Recognise the student whose focus is elsewhere?
Other interests hold their attention, rather than the immediate
class, lecture or lesson? Digital technologies can be used for
content delivery. But they can also link what you are teaching about
to your students immediate circumstances or to what is happening
beyond the classroom walls. Teachers can use technology to listen
and involve their students in a learning experiences that extends
beyond the confines of the pages in a textbook. Do you see digital
as a delivery mechanism. Or as a trigger or a lever that can prompt
and support meaningful conversations and purposeful
interactions?
Teaching approaches such as inquiry-based earning (IBL), mastery
learning or authentic learning can be enabled and enhanced with
technology.
“Content tyranny”
When the need to complete the curriculum receives the higher
priority than dialogue or shared meaning making, then its easier to
value tools, apps and devices above students well being. We forget
the underlying values of the subject and the tools become the hidden
curriculum.
I know that I'm being tracked. I'll work
through their content. Battling to concentrate or remember.
There's another world out there.
To Begin: Engagement and Cognition
Use of technology is regularly encouraged among teachers. But how
exactly, is technology positioned within a lesson. Technology should not
dictate how or what we teach. When used with student well-being in
mind, they technology can capture attention, maintain interest and
re-engage students.
- Getting students engaged:
Capturing student attention is a necessary precondition for effective
learning. Here are two strategies to trigger students’ initial
cognitive processes.
- Maintaining Engagement:
During course activities, focused attention can be effected with clear
structures, action based guidelines, challenging tasks and timely
feedback.
- Re-engaging students :
A proportion of students will delay or fail to engage at key points
during a course. Re-capturing their attention is possible with these
two strategies; monitoring and personal attention.
To Consider: Flipped Learning
The flipped classroom describes a logistical arrangement – how and when
the initial information is encountered by students, and what is
scheduled to happen in class. Flipped learning is about inverting the
expectations around the traditional lecture.
- Flipped learning: Flipping
isn’t about lessons and homework. It's about helping students to
unpack their understanding with dynamic and interactive group
learning.
To Try: Backward Design
One way to challenge the content centered approach to curriculum design
is to work backwards. This approach, known as backward design,
prioritizes learning outcomes and meaningful assessment tasks. When you
design backwards, you support contextualised teaching approaches and
guide students towards understanding. In backwards design, students can
“show what they know” and digital scaffolding can help them “come to
know”.
Backwards designs asks lecturers to think about the END first, about
the purpose of the course, not the content that needs to be covered. Its
focus is on what a student should be able to accomplish, and what plans
can be made to assist the students attain these accomplishments .
- Backward design:There are
lecturers who begin their curriculum planning with the textbook.
Backwards design advocates for the reverse. To first identify the
desired results, then decide what constitutes acceptable evidence and
finally plan the learning experience.
To Do: Techno-teacher Checklist
Use the following checklist to identify your current use of technology
and think about how you to use digital in the future.
- Techno-teacher checklist: Think
about how you currently use technology and then go through this
checklist to exploit the attributes of technology and enrich your
lecturing or perhaps create better learning experiences
