10 Simple Ideas to Use Technology to Engage Students

Students at school can be fun. They can be naughty, fickle and sometimes (read: always) do not sit in their seats.And let’s talk about the teenage students, the high school students. They are tired of listening to the same teaching methods.Technology has surely brought some great changes in the education field. Almost all the schools around the world are now using smart technology to the classrooms and introducing new and interesting methods to teach students. They call this a smart approach to smart learning.With the advent of every new year at the school, the teachers over there have to re-invent themselves,

Think of new ways to teach the children, manage them in the class and yet learn something better and new every day to cope with the fast pacing world.

The teachers are always thinking of updating new technologies to teach students and engage them. Sometimes they fail to engage students with their words or whatever they are teaching. Of course, time is very important and that’s why we have come up with 10 simple ideas to use the technology to engage students. It may not be easy and new in the beginning, but you’ll get used to it once you are using it regularly.

1. Use videos:

Videos or visuals are said to be more powerful that audio. It means that a child can register more in the brain if he or she sees something. After all we do remember what we see than remember what we heard. SO always try to use videos in the presentations to teach a few topics so that students can learn better.

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For example, you can download lots of educational content or videos from YouTube. Or you can also use Teacher Tube which is like the place where you get a lot of academic videos.This is the easiest way to engage your students. Just load the video in your laptop, connect the laptop to the projector and there you go, the children are all seeing it.This can somehow create a positive impact on the child.

2. Make your Presentations well:

You can always make presentations creatively. You can add multimedia and animation wherever you can. Since it depends upon the subject you are teaching, you can weigh how much multimedia is required for the class.

You can add videos, audio clips, photographs or animation et cetera to make your presentation more interesting.Who would want to pay interest to a basic PowerPoint presentation anyway?

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3. Online Activities:

Some of the schools have started to provide smart tablets or laptops to their students. This is because the students can use them for receiving the study material and other assignments. You can always make up some online activities and give them to students who are tough to engage. Online Activities can be anything. It can be quizzes, games or anything. But assigning online activities is another simpler way to engage students.

4. Online Mind Maps:

Remember your childhood where you used to make mind maps to understand everything? Yes, the same mind maps. Using online mind maps is a truly engaging for brainstorming. And discussions in the class-rooms.

You can use MindMeister, an online mind maps maker where they learn to reinforce learning matter.

5. Allow the students to come up with something interesting:

You can motivate the students to come up with something great for a better conceptual understanding. You can ask them to come up with a Wikipedia page to update about some topic you shared and the next day or two, you can ask them to present them in front of the class. This way, they’ll build their confidence and bounce back in no time that the teachers will be very happy.

6. Blogging using WordPress:

You can also ask them to set up student blogs. You have WordPress which offers free trial you can take. You can ask them to post anything in the blog. The blog could be around poems or short essays and other things. Student blogging might take some time but it’s worth the wait.

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7. Offer some good technology related projects:

To keep the students engaged, you can encourage them to use their gadgets to build some great projects online. You can accordingly grade them on that. The project can be on various things like putting eBooks together or looking up for a solution. You can also give them web designing or crafting multimedia presentations.

There are a lot of software’s which can be used to create some own and good quality products. At least in these ways you can introduce technology to your students and totally engage them.

8. You can introduce games:

Yes, you can introduce a games learning platform. Most of the games are designed so that students can enjoy and learn at the same time. You can use a video game simulation and make them learn something useful. And according to an article, you learn quicker and easily the concepts all the teachers have been trying to teach.

For example, there is Prodigy which provides games to teach mathematics up to grade 8 in places like Canada and the United States. The teachers can make their own classrooms and also send them questions like assignments through email.

9. Simulations:

One of the students’ favorite way of learning: Simulation. You can create whatever you want to learn. The simulations can apply to the real world applications and are pretty useful for a student’s learning. A lot of teachers are thinking of how else the simulations can be updated so that they can know how to apply the concepts better.It is easy and very simple to use and teach9mg is even more simpler to the teachers.

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10. Web quests:

Web quests are online educational based adventure games. The students can get to play detective role and solve any specific case. The case comes with certain clues and information, the rest the students have to figure it out and reach to the bottom of the case.

Conclusion:

 So these are few methods where you can engage students with technology. For sure, technology does have its pros and cons but the technology has always brought a smile in the student’s face and relief in the teacher’s heart.

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