by - Vishakha Gopinath
Facebook today has almost one-fifth of world’s
population! When it comes to students, it is quite obvious that they all have a
facebook account. This social networking site is so addictive that people find
it necessary to wish facebook “good morning” every morning they wake up. Would
it seem terribly strange to hear that students indeed are doing these things
regularly outside of their classrooms? Every day, many students are spending
countless hours immersed in popular technologies—such as Facebook/MySpace,
World of Warcraft, or Sim City—which at first glance may seem like a waste of
time, and brain cells. But these genres of technologies—Social Networking,
Digital Gaming, and Simulations—deserve a second, deeper look at what’s
actually going on..
You need not be a teenager to understand
technology or simply the words used in the earlier paragraph. With the
emergence of a generation completely dependent on technology for even the most
basic of human communication, it is becoming almost a necessity to include some
aspect of technology in every day classrooms. For many teachers, this is
exciting and cutting-edge, but for others, especially those not confident in
the use of technology, this is extremely intimidating.
This HAS begun, training students in the classroom
with the help of technology has begun, the SMART CLASS they call it. Many
schools around the globe have implemented such classrooms where the traditional
black board and chalk has been replaced by an interactive computer screen
similar to the size of the black board. This screen has the ability to show the
lessons being taught in an audio visual form, which would help students to
register in their minds the crux of each topic. Making games and social
networking sites a part of the academic learning process, is no easy task. But
this can be made easy if understood well.
Another implementation according to National
Teacher Institute, is using videos. This helps students retain more information
and also grasp difficult concepts. If you're teaching about the Civil War, you
can show video segments that have been put online by PBS.
If you're
teaching about anatomy, you can show your class a video of a frog or worm
dissection. Of course, using video in the classroom should not replace any
portion of your lesson. Instead, it should complement your existing teaching
methodology.
Blogging has been implemented by a few teachers in
the senior classes as it helps students learn quickly. According to a recent
study, blogs can do wonders to the minds of students.
- Blogs can promote critical and analytical thinking.
- Blogging can be a powerful promoter of creative, intuitive, and associational thinking.
- Blogs promote analogical thinking.
- Blogging is a powerful medium for increasing access and exposure to quality information.
- Blogging combines the best of solitary reflection and social interaction.
Let’s take the game THE SIMS for example, this
game is basically running a household along with building new houses. If you
want your students to learn something out of this game, the best thing would be
the art of multi-tasking. This is one such talent all most organizations look
for in their applicants as they would want their employees to deal with a
couple of issues all at the same time. Another example would be the traditional
SOLITAIRE, or the card game, the winner in this game would be the one who
arranges all the cards in the right order the fastest. What do we learn out of
this game? Time management, and to a certain extent crisis management, as the
cards would not appear according to the players wish.
The CIVILIZATION IV, allows players to form teams
in order to increase collaboration and strategy efforts. In this turn-based
strategy game, players must make decisions for their civilization around
societal development and diplomacy—including when and where to build new
cities, what societal advances in knowledge should be sought (and when), and
how to handle adversarial and non adversarial neighboring civilizations. At the
onset of the game, players even have the choice of which civilization to
play—Aztecs, Romans, Mongols, etc. As time advances in the game, new
technologies emerge (such as pottery and nuclear fission) and civilization
leaders have the choice to try to capitalize on these technologies or not. This
game is a profoundly powerful way for learning about history, and through
game-play players can gain advanced terminology and knowledge of geography, principles
of history, and generally increase their interest in this area of study.
It is also a fact that most students learn English
from playing video games. In a given week, the average eighth-grade boy will
play video games for about 23 hours, while the average girl will play about
12—that’s even more time than they spend watching TV. Therefore, one of the
most obvious benefits to using these technologies for learning is that students
are often already familiar with these interfaces and the “language” of
interacting with and utilizing them.
The gaming technology today brings about a cluster
of options that would help students to manage time, calculate fast and improve
a variety of skills.
I always wondered how it would be if trailers of movies
like “The inventions of BIG NOSE” (INVENTIONS OF ISSAC NEWTON), “Drucker's
mainframe” (PETER.F.DRUCKER’S MANAGEMENT) or “The Bard of Avon” (SHAKESPEARE) came
on T.V saying “in theaters near you”. Students all over the world would be so
excited to see & LEARN their lessons that are playing in the movie
theaters.
Using social networking sites is also an
innovative technique of teaching. When you hear “MySpace”, “World of Warcraft,”
or “Facebook” what do they bring to mind for you? What emotions do you associate
with them? Have you heard of them before? Students have, and they almost
certainly have strong opinions about them.
It would be so useful for the students if the
teachers uploaded a video of theirs on facebook taking a chapter on
“Statistics” or “Research methods in marketing” or any subjects for that
matter. Students would leave their doubts as comments below the video and the
teacher’s colleagues would “Like” itJ. It would be even more fun and innovative if
teachers created a page on the networking site for a particular subject and,
updated the students with the syllabus, homework and projects that have to be
completed. In that manner the students would not even have excuses in case they
have not completed their homework.
Even creating a classroom website has its
advantages, this website would help the students more effectively as teachers
could upload links of other study material & activities that would help
students learn and revise. This classroom website would also help communicating
to parents and your teaching colleagues by putting up attractive and appropriate
material.
Here are a few examples of classroom websites.
Undoubtedly, without these recent technologies
(i.e. digital games, Web, etc.) in the classroom, strong lessons can still be
achieved, but there’s a sharp disconnect between the way students are taught in
school and the way the outside world approaches socialization, meaning-making,
and accomplishment. It is critical that
education not only seek to mitigate this disconnect in order to make these two
“worlds” more seamless, but of course also to leverage the power of these
emerging technologies for instructional gain.
