Education - The importance of Technology in the Classroom

I am currently working on a thesis regarding the use of technology in the classroom. Below is an excerpt from my dissertation:

The use of computers and the Internet is fast becoming an important tool in the education sector. It is becoming very common for technology to be used for assessing, training and educating students. According to a number of studies conducted by Barbara Means et al. (1997), the use of technology in the classroom has a number of advantages including, better collaboration between students, enhancing student motivation and adding to the students’ perception that their work is credible when properly referenced from the internet. Most educators are overcoming the barrier posed by these ever-more sophisticated technological tools and they now understand that technology is a particularly important tool for assessing their students. The fact that modern students are very dependent on technology proves how important it is that their teachers employ more modern methods in their classroom so as to meet the interests and capabilities of their students.

The use of technology in the classroom can certainly make teaching easier and more efficient by saving us precious time. I am currently in the process of creating an online application (which is part of my thesis) to be used by teachers and their students. I had been searching online for the ultimate teaching tool for years and I failed to find it. The applications that I found were too complicated, limited in functionality, or required a monthly subscription payment...so I decided to create it myself. This will be a website created by a teacher for teachers and it will be 100% free. As you might have noticed, the website will be called Mentor Buddy (www.mentorbuddy.com). I'm putting the last finishing touches to the whole thing and hopefully it should be launched sometime in late October. In the meantime the internet has a wealth of resources for teachers: from lesson plans to tests ready for printing. The internet can make our job so much easier, the trick is to know how to search for the proper information.

Teaching: staying creative

It's easy enough for new teachers to let their enthusiasm create creative and fun lessons. However, more seasoned teachers usually struggle to deliver a certain level of creativity in their lessons. Enthusiasm may start running dry after some years, particularly if you are being given students who just don't seem to appreciate your efforts.

None-the-less, there is no excuse for delivering boring lessons. Here's a list of things to do to give that little extra-something in your classroom:

• Care about your students: Knowing your students as individuals and understanding their needs, will give you a big motivational boost.
• Games: the internet is the best way to get great ideas for games to be included in your lessons. Games don't need to be fancy. Simple crosswords, word puzzles can be easily included in exercises and they make such a big difference.
• Re-use old materials: there is nothing wrong with re-using lesson plans, games, activities, etc, from previous years. Just make sure that you deliver the lesson with the same enthusiasm as the first time.
• Be modern: stay up to date with what's going on in the world. You might never know when you'll be able to use the latest cartoon character or movie star in your lessons. You need to understand what students are interested in and then incorporate that in your lesson. All it takes is to ask some direct questions...you don't need to be a detective :)

That's it for today. I'll keep you posted.

Teaching: Effective classroom management

I have already written a post about effective classroom management. This should hopefully be a more detailed and direct post tackling the subject.
As a teacher you MUST avoid:

• Over-appeasing students: some teachers will do anything to be the students' best friend. Keep in mind that before you are the students' friend, you are their teacher. If punishment is needed then use it.
• Ambiguous questions: questions need to be direct and easy to understand. A good way of overcoming this problem is to tell students who have understood a question to explain it to their peers.
• Not learning students' names: it is very difficult to conduct an effective lesson when you don't know the names of your students since directing questions to particular students or correcting student's behavior becomes overtly-complicated.
• not acting on bad behavior: verbal threats alone will not accomplish anything.
• Ignoring bad behavior: this is a definite no-no. Bad behavior will not stop simply by ignoring it. Act immediately on it. Set down some ground rules and give out punishment if students challenge these rules. Punishment may involve writing lines, take away a fun activity, whole-class punishment (use this sparingly as a last resort)
• Standing in the same area of the class during lessons: While conducting your lessons, move around the whole area of your classroom. This will discourage bad behavior.
• Silent classes: unless the students are working on a test or an individual exercise, your classroom must not be silent. It should constantly be a flurry of ideas and information.
• Being too serious: Lessons need to have some fun elements in order to make it interesting otherwise students will get bored and break your class-rules. Crack some occasional jokes and use lots of media for your lessons. On the other hand you must not over do this, otherwise students will not take you seriously.
• Overpraising students: don't praise students for doing things that they are expected to do.

That's it for today. As always, If you have any questions or ideas that you want to share with everyone, feel free to leave a comment.