ALT-5 Teaching in a Digital World
Technology: A Teacher's best friend in a Digital World
Teaching in a digital world involves a level of comfort with technology and the ability to integrate it with traditional aids in the classroom. A teacher today is expected to use multiple intelligences to deliver lesson plans to her learners. She does this by combining technical know-how with a holistic understanding of the curriculum to be delivered.
Some of the more popular classroom technology aids are online games, concept and mind maps, self-grading quizzes, graphic organizers and web diagrams.
Graphic organizers: This is a visual organization strategy that helps learners organize and prioritize information. When visually organized on a screen and color-coded, the information seems easily digestible. This strategy also helps improve a learner's note-taking efficiency.
Character web diagrams: In a digital world, Shakespeare can be a whole new experience. The teacher can have pictures of the characters up on screen, have character descriptors (ambitious, kind, selfish) and then pick specific examples from the text to illustrate how a particular quality comes to light through a character's action.
Lesson Planner: There are websites that help teachers use technology more effectively by asking them to fill out boxes to create a lesson plan. The teacher can focus on grammar, spelling or dialogue and create a plan to deliver that focus area in a comprehensive manner.
Audio-visual material: Technology helps today's teacher to use movie clips, advertisements and blogs to deliver a lesson that combines multiple intelligence. Research shows that some students are visual learners, some auditory, some linguistic and others kinesthetic. By combining music, drama, movement and language in the classroom, it is possible to capture the attention of more learners and make the lesson more relevant to their needs.
Online Games: Research shows that learners learn better when learning is fun and relevant. Today's digital revolution makes this possible. By using games to teach sentence structure or grammar a teacher ensures that technology is utilized in a fun way to enhance the learning experience.
Technology aids have made the classroom experience a pleasure for both teacher and student. A teacher who is techno-savvy is an asset in today's world.
