Looking for new ideas to try in 2016? Maybe you’ve been trying to innovate in the classroom for a while now? Look no further—we’re full of suggestions in the latest edition of the Eduporium Weekly!
New Ideas for Teachers in 2016
You may have heard it’s a new year—well, not a new school year, but a new calendar year and a whole new bunch of opportunities for teachers to finish out the school year strong! Just like us regular people, teachers often make New Year’s resolutions, too. They could be something like spending more time on a particular topic or even taking just a bit more time for yourself! We hope you resolve to use more technology in the classroom to engage kids in more meaningful learning and better prepare them for the future, but if that’s not your forte, here are some other suggestions!
There are so many ways to provide kids with innovative learning experiences and it’s only gotten easier in 2016! Whether you are teaching a STEM subject, like Math or Science, or something else like English or Art, there’s an EdTech option for you! Take science class, for example. Teaching circuitry is an important concept and there’s no better way to learn about it firsthand than with Makey Makey. The Makey Makey is an interactive tool that teaches kids about conductivity simply by letting them complete the circuit! When holding the alligator clips, they’ll be able to complete the circuit if the other object they touch is conductive. For a bit more of a high-tech project, Unofficial Cardboard is a great tool to try! With the hype around virtual reality continuing to grow, Unofficial Cardboard provides a very basic introduction to the field. The best part is it’s perfect for young elementary school students!
If you really want to get innovative and up your EdTech game, 3D printing astounding and totally purposeful objects might be the perfect solution. 3D printers are everywhere these days and we figure they will only continue to gain popularity. They provide students with one of the most unique learning experiences around as they give kids total control while naturally helping them learn key STEM concepts. With a 3D printer, students can collaborate and creatively bring to life anything they need or want. Their creativity and tech skills will be vital to them in the future, so why not start now!? There are thousands of project ideas involving 3D printers or challenge students to invent their own!
Get Hands-on—Or, Try To…
One of the best ways for today’s students to use technology and learn in a deeper way is for them to physically engage with the material. Hands-on learning, in the form of labs or practicals or whatever else, has always been a part of education, specifically as students progress towards high school. Why should it be limited to older students, however? Getting hands-on with fun and engaging projects is so easy to implement as early as first or second grade. Plus, there are so many age-appropriate learning tools that will afford young learners the opportunity to get hands-on early on!
Lately, a new trend in hands-on learning in both the education and corporate worlds has been none other than virtual reality. Virtual worlds allow students to enter complex and highly technical worlds and build solutions that can be applied to solving real problems. In this and many other ways, VR has been making a splash in education and tech coordinators have certainly taken notice. Among other capabilities, virtual reality is expanding student horizons by exposing them to different roles and honing different skills. And it’s now easier than ever to partake in virtual reality experiences. Products like Unofficial Cardboard provide VR experiences that fit right in students’ hands. It’s simple and powerful and the benefits of this immersive technology are widespread.
Rather than reading about a topic, virtual reality lets students, with guidance from instructors, feel as if they have jumped right in! The key is immersion. Immersion leads directly to engagement and, as we know, higher engagement levels in students lead to better learning and improved retention of key concepts. Since today’s students are commonly referred to as ‘digital natives,’ many people feel that educators should allow them to learn in this way. There should be a conscious effort to expand hands-on learning through the use of innovative EdTech tools because having these kinds of skills will become increasingly important in education and beyond. Technology is going to keep evolving, so getting to know one of the latest advancements, virtual reality, could only benefit today’s students.
How to Inspire Students in Modern Education
If history has taught us anything, it’s that, among other things, success for today’s students begins (a lot of the time) while they are still students. Through innovative units of study and purposeful project-based learning, kids gain a much higher understanding and develop more useful skills than they would from, say, reading aloud from a textbook. When in-class projects reach that transcending level of complete engagement and ooze inspiration with every move, then you know that kids are getting all they can out of it. They’ll leave the room as they walk to their next class, still talking about what they just did—what they just accomplished. That’s what teachers should strive to achieve. But, how is it done?
As we mentioned, the secret to an effective day at school is providing students with lessons so engaging and hands-on activities so intriguing that they retain the key concepts forever—or at least for the rest of the year! For teachers who have discovered the power of project-based learning, first of all, we commend you. Second of all, you’ve probably noticed that the very essence, the entire purpose of PBL lies in student engagement. Students can engage in building all kinds of things in the classroom—a miniature boat, for example. Together, they’ll probably be able to put the proper parts together and make it float at least reasonably well. Then, imagine they ask, ‘What if we built a real one?’ That’s the goal of project-based learning: laying the groundwork to inspire students to go out and put the skills they’ve learned into action in developing ways to help each other out in the real world.
Project-based learning drives authentic learning in and out of the classroom and inspires students to incorporate their passions into their education. The best projects are those that demand critical thinking on the part of students and relate to their interests. When students get excited, the learning opportunities multiply almost instantly. To maximize effectiveness of PBL, teachers should aim to have their PBL initiatives cover six key areas: comparing and contrasting, prediction, determination of how parts relate to the whole, identifying patterns, examining different perspectives or creating something new and useful. Sometimes, students will conceive new ideas during the course of the project and they should feel free to explore those new avenues in any direction they’d like. Mix in some cool technology and you’ve got yourself an engaging, inspiring and real-world semester of 21st century learning.
3D Printing Provides Base for More Authentic Learning
In recent years, many changes have come across in our education systems and we couldn’t be more excited about them! One that has stuck out because of its high power and innovative potential is 3D printing. 3D printing is one of the most important EdTech trends because of what it can do for students now and in the future. This revolutionary form of project-based learning attacks learning at the heart: it gives students a genuine problem to solve and requires them to collaboratively mimic the work of professionals. What better way is there to get them ready for the working world?
We touched on project-based learning earlier and 3D printing is a specific subcategory of PBL that demands an increasing amount of creativity from students and promotes the notion of teamwork among classmates. In order to gain the best possible understanding of the problem they are trying to solve, clear communication is also important. Those who have observed this method in classrooms indicate that it is much more efficient than traditional classroom approaches. 3D printing is one of those areas of STEM education that is able to take on a totally self-directed aspect that helps to build student readiness as well as each of the above skills.
Just in the classroom alone, 3D printing seamlessly inspires invention, design and engineering among students, making it an extremely effective EdTech tool for both teachers and students. Students print their own tools and devices, meaning that whatever they need, they can print and this often includes products that are not readily available to most schools for monetary or safety reasons. Even as young as kindergarten, students can begin engaging in impactful learning through 3D printing, but, generally, it has much more of an effect on middle schoolers. 3D printers give students the chance to hold their outcomes—literally. Creating something tangible that they can then keep or use to help them continue to learn is a wonderful byproduct of how far technology in education has come and perhaps a precursor for all of the innovative directions it may soon go.
All the Ways Schools Can Innovate
Innovation is key—in work, in learning and pretty much everywhere in between. The ways in which educators prepare kids for the future in which they will need to be innovative more than anything else are wide-ranging and important. There are so many ways to innovate, but, most importantly, there is no wrong way. Innovation and creativity, especially in education, is not one dimensional. Modern education offers many ways to innovate, including the creation of state-of-the-art learning spaces and modified instructional methods that better reflect today’s world. Every school has the potential to rewire its practices for better preparation.
A great place to start is with the students. To best prepare kids for a world full of technology, the way they learn now should be modified. Teachers should see each student as a unique individual rather than one large group and educate each one of them accordingly—something that is commonly referred to as personalized learning. Using technologies for support, children are encouraged to take control of their education, often teaching themselves things that teachers can’t always relate to them. Personalization is the innovator’s response to standardized education due to its flexibility, ability to integrate technology and the way it encourages students to work at the pace that is best for them.
Innovation, specifically by using EdTech, allows schools to connect with the outside world, making them much more effective in giving kids a real-world education. Education is no longer solely about knowledge transmission; it’s about immediate knowledge application. Hands-on projects allow students to develop the necessary skills and competencies to thrive once they have completed their education. Perhaps most importantly, educators should work together to give life to a curriculum that promotes critical and creative thinking through the use of actively engaging problem-solving projects. Students often learn best by doing. Learning by making and doing should be high up on the list of priorities for any school that truly wants to innovate.
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