Nowadays it's all about technology. Usage of tech in teaching is the new normal.
How effective the tech tools can be in the teaching field?
Teacher Help
Moderator: Josef Essberger
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StudyBoards
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Re: Teacher Help
Have you seen what I've posted? It's precisely related to the question you're raising. 'Technology' has been a word bandied about in TEFL circles for a very long time, in the eyes of many a misguided school owner, they assumed this meant putting up a flat screen TV in the classroom and shoving some pc-off-the-scrap-heap in the corner of the room, and calling it a day. Obviously, it's not the what, but the how.
Fast forward several years and we now have a glut of apps that can be used to augment the teaching process, think Kahoot or Quizlet. However, in my view, these are rather an extension of the current trend of gamifying lesson activities, creating the all important 'fun' and 'engagement', but that's kind of all they are to me - fillers. Not that they don't have their merits, Quizlet flashcards more so than Kahoot, which basically amounts to kids getting all hyped and excited over 1 multiple choice question for 5 minutes or more at a time - hardly a productive way to learn I would say.
Also, the platforms we are all used to, as teachers, students and administrators, think Google classroom, Microsoft teams, and so on, have a myriad of issues, on the UX/UI front, and I don't know many people who are genuinely happy with them. 'Stuff is thrown around everywhere', they would say. And often, LMSs (learning management systems) are purely administrative tools that don't integrate with what goes on in the classroom and how the student learns, and they too are clunky, menu-driven systems that most administrators get frustrated with.
Hence, it has been one of the motivations behind of what I've created. A simpler integration of all these things, along with systems that don't just provide amusement and entertainment in the classroom, but actually try to do what I see very, very little being done about - helping the student with strategies that help them learn between lessons. Because it doesn't matter how mind-blowing a lesson is, and how many dozens of hours a teacher has put into preparation, crafting handouts, cutting slits of paper, etc, if the student still does nothing to revise what was covered in the lesson. And what do teachers do? They wring their hands and say 'it's their problem, they're just lazy'. No, it's our problem too. Not an easy thing to solve, at all, hence perhaps the right technology can help in that...
Fast forward several years and we now have a glut of apps that can be used to augment the teaching process, think Kahoot or Quizlet. However, in my view, these are rather an extension of the current trend of gamifying lesson activities, creating the all important 'fun' and 'engagement', but that's kind of all they are to me - fillers. Not that they don't have their merits, Quizlet flashcards more so than Kahoot, which basically amounts to kids getting all hyped and excited over 1 multiple choice question for 5 minutes or more at a time - hardly a productive way to learn I would say.
Also, the platforms we are all used to, as teachers, students and administrators, think Google classroom, Microsoft teams, and so on, have a myriad of issues, on the UX/UI front, and I don't know many people who are genuinely happy with them. 'Stuff is thrown around everywhere', they would say. And often, LMSs (learning management systems) are purely administrative tools that don't integrate with what goes on in the classroom and how the student learns, and they too are clunky, menu-driven systems that most administrators get frustrated with.
Hence, it has been one of the motivations behind of what I've created. A simpler integration of all these things, along with systems that don't just provide amusement and entertainment in the classroom, but actually try to do what I see very, very little being done about - helping the student with strategies that help them learn between lessons. Because it doesn't matter how mind-blowing a lesson is, and how many dozens of hours a teacher has put into preparation, crafting handouts, cutting slits of paper, etc, if the student still does nothing to revise what was covered in the lesson. And what do teachers do? They wring their hands and say 'it's their problem, they're just lazy'. No, it's our problem too. Not an easy thing to solve, at all, hence perhaps the right technology can help in that...