New innovations in teaching methods
According to the National Education Association, in a piece written by Dawn Dupriest titled, "Creativity in the Classroom," she claims, "Is there anything more satisfying than making something innovative?A quilt, a webpage, a decoration, an invention? As a child, do you remember the pride you felt when you showed your parents a LEGO creation or a fairy house or even a mud pie? Innovation belongs everywhere, not just in childhood games and extracurriculars. It involves all of your senses and creates new knowledge that didn’t exist before. Students of all ages need to learn by innovating – it helps to synthesize information and bring joy and meaning into their educational experience."
To create an innovative, open, creative and trustworthy place for students to grow, take risks, and feel comfortable in their own patterns of learning, there are a few key actions that teachers can take to create a more innovative and entrepreneurial classroom.These are:
1. Smart Boards Teaching:Smart boards are an effective way to bring the classroom to life while helping students experience a deeper level of engagement and understanding. This is done by making the course content interactive and visual. The smart boards transform the teaching experience into an interactive and collaborative experience as the teachers use dynamic multimedia content, to help convey the topic more effectively to the students and making it a visual, engaging experience.
2.Cross-over Teaching:While this type of teaching does not include technology, it is an enriching experience for the student as well as the faculty. Here, the learning happens in an informal setting such as after-school learning clubs, or trips to museums and exhibition. The teacher can link the educational content with the experiences that the students are having. This teaching is further enhanced and deepened by adding questions related to the subject. The students can then add to the classroom discussions through field trip notes, photographic projects and other group assignments related to the trip.
3.Flipping Classrooms:Flipping the classroom is becoming an increasingly popular effective teaching method. In this technique, the students are made active participants of the learning process by passing the onus of learning on them, it requires the teachers to relegate to the role of resource providers and the students take the responsibility of gathering concepts information. Using various tools of technology the students are encouraged to constructing knowledge, fill in the information gaps and make inferences on their own, as and when needed.While many may question if giving students the responsibility of learning may work , it has been seen by teachers across the world that when put in charge of their own learning they immerse themselves more in the subject, taking more interest and learning better.This method of teaching is one of the best ways to lay the foundation in independent learning.
4. Teaching through collaboration:Another innovative method of teaching involves encouraging student collaboration for various projects. Today, we live in a globalized world and collaboration is an essential life skill that is important for all careers and enterprises. Teachers can help foster this skill in the classroom by allowing students to learn, study and work in groups.For instance, by assigning group homework or encouraging students to work together on plays, presentations and other reports. Today, collaboration as a form of teaching is gaining acceptance as a powerful teaching tool where once again the responsibility is on the group of students and the educators play the role of guides, mentors, supervisors for the students. It also teaches students empathy, negotiation skills, teamwork, and problem-solving.
5 Virtual Reality:Virtual Reality technology involves helping students learn through interactions with a 3D world. For instance, instead of taking the students through a boring history class, the teachers can use 3D technology to explore ancient civilizations, travel to distant countries for a class in geography or even take a trip to outer space during a class on science.Virtual Reality technology offers students a valuable opportunity to learn in an immersive manner that creates a lasting impression on their minds. It makes learning fun and helps the students retain the material for a longer time – all the essential points when considering effective teaching methods in a classroom
6. 3D printing technology:Teachers looking for innovative methods of teaching can also look at 3D printing as a means of teaching. This method is fast gaining global acceptance, especially in higher educational institutes where 3D printers are used to create prototypes and make complex concepts easy to understand. In the lower level classrooms, teachers can use the 3D printers to teach content that was previously taught via textbooks, thus helping students gain a better understanding of the concept- especially STEM subjects.
7. Cloud ComputingTeaching:Bring technology into the classroom allows educators to experiment with innovative methods of teaching. The use of cloud computing is one such method where teachers can save vital classroom resources such as lesson plans, notes, audio lessons, videos, and assignments details on the classroom cloud. This can then be accessed by the students from the comfort of their homes, whenever needed bringing the classroom back to the students with the click on a mouse. It also ensures that students who have missed class either for illness or any other reason stay updated at all times. It eliminates the need for lugging around heavy textbooks and allows students to learn at a time, place and pace that they are comfortable with
8. Technology and innovative methods of teaching:The use of technology in the classroom helps to engage the students with different kinds of stimuli and creates an environment of activity-based learning. It makes the content of the classroom more interesting and makes learning fun.For teachers, technology offers an endless set of resources that they can tap into depending on the need of the students. While this blog lists a few such resources, for a teacher looking for effective teaching methods in a classroom, turning towards the latest technology will offer a vast number of updated solutions
Written by:
Naveen Kumar
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