A teacher's job can be hard at the best of times. A highly prescriptive national curriculum, and only limited time in which to teach it, mean that it's vital to keep the attention of every class if all pupils are to get the best possible chance of succeeding in their all-important exams.
One of the best proven ways of getting children to pay attention in class is to make them feel involved in what they're being taught. Putting them right in the position of someone who has to solve a particular problem gets their minds working along the right lines in order for them to be able to answer all sorts of questions, and appreciate things from other people's points of view.
Educational technology has, thankfully, meant that many ways have evolved of being able to do this.
First came the radio, then the television, followed by the projector and cine camera, all of which played major roles in the education of several generations of pupils, long before the arrival of computers, and the many methods which they brought to present information in involving and engaging ways.
And that lies at the heart of the way lessons are taught today. The job of a teacher, in conveying facts and information to pupils, is one which requires a grasp of several methods of communicating that information. And, in a multimedia age, when children take in their information through a variety of channels and media, the learning environment has to reflect that, in achieving its most important aim – that of passing on facts and ideas to pupils, in whatever ways they can be best absorbed.
It has been widely shown that simply reciting facts to pupils, and expecting them to take copious notes, and then learn from them, is not the most effective classroom technique.
Instead, children are far more used to a participatory method of learning, one which doesn't rely on dry facts, but which places them at the heart of a scenario, and expects them to adopt what they learn and put it to practical use.
In much the same way as mathematics gained far more relevance to people by asking them to do sums involving everyday tasks such as shopping, so is the case with nearly every subject which can be placed in a real-life context.
Children are exposed more than ever to the media – so making this part of the way in which they learn can only bring dividends. Learning from life – whether real or imagined – makes information seem all the more relevant, and so not something which is separate from their daily lives, but rather, an important part of it.
Educational technology works best when it enables pupils to associate the subject being studied with their own lives, and an interactive whiteboard is very useful in putting them in the position of solving real-life problems.
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1 in 7 classrooms worldwide are predicted to have an interactive whiteboard by the end of 2011, and as the number of classrooms with interactive whiteboards increases, so does the debate over their usefulness. Below I offer a list of the main arguments against IWBs and my responses. |
