In today’s society, an increasing number of teachers have serious problems controlling their classrooms. Apparently, students are very easily bored, they have a short attention span, and need to be continuously stimulated to give out the best results. Thus, a teacher’s job becomes incredibly challenging, since she or he must constantly find innovative ways to encourage students, keep them interested, and capture their attention.
Fortunately, technology in education adds important features to the classroom, helping teachers stay on top of their work and students focus on their tasks at hand. To maximize these tools’ efficiency, you must learn the proper ways to use them as a teacher. If you are not able to explain how the system works, how will your students be able to understand your requests or requirements? Here are three smart ways in which you can use gadgets in the classroom.
photo by Jeff Peterson licensed under CC BY
1. Encouraging Creativity
There are so many ways in which you can encourage creativity among students while using technology, that you cannot even imagine! While some critics might claim that technology limits creativity, the truth is, it actually enhances it as long as you know how to use it.
Neuroscience has long proven it – encouraging creativity by using gadgets for college students is a bliss! Here are some ideas in which you could use technology to enhance your kids’ imagination and creativity:
- Have them blog for creative thinking – blogging for fun is one of the best activities that you could encourage them to do. Let them write down their deepest thoughts and emotions and then, discuss their pieces with them! Let them develop their own stories and create their own characters, and then, analyze them together! To check their work against others, you can buy college essays! It’s good to have a comparison standard.
- Have them use mind-mapping tech gadgets – brainstorming is an important part of almost all activities we must perform daily, so show them how to use Wise Mapping or Creately to map out their own ideas!
- Video and audio tools are interesting too – have your kids create their own videos and audios – don’t set any restrictions, let them have their fun and develop their creativity! Watch their behaviors and notice how they think – are they strategic? Are they more soft-skill inclined? You can learn a lot by watching how they react to these new technologies.
photo by Maryland GovPics licensed under CC BY
Making It Fun
To keep students engaged and attentive, you gotta make things fun! So, here are some brief ideas that could help you out –
- Make them learn by gaming – this is a very smart way to make your kids engage in the activities you’ve prepared.
- Integrate social media into the classroom – students are already social media users, so integrating this approach into your teaching method will be fun for them!
- Review webpages and critique them! – teach them how unreliable the internet is by reviewing websites such as Wikipedia; explain to them how a good informational resource should look like.
- Teach them the basics of multimedia presentations and the essentials of smart gadgets – help them develop their first PowerPoint presentation and teach them Excel!
- Award students who finish faster – make the activities fun and competitive by using an agreeable reward system!
- Get your students’ feedback – don’t forget to ask your students if they are comfortable/they like the teaching method you are approaching; a good way to do that is by asking for their feedback through surveys.
Integrating technology into the classroom will make your lessons more engaging and interactive! Make sure you are searching for the right resources to provide your students with the best content!
photo by unknown author licensed under CC BY-SA-NC
Using the Apps
Some teachers like to innovate their classrooms by purchasing a foldable keyboard, digital textbooks, and even charging backpack! If this is you, feel free to! Besides these new features, here are some great examples of cool gadgets you could implement in the classroom. There are a bunch of them out there, so if you don’t like our options, feel free to research for yourself! However, this is what we recommend:
- Evernote for your notes – your work is kept online, meaning you can access your content from wherever you’d like!
- Prodigy – this one helps turn your Math lessons into an engaging, interactive presentation for elementary school kids!
- Seesaw – if you want to make sure that parents are updated on their children academic progress
- Kahoot! – this imaginative app is a great tool to generate competition among students and thus, access their most deterministic self!
- GoNoodle – if you think mindfulness is an important practice to start from a young age, go with this amazing app! It will help you structure their breaks in an innovative yet productive way.
Conclusion
Traditional teaching methods are highly important and regarded as productive in most cases, so if you worry about them disappearing, worry no more! technology is just another cool aspect that innovative teachers can add to the classroom to make it more interactive and stimulating, so start looking into these new creative processes. Keep your classroom interesting and special!
This is a guest contribution by Joshua Robinson, a teacher, innovator, and speaker. His main passion is developing technological means of achieving academic success. Joshua’s greatest achievement is developing smart gadgets for college use.
