote. It offers an interesting feature of collaboration where teams can work together on projects. You can create, organize, and sync data using Evernote. It has, both, a free and a paid version.
There are many other tools such as OneNote, Wunderlist, and Notion that can be used for taking notes.
Tools for designing
Online workshops have to be aesthetically appealing. If not, they will not serve their true purpose. In case of live workshops, the instructor talks to the audience one-on-one. To avoid sounding boring, they will switch between showing their face and showing slides. But most people are terrible at designing. They will have the best content, but the awful representation ruins everything. So, here are some tools that will make your work easier:
- PowerPoint: PowerPoint is so famous that it has become synonymous for presentations. It is a basic, easy to use tool for designing a workshop. It has several readymade templates that can be customized to suit our taste.
- Canva: Canva is a really cool app that allows you to create social media posts, presentations, logos, portfolios, and workshops. You can either create from scratch or use the default templates. Even the free version of Canva comes with many eye-catching templates and elements.
- Prezi: Prezi is similar to PowerPoint in many respects. The only difference between them is that it doesn’t offer as many free templates as PowerPoint.
- Adobe Photoshop: Adobe Photoshop is used by advanced graphic designers who want to create exceptional infographics. It is famously used for digital 3D artworks. However, it is not free to use. You get a 7-day free trial. After that, you have to pay to keep using it.
Project Task Management Tools
Why do we need task management tools? These tools help us to keep track of the order of the project. They are especially functional in interactive workshops. Suppose your workshop contains so many activities that it is hard to remember all of them. You would want to use a project management tool to tell you when to conduct a quiz, when to ask for polls, when to start Q&A session, etc.
- Trello: Trello is a well-known task management tool. It neatly arranges all your content in the form of boards and cards. Its downside, however, is that it cannot be used offline. If network issues occur, you will not be able to access data. Furthermore, you cannot upload a file larger than 10 MB.
Video Conferencing or Video Recording Tools
Now you have to decide where to conduct your workshop. The quality of the tool that you use for conducting it matters a lot. For live workshops, you can use video conferencing tools like Zoom, Google Meet, Google Hangouts, Skype, etc. But if your workshop is a pre-recorded hour-long video, you can use video hosting tools such as Vimeo, Loom, and Wistia.
Tools for storing data and files
After all the hard work that you put into creating the online workshops, it would be a shame if you lost all the data for some reason. This is why you should make sure to use reliable softwares for storing files. The best option is your Google Drive. The second-best options are OneDrive and DropBox.
These tools are meant to complement your content, not replace it. In the end, your content is the king. Although execution matters, nothing else is more important than the value you provide through your workshop.