Since it is now Thanksgiving week, we wanted to take a moment to remind our members that it’s perfectly fine to venture to uncharted education territories and try new learning methods with EdTech! Here’s some helpful hints for your reading pleasure.
Try Something New—Learn With Robots
Technology—in any form—is generally much more beneficial in chasing the elusive quest for deeper learning. Many educators and districts have adopted this belief and implemented tools like iPads and Chromebooks into their classrooms for students to use in a 1:1 environment, but along with these useful technologies, there are others you probably wouldn't think of right away. The best example? Robots. Robots, while not very mainstream, provide a totally different and certainly innovative approach to learning and will get kids excited. Using these fun teaching tools will build interest and open up new forms of innovation.
Not only will young kids find it to be very fun, teaching robotics in early grades has learning benefits as well. Playing with and building robots helps kids learn the basics of programming and by being in control, they learn to follow precise instructions as well as experimenting with what the robot can and can't do. Plus, despite young children not noticing, learning through robotics also teaches kids some of the most important skills they will need to land modern-day jobs. The programming demand—whether for up-and-coming drones or some yet-to-be-established field—is likely to be booming. By programming robots in school, students are able to discover if they have an interest or skills for any of these tech-related careers and learn valuable skills anyway.
There are teaching-specific robots that are suitable for children of any age and those that cater to specific age levels as well. Some huge and some tiny, robots have shown to be a great assistive tech tool, especially to those children with learning difficulties. Kids tend to respond to and benefit from the calm, clear and consistent interactions that learning with robots can provide. One last benefit is the myths learning with robots help dispel. Kids tend to believe that robots are tightly wired, complex pieces of huge technology, whereas in reality, they can be made of the simplest components, like the Ozobot for example. Understanding what these tools can and cannot do is the best way to help kids understand and help prepare them for a future in which they will probably be seeing a lot of them.
Should you Consider Mobile Learning?
While it’s true that providing today’s students with access to the Internet does a great deal to enhance lessons through conversation and/or video, it’s increasingly difficult to get 25 children huddled around a desktop computer. Thankfully, with advances in today’s technology and many kids already owning their own, smart mobile devices are a great way to alleviate this problem and engage students on deeper levels. Mobile learning is easy to integrate—kids will love being able to use their cellphones in class! And, on top of that, they have been shown to boost retention, increase learner satisfaction, widen participation and, with a little research, could even end up saving the school some money.
Mobile learning (or mLearning) upgrades the education experience for young students in a number of ways. First, it allows for quick and efficient online communication through avenues such as Twitter or forums set up by the teacher. The ability to be able to communicate with teachers as well as peers while accessing a multitude of online learning resources in real time plays a key role in facilitating learning. As an added bonus, today’s students can even do it on the move. As long as the school provides a reliable Wi-Fi connection, communication can continue even as children move to different classrooms. It certainly is one way to re-engage students by approaching them through a medium they are comfortable with and with proper, organization-wide planning as well as reliable tools, it can become a helpful reality.
Mobile technologies an maximize learning by making content more accessible—especially for learners with disabilities. There are specific devices that are designed to assist those who struggle with focus or comprehension and, like almost everything else, have been made mobile as well. These kids are probably familiar with using mobile technology in their everyday lives, but now they will start recognizing how they can use it to learn and better their education. Plenty of teachers have successfully built mobile learning classrooms and found a dramatic increase in engagement and retention among their students. Mobile learning can open up a wide variety of learning avenues as students can do everything from finding new project ideas to doing research on current events—all from their desk in the classroom.
The Ideal School Makerspace
What does it take to build the best, student-centered, active learning environment you can dream up? SCALE it up! Here are some great tips for creating a Student-Centered, Active Learning Environment to learn with technology. Start with a desire to improve, a touch of motivation and a whole boatload of creativity and you’ll be well on your way to creating an ideal makerspace for kids to collaboratively explore all that a modern-day education should encompass. You can revamp an old space (dusty classrooms work as well) and don’t hesitate to throw out any VHS tapes you find. If possible, monitors for video should be placed strategically throughout the room so that they’re visible from all vantage points. This usually becomes a bit easier when tables and chairs can roll. Variety, flexibility and comfort are key to creating an ideal collaborative environment.
So, what are some of the coolest things to include? The most awesome one that’s caught our eye might just be white board walls. They provide a writable surface for each student to share ideas all throughout the room (literally)! Some learning spaces include a place for virtual field trip taking with monitors set up to explore any museum in the country, multimedia areas with green screens so students can learn to shoot and edit video, a quiet learning area for those who do their best thinking in silence as well as standing tables, theater seating and areas that can accommodate both small and large groups for collaborative projects. Everyone has their own unique ideas and until you try them out for real, none of them are wrong!
Keep in mind that it’s okay if it takes a few years to design and fundraise for your innovative space—the goal is simply to design an area that will change instructional practice for the better and promote active learning. Some things that look truly appealing include bar seating, having no “front” of the room, mobile and flexible furniture and a comfortable lounge area. In no time at all, students will begin to huddle around displays and become much more engaged when content is right in their face. You even can (and should) design areas that are wheelchair accessible simply by leaving some extra space between benches or making sure there’s enough space under tables so that your makerspace is 100 percent inclusive. You can spend as little or as much as you want when funding your perfect space and can get all the cool stuff for between $25,000 and $30,000 (roughly the same as installing a 90s computer lab). Consider eliminating “nice-to-have’s” and focus only on what you need to collaborate. One final tip: it’s not only the technology and furniture in the room that make makerspaces successful—it’s what motivates you to change instructional practice and shift learning UP!
Teachers + Twitter In The Classroom
The use of EdTech is a practical and readily available way for educators as well as their students to become true digital citizens and enhance education in the process. The best way to make this happen is to take advantage of every tool possible to bring all aspects of the modern world into the classroom. One tool that is extremely useful in modern classrooms, though it might surprise you, is the social media giant, Twitter. Since they spend a good chunk of time, however, each day trying to keep their students off of the mobile app, some educators might be skeptical. Get ready to be convinced.
Assuming that both teachers and students utilize the site for its up-to-the-minute nature and sharing capabilities rather than chatting and scrolling, there are a lot of benefits to using Twitter in education. In the 21st century, teachers increasingly have seen positive results from using Twitter in the classroom. Twitter is a valuable learning tool and even more valuable as a tool for sharing and collaboration—two of the most crucial things that help students to continue to grow and develop.
Basically, there’s no reason we can think of to discourage any educator from using Twitter in education. As a resident in the 21st century, you have access to the Internet—probably at your fingertips constantly. As an educator promoting the values of learning and sharing results, you have a growth mindset and Twitter (surprisingly perhaps) is a great tool to multiply students’ growth. Finally, Twitter enables the possibility for national and international connections from right in the classroom. Still not convinced? Create an account and follow Eduporium! You’ll be hooked!
The Importance of Creativity in Modern Classrooms
One way to learn is to sit still for seven hours and write down everything you hear in a 50-page spiral notebook you’ll probably lose sometime next week. If that doesn’t sound like a good time to you, that’s probably because there are much better (and more fun) ways for students to engage with class material and actually learn it. Students—for whatever reason (probably tradition)—accept the fact that they need to sit in evenly distributed rows for hours on end to become the educated individual they will need to be in order to survive and advance. But, what if they refused?
One thing is certain: there is not a whole lot of creativity being put on display when students are being talked at except for perhaps some interesting designs in the margins of their notebooks. Some of the factors that scientifically compose creativity include originality, self-expression, risk taking and collaboration—none of which I see in traditional lecture-giving and note-taking classrooms. The reality, however, is this: we rely on creativity and creatively using technology to adapt in a world that is constantly changing. Picture the world in 10 or 15 years from now and imagine how much more rapid and complex changes will be occurring at that time. Kids need to learn real-world skills like creativity in order to be set up for a successful future and that does not happen unless they engaged and involved in their education every day.
Now, hopefully everyone understands the importance of allowing students to be creative and we can move on to ideas for how to get their creative juices flowing. One idea is possibility thinking—posing “what if?” questions to get students to come up with as many creative solutions for a problem or a question as possible. Or, provide them with opportunities to explore their individual interests since creativity booms when kids are using it to fuel something they truly enjoy doing. To really access the creative genes in students, reiterate that there are certain goals intended to be accomplished creatively and incorporate the ideals of self-discipline, openness, risk taking, tolerance for ambiguity and group trust into the collaborative (key word) process. Now, with these ideas applied, students will be able to learn material much more effectively, shed light on innovative ideas and, all at the same time, become more prepared for the future.
Have a safe and happy Thanksgiving and be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook for updates about how you can save on your favorite EdTech products this Black Friday and Cyber Monday.