Qontent by QOMO

Tech­nol­o­gy has com­plete­ly trans­formed every­day life, from the way we keep in touch with friends and fam­i­ly to the way we shop for clothes or order din­ner. With each tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ment our world gets more effi­cient and more indi­vid­u­al­ized to our spe­cif­ic needs and pref­er­ences. This is the world the chil­dren of today have been born into.

It’s nat­ur­al, then, that many kids are strug­gling to fit into the tra­di­tion­al learn­ing mod­el. The expe­ri­ence of being in a tra­di­tion­al classroom—sitting still at a desk for hours, rais­ing a hand to share an opin­ion, and going at the same pace as every­one else—is at odds with the almost con­stant stim­u­la­tion and fast pace of a tech­no­log­i­cal­ly-advanced world. The typ­i­cal school day, for some kids, is almost unbear­ably rigid.

 

“This distractibility is compounded in students, who haven’t yet mastered the ability to keep school and home life separate and rarely get adequate sleep on school nights.”

Incor­po­rat­ing even a few edu­ca­tion­al tech­nol­o­gy devices in the class­room can help accli­mate today’s stu­dents to the learn­ing envi­ron­ment. With class­room tech­nol­o­gy, teach­ers can lev­el the play­ing field for stu­dents with dif­fer­ent learn­ing styles, make project work more effi­cient, increase over­all stu­dent engage­ment, and accom­mo­date stu­dents with disabilities.

1. Making learning more individualized.

One of the great­est advan­tages of edu­ca­tion­al tech­nol­o­gy is the abil­i­ty to cater to mul­ti­ple learn­ing styles at the same time. Every kind of stu­dent, from cre­atives to prob­lem solvers and visu­al to kines­thet­ic learn­ers, can ben­e­fit from an inter­ac­tive touch­screen dis­play. Whether you use an inter­ac­tive white­board, an inter­ac­tive laser pro­jec­tor, or an inter­ac­tive pan­el, touch­screen dis­plays can instant­ly fos­ter a col­lab­o­ra­tive and equi­table learn­ing environment.

When you imple­ment a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) strat­e­gy in your class­room using wire­less screen shar­ing, stu­dents are able to inter­act with the con­tent at their own pace and make per­son­al­ized anno­ta­tions on indi­vid­ual inter­ac­tive mon­i­tors or their per­son­al smart­phones or tablets.

2. Improving student engagement and classroom participation.

Stu­dent engage­ment is rarely (if ever) at 100%. Teach­ers too can have a hard time keep­ing per­son­al prob­lems, wan­der­ing thoughts, and just straight up sleepi­ness at bay dur­ing school hours. This dis­tractibil­i­ty is com­pound­ed in stu­dents, who haven’t yet mas­tered the abil­i­ty to keep school and home life sep­a­rate and rarely get ade­quate sleep on school nights. 

One method to improve class­room engage­ment and focus is offer­ing indi­vid­u­al­ized atten­tion, some­thing wire­less tablets and inter­ac­tive mon­i­tors make pos­si­ble. With wire­less devices in hand, teach­ers are free to roam and make eye con­tact, with­out hav­ing to turn their backs on stu­dents while ref­er­enc­ing the mate­r­i­al on the pro­jec­tor screen or whiteboard.

Even if every stu­dent were pre­pared and focused, one-third to one-half of your class may be com­posed of intro­verts who would lit­er­al­ly choose to have teeth pulled over rais­ing their hands to speak. Teach­ers fre­quent­ly use required class­room par­tic­i­pa­tion to force stu­dents who are usu­al­ly pas­sive lis­ten­ers out­side their com­fort zone and keep every­one alert and on their toes. While this strat­e­gy can some­times be a wel­come chal­lenge for some intro­vert­ed stu­dents, who must be pre­pared to live in a world that high­ly val­ues extro­ver­sion, it can also paint intro­ver­sion as a flaw that must be over­come instead of a nat­ur­al gift.

An audi­ence response sys­tem can bal­ance your class­room par­tic­i­pa­tion strat­e­gy, allow­ing intro­vert­ed stu­dents to demon­strate that they’re fol­low­ing along with­out being sin­gled out. In fact, audi­ence response devices can gen­er­ate an even live­li­er dis­cus­sion by giv­ing a voice to every student. 

Pic­ture this: You ask a ques­tion to the whole class, but you only get answers out of 3–4 of your most reli­ably talk­a­tive stu­dents. What if you encour­aged the entire class to vote A, B, C, or D with an audi­ence response device to indi­cate which view­point they agree with (or choose E if they have an entire­ly dif­fer­ent opin­ion)? When vot­ing is com­plete, the results are shown at the front of the class­room. Are the results sur­pris­ing? If this is your first time hear­ing from your entire class at once, most likely.

 

“Under the supervision of tech-savvy instructors, [educational technology’s] collaborative power can be wielded to make project work more efficient.”

3. Increasing efficiency of project work and promoting collaboration.

If you’ve seen the wide­ly cir­cu­lat­ing Twit­ter anec­dote about stu­dents using Google Docs to share notes dur­ing a lec­ture, you know that your stu­dents are already using tech­nol­o­gy to work togeth­er in the class­room and at home, for bet­ter or worse. Under the super­vi­sion of tech-savvy instruc­tors, this col­lab­o­ra­tive pow­er can be wield­ed to make project work more efficient. 

The Google Suite elim­i­nates sched­ul­ing con­flicts between stu­dents and makes it eas­i­er for instruc­tors to gauge the amount of work con­tributed by each project part­ner (by using ver­sion his­to­ry). By requir­ing stu­dents to share their project doc­u­ment with you before they start work­ing, you can keep tabs on them up until the dead­line, mak­ing them less like­ly to procrastinate.

Using a large inter­ac­tive dis­play with mul­ti-touch abil­i­ties can pro­mote col­lab­o­ra­tion in class, allow­ing mul­ti­ple stu­dents to stand and inter­act with the mate­r­i­al simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. The same results can be achieved with more stu­dents by using writ­ing tablets or wire­less screen shar­ing. Some cloud-based col­lab­o­ra­tion soft­ware even allows stu­dents to write anno­ta­tions over every­thing, from dig­i­tal doc­u­ments to zoomed in pho­tos of sci­ence class spec­i­mens tak­en by a doc­u­ment cam­era, and upload their notes to the cloud to be viewed lat­er on anoth­er device.

4. Creating a more accessible classroom.

Intro­duc­ing dig­i­tal learn­ing tools can make it eas­i­er to meet the needs of stu­dents with cog­ni­tive, phys­i­cal, or learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties. Giv­ing your stu­dents the abil­i­ty to access class­room mate­r­i­al through crys­tal clear audio, leg­i­ble visu­als that can be mag­ni­fied, and hap­tic tech­nol­o­gy or kines­thet­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tion are vital steps to mak­ing your class­room more acces­si­ble to stu­dents with disabilities. 

For some stu­dents with dis­abil­i­ties, a large, bright, and easy-to-use inter­ac­tive dis­play, an HD res­o­lu­tion doc­u­ment cam­era with high dig­i­tal zoom, or a sound sys­tem can help them fol­low along with the mate­r­i­al at their own pace, clear­ly see small-print text­books and doc­u­ments, and hear teach­ers clear­ly when they speak.

Also con­sid­er whether the appli­ca­tions you’re using are com­pat­i­ble with your stu­dents’ assis­tive tech­nol­o­gy. Does your hard­ware and soft­ware work with alter­na­tive input devices, text-to-speech, and screen read­ers? When pur­chas­ing tech­nol­o­gy for the class­room, choose flex­i­ble hard­ware that allows you to use your own software.

Curious about how to get started with technology in your classroom?

Once you’ve decid­ed to take advan­tage of the numer­ous ben­e­fits of edu­ca­tion­al tech­nol­o­gy, you’ll need help deter­min­ing which strate­gies and devices are best for your par­tic­u­lar class­room. That’s where QOMO comes in. Get in touch with a mem­ber of our team to request a demo, or give us some details about your edu­ca­tion­al tech­nol­o­gy needs so we can reach out to you.

Want to hear more from us about how to improve your class­room with edu­ca­tion­al tech­nol­o­gy? Invite us to your inbox!