Fast facts
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- Project-based Learning Experience - No Course Papers Required
- Ed Tech Tools Learned and Applied Throughout All Courses
- #4 Best Online Master's in Education programs in Minnesota – 2021 by US News & World Report
- 2 Graduate Certificates Available
Today’s primary and secondary students are extremely tech savvy, which is why implementing technology in the classroom has become a major focus (and in some cases a major obstacle) for educators. The students in your classroom constantly use technology to communicate with each other and learn about the world around them. Integrating technology into the classroom
creates learning opportunities that are more engaging, and sometimes more effective, than traditional teaching methods and principles. A 2012 pilot study by textbook publishers Houghton Mifflin Harcourt found that 78% of students scored “Proficient” or “Advanced” in subject comprehension when using tablets compared to 59% of students who
relied on paper textbooks alone. Developments in educational technology have facilitated the shift toward student-centered classrooms and dynamic project-based learning. Students who are allowed to actively explore real-world problems and challenges acquire a deeper understanding of the subjects they’re studying than they would by simply reading from a textbook.
Technology helps turn students into explorers and investigators who are better able to engage with the topics you are presenting in the classroom. Consider the types of technology you and your students currently have access to. How can you leverage those assets to build project-based learning into your lesson plans? If you are not sure where to begin, here are three easy ways you can integrate technology in the classroom:
Online Research
A great way to integrate technology into the classroom is to have students conduct research online for various projects. There are many exciting ways to structure online research tasks. One extremely popular and effective online research project is called the Web Quest Model, an inquiry-oriented lesson in which most or all of the information comes directly from the web. There are thousands of Web Quest activities available online for you to implement in your classroom right away. You can also find templates online that make it easy for you to build your own Web Quest project for any subject and grade level.
Interactive Whiteboards
An increasing number of classrooms have access to interactive whiteboards (IWB). If you have never used one, think of it as a rolling touchscreen whiteboard that can display websites, images, and videos. IWBs are excellent tools for engaging entire classrooms in an interactive lesson. A 2010 study by Marzano Research Laboratory that involved 85 teachers and 170 classrooms across the United States found that using IWBs was associated with a 16 percentile point improvement in student achievement. If your school or district doesn’t currently have the budget to purchase IWBs for teachers, refer to this collection of online grant resources for teachers to help secure funding for new classroom technology.
Digital Presentations
Tools like Prezi and Microsoft PowerPoint make it easy for students to create multimedia presentations and share their work to the class. Google Docs has a similar program that makes it easy for multiple students to collaborate on one multimedia project. With Google Docs, students can even work on the project from their laptops or tablets when they are at home. These collaborative tools make teamwork accessible and seamless, whether students are using the technology in the classroom or at home.
Online resources for using collaborative and interactive teaching tools are already plentiful. But to stay ahead of the curve and become an expert in integrating technology into the classroom, consider earning your Master of Education in Learning Design and Technology from Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota. This degree will help you improve student outcomes while also advancing your own career in education. Discover the opportunities that await instructional designers and learn why a master’s degree in Learning Design and Technology is a good investment by calling 877-308-9954.
Check out the “How Educators Use Technology and Data to Guide Teaching and Learning” free eBook.
Teachers matter enormously to student learning.
Teachers deliver academic knowledge. Teachers impart model socioemotional skills. Good teachers boost students’ long-term life outcomes. Teachers can
inspire (and in another demonstration of their importance, in some cases, sadly, teachers can disappoint or even abuse). Yet teachers, often lionized and occasionally
villainized, are people. They enter the profession for a wide range of reasons, they have their own families to feed, and – like most professionals – they respond to incentives, support, accountability, and the quality of the management around them. In short, they are part of a system. Getting teacher policies right isn’t always easy, and sometimes education technology solutions can
seem like a shortcut. It’s tempting to search for the perfect app that will “disrupt” the learning process and allow countries to “leapfrog” to high-quality, equitable education without having to engage with these complicated people near the center of the learning process. (Let’s keep learners at the actual center.) Education technology interventions have had both successes and failures. Even as the COVID crisis has
heightened attention to education technology, many parts of the world lack the infrastructure for it have an extended, effective reach, with big implications for educational inequality. In a recent
note—“Education Technology for Effective Teachers”—I look for examples of how education technology—rather than seeking to circumvent teachers—can help teachers to be as effective as possible and make their jobs and lives easier in the process. Looking at a wide range of experiences, mostly in low- and middle-income countries, I identify and discuss four
principles to guide investments in technology to boost teacher effectiveness. Beyond these principles, which may seem obvious but which anyone who has worked in the implementation or evaluation of education technology can tell you
are often not applied, I provide practical examples of six ways that education systems are using technology to support teachers. I summarize these in the table below, but you can find more country experiences in the note. (In Kenya, a tablet-based literacy program boosted learning, but no more so than the analog alternative and at higher cost.) This page in:
Systems can use technology to…
Where and how
Coach and mentor teachers
Complement teacher content knowledge and pedagogical skills
Create virtual communities of practice for teachers
Manage teachers effectively
Deploy the teacher workforce effectively
Increase the attractiveness of the teaching profession
Technology is not the solution, but just like books and classrooms and blackboards, technological tools can help teachers to improve their skills, to use their skills most effectively, and to be accountable. These investments should never be made on the basis of evidence-free optimism but rather evidence-based realism in terms of systems’ capacity to maintain the technology, teacher willingness to engage the technology, and whether the technology will perform
better than the cheaper, analog alternative.
But in cases where technology passes those tests, it can be a valuable complement to teachers. It can also make teachers’ jobs a little bit easier so they can focus their energy on teaching.
Further reading:
- For more on how this brief fits within the World Bank’s program for teachers, check out Saavedra’s blog post from earlier this month, “Realizing the promise of effective teachers for every child – a global platform for successful teachers”
- For more on how to foster effective teachers, check out Béteille’s and my approach paper “Successful Teachers, Successful Students: Recruiting and Supporting Society’s Most Crucial Profession” or the World Development Report 2018 chapter on teachers.
- For a broader framework on how to apply education technology in systems (beyond its interactions with teachers), check out Ganimian, Vegas, and Hess’s 2020 report “Realizing the Promise: How Can Education Technology Improve Learning for All?”
Authors
David Evans
Senior Fellow, Center for Global Development