Education, like almost every other area of our society, has evolved in leaps and bounds in recent years. Traditional teaching techniques, based mainly on a teacher explaining a topic and students taking notes, may still be useful on occasion, but education today revolves more around encouraging the student to awaken their curiosity and desire to learn.
A number of different teaching techniques have emerged due to this change in education. Many of these teaching techniques are not actually new however! The use of technology in the classroom has simply given education a new lease of life allowing us to approach old ideas in new ways.
Outlined below are some popular teaching techniques that have arisen from the integration of technology in education.
6 Teaching Techniques You Should Know:
1. Flipped Classroom (Inverting your class):
The Flipped Classroom Model basically involves encouraging students to prepare for the lesson before class. Thus, the class becomes a dynamic environment in which students elaborate on what they have already studied. Students prepare a topic at home so that the class the next day can be devoted to answering any questions they have about the topic. This allows students to go beyond their normal boundaries and explore their natural curiosity.
ExamTime’s free online learning tools can be integrated into the Flipped Classroom teaching model. Using ExamTime, you can easily share resources with a group, in this case a class, allowing students to study these resources from home and prepare for the next class.
2. Design Thinking (Case Method):
This technique is based on resolving real-life cases through group analysis, brainstorming, innovation and creative ideas. Although “Design Thinking” is a structured method, in practice it can be quite messy as some cases may have no possible solution.
However, the Case Method prepares students for the real world and arouses their curiosity, analytical skills and creativity. This technique is often used in popular MBA or Masters classes to analyze real cases experienced by companies in the past.
Ewan McIntosh, an advocate of Design Thinking, created The Design Thinking School as part of his “No Tosh” consulting group. No Tosh harnesses the creative practices of some of the best media and tech companies in the world to coach educators methods to implement the concept. Design Thinking for Educators also provides teachers with an online toolkit with instructions to explore Design Thinking in any classroom. Click here to download the free toolkit now.
Curiosity is the main driver of learning. As a basic principle of learning, it makes little sense to force students to memorize large reams of text that they will either begrudgingly recall or instantly forget. The key is to let students focus on exploring an area which interests them and learn about it for themselves.
A perfect example of a teaching technique based on self-learning is outlined by Sugata Mitra at the TED conference. In a series of experiments in New Delhi, South Africa and Italy, the educational researcher Sugata Mitra gave children self-supervised access to the web. The results obtained could revolutionize how we think about teaching. The children, who until then did not even know what the internet was, were capable of training themselves in multiple subjects with unexpected ease.
A common technique for exploring self-learning is the use of Mind Maps. Teachers can create a central node on a Mind Map and allow students the freedom to expand and develop ideas. For example, if the focus is the Human Body, some students may create Mind Maps on the organs, Bones or Diseases that affect the human body. Later the students would be evaluated according to the Mind Maps they have created and could collaborate with each other to improve each others Mind Maps and come to a more comprehensive understanding of the Human Body.
Learning through the use of games is a method that has already been explored by some teachers, especially in elementary and preschool education. By using games, students learn without even realizing. Therefore, learning through play or ‘Gamification‘ is a learning technique that can be very effective at any age. It is also a very useful technique to keep students motivated.
The teacher should design projects that are appropriate for their students, taking into account their age and knowledge, while making them attractive enough to provide extra motivation. One idea may be to encourage students to create quizzes online on a certain topic. Students can challenge their peers to test themselves and see who gets a higher score. In this way, students can enjoy the competition with peers while also having fun and learning.
5. Social Media:
A variant of the previous section is to utilize social media in the classroom. Students today are always connected to their social network and so will need little motivation to get them engaged with social media in the classroom. The ways you can use this method of teaching are quite varied as there are hundreds of social networks and possibilities.
A good example is the initiative carried out by the Brazilian Academy of Languages ”Red Ballon“, which encouraged students to review the tweets of their favorite artists and correct grammatical errors that they committed in an effort to improve their English language skills!
6. Free Online Learning Tools:
There is an array of free online learning tools available which teachers can use to encourage engagement, participation and a sense of fun into the classroom. Teachers can create an interactive and dynamic classroom environment using, for example, online quizzes to test student’s knowledge.
If you haven’t used ExamTime’s free online learning tools yet, sign up now to create Mind Maps, Flashcards, Quizzes & Notes. Encourage your students to sign up to ExamTime too so you can create a Group and invite each of your students to become a member. This means you can share study resources directly with each student online and even apply the Flipped Classroom Model to your method of teaching.
Below is an ExamTime Mind Map with a summary of these 6 teaching techniques should know:
As you can see, technology has created many teaching techniques that can help you connect better with your students.
Have you had experiences with these teaching techniques? Do you have different techniques you’d like to share? Comment below to share your experiences with others!
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