This week, we’ll take a look at teacher-student feedback in the digital age, why it’s ok to fail in a blended learning classroom and how educators can create tomorrow’s classroom right now! Buckle up for the latest installment of The Eduporium Weekly!
Keeping Calm and Overcoming Flipped Learning Challenges
So, you finally got around to giving technology in the classroom a wholehearted try. That’s great! Chances are though, especially if you’re new to teaching with tech, that something is bound to go wrong. That’s okay! In fact, it would be weird if our technology ever functioned 100 percent perfectly for any extended period of time, right? When your EdTech fails, just remember to keep poised and follow these steps to alleviate poor tech performance and discouraged students.
You may realize after a period of time that your in-class technology isn’t working as well as you thought it might. This may then be confirmed by a flood of parent emails over a long weekend, for example. So, now what do you do? As long as you’ve covered all your bases—from researching your tech to building relationships with your students—you’ll be in pretty good shape. Remember, also, not to hand them the grades they want. For students to truly learn (even with their EdTech), they need to earn their grades. Try making the class more fun, better catered to what the students want and what you need.
Now, to return to the flipped learning you set out to achieve. It can be done if you show patience and approach it correctly. First, make share students’ concerns and opinions are heard. Sometimes, they need to be reminded that teachers have their best interests in mind and technology is a powerful learning tool. It also doesn’t hurt to remind them where tech could take them. Take the time to show them (not tell them) how useful their STEAM education will be. And, finally, just talking it out will help. Calm communication and feedback are critical to understanding how any aspect of education needs to be improved and flipped learning is no exception. Students will probably have picked up on something you never even considered.
What Should Be Done To Prepare Kids For The Future Economy
The contemporary workforce is drastically different than it was even 10 years ago and, as of right now, there is no telling how much more it will evolve over the next 10 years. Learning practices and methods in K-12 education need to be adapting to better align with the jobs that will likely be available when kids graduate from college. Why should the majority of today’s students spend 40 hours a week reading from a textbook? Is that going to be their career—professional reader? The much more likely answer is that their future job will lie somewhere in the technology field and they will need to have a deep background in STEM subjects in order for them to achieve success. The time for preparation should start now.
What today’s educators are preparing their students for is certainly unique to both parties. The world that we live in and that today’s schoolchildren will work in has transformed into a truly global society. The skills that they will be expected to have will be specific and have already begun to be specifically highlighted by some STEAM educators through innovative technology use on a regular basis. If the present is any indication, the future will be much more advanced—both technologically and interpersonally—than it is now. Students should be starting to build the proper state of mind to succeed in an economy that requires critical thinking, the ability to understand scale and the ability to meaningfully respond to constant change while prioritizing ideas and maintaining a digital identity. That is the future of working in the 21st century.
The truth remains that while, based on tech trends, we have an idea of what the economy will look like in the future, we cannot know for certain. That throws a bit of a wrench into how we can prepare students, but we can assume that it will be tech-centered. The biggest thing that education must advance is mastery—not passing a subject, but mastering a skill. Oftentimes, this is better off done in a project-based, hands-on setting rather than at a desk in a classroom. Kids will achieve the necessary levels of understanding and retention when they engage in performance-based assessments rather than tests. In the 21st century, it is time to value mastery of skills over grades because grades can be changed with an eraser, but you can’t unlearn a vital skill. That’s how the current generation will succeed in the world that lies ahead.
Minimizing EdTech Mistakes in Modern Classrooms
Like all innovative ideas, the integration of EdTech into mainstream classrooms is bound to have its shortcomings. Whether it’s a lack of funding, an inconsistent amount of competency with the products or any number of other things, there are bound to be those who second guess teaching with technology. Luckily, there are ways to fix these problems starting first and foremost with the educators. The relationship between the teacher and the tech is an important one and neither should ever replace the other. In other words, for optimal functionality, the teacher and the tech must work together. It’s okay for technology to replace certain functions of the teacher, but not all of them. Teachers are still extremely important as they are needed to fill the voids and execute all of the intangible things that technology cannot teach.
While we’re on the subject of relationships, there is something to be said about how the technology and the students interact. Technology has generally been thought of as a way to help students learn the curriculum more completely and retain concepts in an overall better way. In reality, tech tools can be used in a hands-on manner by students to create their own functioning products. This should (hopefully) result in a shift in what we desire to be the outcome of education. Technology should not just be used as a way to raise test scores—when it is, its use is severely limited. Rather, it should be used as a transformative tool to create a much more comprehensive education experience for every student.
Beyond that, there are plenty of educators who have believed that technology should be used only to improve the existing curriculum. It has, however, created an entirely new world that can help students learn, but also incidentally will demand they develop a whole new set of skills in order to succeed. Now, technology in schools is used much more as a digital competence builder and to foster success in the digital age. Last but not least has to do with teacher-to-teacher tech use. Technology changes fast. To keep up with it, teachers should regularly take part in professional development that focuses around educating them on EdTech tools. The focus here should be on teaching teachers how to use the tools rather than on what students need and how technology can affect education. Avoid these common mistakes and your EdTech rollout will be golden!
Modernizing Feedback to Enhance Student Learning
With all the advances in educational technology and tech in general, there should be no reason for students to continue to struggle with retention. While EdTech tools are designed to boost learning efficiency, even if they are not ideal for all learners, there are still steps that teachers can take to ensure they are fully learning all they need to know. One way to do this is through feedback. Feedback—a term we’ve pretty much worn out over the years—has dramatically evolved just as eLearning and education in general both have. In the 21st century, there are new and much more efficient ways for teachers to provide their students with helpful feedback that contains specific recommendations for what exactly they need to improve.
For example, there are technology tools that can help teachers grade students’ tests, but did you know that there are also tools that can diagnose exactly where a student went wrong? It’s true. And now, new technology is being developed with the hope that it will build on the “right” or “wrong” feedback and be able to help students really learn how to correct mistakes. Known as knowledge integration, this future technology is designed to help students update and link ideas in order to better understand complex concepts. In developing this plan, extensive research led to researchers reviewing hundreds of student responses to different questions and subsequently creating the guidance they believe would be most helpful. The feedback includes suggestions for adding, distinguishing or integrating ideas and different kinds of feedback are created for students at different levels of knowledge so that they can learn optimally.
While it is not yet clear that feedback from artificial sources drastically improves student scores, it is capable of picking up on things that teachers miss (and vice versa). In some areas, knowledge-integration feedback has been shown to yield better results on redoes, but it tends to depend on the type of work. What this technology does do is create clusters of students who can receive similar feedback, showing how tech can amplify the work done by effective teachers. When computers are able to accurately provide feedback, the teachers can save a large amount of time and only pencil in a few, deeper pieces of guidance that the machines cannot fully pick up on. Ultimately, if this technology were to launch, it would provide busy teachers with more time to give detailed feedback on assignments they otherwise might not focus on as closely.
Creating Tomorrow’s Ideal Classroom Today
There’s a lot to be said about the material covered in K-12 classrooms as well as the technology teachers use to enhance learning. When you stop to think about it, however, those are just two of the many components that go into creating the perfect classroom. As education and technology continue to evolve, there is more and more focus on the classroom, specifically how it can amplify learning and make students more comfortable. Whatever way you look at it, neatly aligned rows, textbooks and lectures may well soon be things of the past.
To truly keep the classroom functioning at a peak level, educators should take every opportunity to keep their teaching tools fresh and, increasingly, that means creating their own. They should also keep in mind that innovation is crucial and what worked well last year might be on its way out in terms of efficiency already. Keeping up to date with the latest educational technology is key. Then, when it comes to planning the curriculum, it’s more than okay to strategically skip over some of the mundane requirements in lieu of activities that promote inquiry among students and demand higher-order thinking in collaborative groups. This leads to teachers being much better able to meet the individual needs of each child.
Besides setting students up with all the right tools (and the proper setting), what’s the best way to position them for success? Stimulate their creativity—early and often. Using innovative tools for creative projects helps students build real-world skills without being restricted by curriculum requirements. Teachers should employ project-based learning on a regular basis and strategically manage their instruction to identify and improve upon any weaknesses any of their students may have. Unlike in traditional classrooms, these dynamic and personalized learning experiences, especially when complemented with technology, encourage children to be self-directed leaners ready for the future. There are so many educational resources—both web-based and physical—that can drastically improve educational outcomes and help construct the classroom of tomorrow right now!