Technology is changing the way people learn. Today’s students are accustomed to using technology in nearly every aspect of their lives, and there are many ways that high school teachers can integrate ordinary computer technology easily into their classrooms to take advantage of students needs, interests, and learning styles.
Information Presented Digitally is More Meaningful
The role of the teacher is to present information. Traditionally, the presentation is in the form of a lecture or reference to a textbook. A computer with PowerPoint and a digital projector can make presentations much more effective, engaging, and easier to deliver.
PowerPoint can easily import outlines from Word. Templates and themes make it easy to format slides to make them more attractive. Animations can often show students processes or emphasize key ideas. Virtually everything that is done on a whiteboard can be done better in PowerPoint and all the information can be saved for the next class or next course, easily modified and improved.
Entire sites are dedicated to supplying PowerPoint templates for popular games like Jeopardy!, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, Family Feud, and Who’s Smarter Than a Fifth-Grader? Such games can be adapted to almost any subject for fun, whole-class learning.
There are also hundreds of appropriate course-specific programs and online tutorials, many available for free, that gain students’ attention, and make teaching and learning more fun and effective.
Digital Data Management is More Flexible and Efficient
Ubiquitous software programs like Excel make it easy to manage data. Teachers can go beyond making lists and use spreadsheet software to create rubrics, calculate grades, and set and track classroom performance goals.
A rubric is a powerful tool for teachers and students. Instead of grading an assignment holistically, a well-written rubric can help make grading easier and fairer. Moreover, a digital rubric can be given to students so they can self-evaluate or peer-evaluate. Excel makes it easy to copy, paste, and merge data sets to find measures of central tendency. These measures can be used to track class scores and motivate entire classes to improve performance.
Technology Tools Make Differentiation Easy
Differentiation is among the best practices in teaching. Many software packages can create different assignments for each skill level. Data management programs – from simple grading programs to a customized spreadsheet or database – can sort students by performance on a single concept. Those who scored at the lowest third in the class can join the teacher group, while the rest can move forward on an enrichment activity.
One way to group effectively is to put a high-performing students with strugglers. Sorting performance values makes this easy, too. The top score can be assigned to join the bottom two. The next highest with the next two lowest, and so on until the middle scores are also together.
Sometimes teachers want to create heterogeneous groups. Excel, again, offers the versatility: a simple random number generator can assign random numbers to a student roster. Those values can be sorted in a number of ways to group students in any-sized teams.
Students Have Opportunities for Creativity
The consensus among educators is that giving students opportunities to create products from newly-learned material will help them remember, understand, and appreciate it better. According to Benjamin Bloom, synthesis, or creating, is one of the most complex forms of thinking.
Many computer technologies give students opportunities to synthesize instruction. For example, students can create slideshows with pictures, text, hyperlinks, and animations to show what they have learned.
Paint, iMovie, online whiteboards, and other animation or illustration programs allow students of all ability levels to showcase what they have learned; it often forces them to do ore research in order to create products that their peers will see or judge.
Communicate More Frequently and Effectively
If students and parents don’t understand exactly what is happening in the classroom, then learning won’t be as meaningful as it could be. Thus, communication is an important part of a comprehensively effective teaching program.
Email is an obvious tool that teachers can use to keep parents informed. Message templates can make sending emails fast and easy. Snail mail is easier than before using technology, with mail merge, Word templates, and printed reports from grading programs.
Newer online technologies give teachers even more options. Blogs are becoming a standard way of informing families of class activities. Students can collaborate and offer comments on the class blog, and pictures enhance messaging.
Technology is an important part of most high school students’ lives, and teachers can leverage it to make teaching more efficient and effective.
Richard Stowell - Rich Stowell teaches educational technology at the University of San Francisco and high school math at a charter school in Richmond, ...
