Being in the 21st century, we all come to find that technology plays a huge role in our lives, with the emergence of social media, smartphones, and the most baffling one of them all, self-driving cars. Since it’s the norm, I think we sometimes find it challenging to realise the actual importance of it, one being to enhance lesson quality. So, how exactly is I.T relevant to classroom-based lessons, and how can it be most effective?
Well first of all, I.T not only has benefits for students, but also for teachers. Repetitive lessons stunt a teacher’s motivation to actually teach, and therefore by including variation in their work, it encourages them to engage in lessons more, facilitating their job better. With variation, it prevents teacher laziness massively, as repetition ruins the drive to strive.
For the students, you may think that technology has the potential to act as a distraction to the students, but in reality, it does the complete opposite. Using devices such as an iPad or computer helps substitute boring lessons, into fun and interactive activities. It improves collaboration massively, and by observing, you will be able to notice the students communicating with each other more. To do this most effectively, however, you must set tasks that require multiple people involving themselves. For example, if learning about bones in the body, you can put your class into groups, and in each group assign individuals to different bones to learn about. You can then give them time after for each student to educate the group on what they have researched. Overall, it leads to a situation where peers are talking to each other, improving their communication and comfortability with each other.
In addition, I.T during classroom based lessons incorporates a range of different learning styles. Every child in your classroom is different from the next, and with a teaching plan, it can be challenging to fit every student’s most effective way to learn. Luckily, introducing technology in your lessons is inclusive to all students. Some may want to visually express their knowledge with PowerPoints or spider diagrams, which help create an infographic that illustrates their understanding of the content. Different forms of technology are to be experimented with, to help students find the technique that best fits them. This understanding can be utilised with the students able to practice them at home in revision techniques.
Finally, it helps improve the student’s technical skills, which can prepare them for the future. Technology is guaranteed to evolve over the years, making not only the number of jobs in the technology sector increase but also the high demand for IT experience in normal, everyday jobs. Therefore, introducing technology in the classroom at a younger age sets your students up for success in the digitally based future.
In conclusion, an increased familiarisation with technology helps improve collaboration, incorporates different learning techniques, and prepares students for the future. Eventually, increased collaboration results in a better understanding of the content, which by extension leads to students doing better in class. An important benefit of this that I’ll leave you with, is that it can advance the skills they possess, such as problem-solving, creative thinking, and communication.
If your school, college or education centre is looking to upgrade their classroom management software to enable a more streamlined approach when it comes to using IT equipment to facilitate an improved learning experience, we’d be happy to give you a free online demonstration of our software.