Some forty years ago, the most advanced technology in school was a simple calculator, and a computer could only be found in the principal’s office. We wrote with chalk on a wooden chalkboard, took notes after the teacher, and faked grades by hand in the diary. At the beginning of the school year the librarian gave us a stack of textbooks and painstakingly entered the data into a handwritten file cabinet. However, modern technologies are making education as easy as gambling at betchan.com/de or cooking your favorite meal. Here are the main methods used by teachers and students.
Distance Learning
Online learning has only recently entered our lives. And if a few years ago many people did not take this format seriously, then with the beginning of the pandemic distance learning became the absolute norm.
Foreign language courses, getting a new profession, training for employees, high school and university programs – online is used at all levels of education.
The popularity of distance learning is growing as the educational methods used are improving. If at the dawn of the first video courses they were difficult to perceive monologues of a teacher, now the technologies are polished to the smallest detail: convenient platforms make training as interactive as possible, teachers have the skills to hold attention, and the process of fulfillment of tasks often resembles a computer game! Pedagogical abilities are enhanced by special techniques for working with a remote audience.
The combination of high-quality educational content with the ability to study at a convenient time and from anywhere in the world, allow to achieve high efficiency of online learning.
Today, any student can easily connect to a video conference in Zoom, designate a speaker, navigate their screen, and know how to make a recording of the lesson to review it if necessary.
Digital Technologies
Digitalization in a modern school starts literally on the doorstep, namely at the entrance to the building, where the passage is carried out by electronic passes. The time is not far off when plastic photo cards will replace the latest biometric pass systems, and students will only need to look at a camera or put their finger on a Touch ID terminal to enter a school.
The use of OLED displays contributes to the development of environmentally friendly thinking. The popularity of these devices is not yet high, but it’s probably only a matter of time. The flexible tablets, which look like sheets of paper, are easy to use, and the awareness of how many trees will be saved by doing away with paper is an extra source of inspiration and stimulates even more thinking about conserving natural resources.
Gradually schools are also introducing future technologies such as 3D printers, with which children can print indispensable in research activities 3D models of the field of study. This is usually a project activity for a group of students who work together to complete a task.
Innovative methods have touched upon technical aspects of pedagogy as well. Interactive whiteboards, on which the teacher can display information from a laptop screen, are used everywhere. In the classroom, students watch videos, study images and slides. You can write on the interactive whiteboard not only with a marker, but also with your finger!
Playful Learning
Most of us were raised to take learning seriously. Today’s children have a much simpler approach to learning. Learning should be interesting in the first place, so why not learn through play? Gamification of learning materials shows excellent results. Students get involved with excitement in the process, move from simpler levels to more complex ones, and receive a variety of points. The use of computer game paraphernalia can interest even the most careless students, problematic underachievers can be carried away by the learning game-strategy no less than an excellent student!
The game levels out fear of failure. Children are not afraid to make a mistake and get an F because one and the same level can be repeated. Funny and unusual characters in games, get into a variety of situations, cause positive emotions and help kids better remember the material. For example, the popular game Fire – a fascinating journey into the world of the Stone Age. The player gets a chance to become a Neanderthal for a while and get fire for his tribesmen. How do you think, what format to study the historical period will suit a modern child more – memorizing a paragraph from the history books, or fun adventure fire?
Developers of educational games agree that making educational projects is much harder than regular games. Creating a classroom game that allows you to learn a certain amount of material is hard! But today’s pedagogy is adjusting to the demands of the times, and learning is becoming an exciting process!
VR and AR
There is probably not a single child who would refuse to try on virtual reality glasses. VR technology, originally used in the aviation industry, is now being used in education. To get acquainted with the underwater world or to visit the Middle Ages by wearing a virtual reality helmet is a great way to fully immerse yourself in the field of study. Computer technology makes it possible to reproduce sounds, smells, temperature changes, wind blowing, and create the effect of full presence.
When studying the geography of the North Pole, children of my generation would look at pictures in a textbook and spin a globe. The modern generation put on a helmet and wandered through the snow admiring sea lions and polar bears! Virtual and augmented reality provide limitless possibilities for cognitive activities. The use of so-called “immersive” learning allows for a deeper immersion in the subject of study, and children just love it.
