Tech Education for Teachers

  Good Instructional Design  Instructional design should be an important tool in your teaching arsenal. So often teachers focus on what they’re teaching, instead of how they are teaching it. You can create an absolutely amazing lesson that hits on every important standard and objective, but if you don’t grab the learner’s attention and make it interesting for them, it will have been a wasted lesson.  Brown and Green (2024) describe instructional design by laying out what an instructional designer’s job is. They state, “An instructional designer’s job is to create something that enables a person or group of people to learn about a particular topic or develop or improve a set of skills, or to encourage the learner to conduct further study.” (p. 7). It is our job as educators to make students want to learn, not just that they have to. Mallillin et al. (2023) state, “Instructional design provides meaningful effective instructions that makes learning and teaching easy. It an...

                Collaboration and communication are two buzzwords in education right now. But it is so important to not brush these ideas aside, but truly focus on how to incorporate them into our classrooms. More than likely, you will have the same students in your classroom for at least 9 months of the year. Open communication with parents is one of the best ways to establish good rapport with the families of the students you are working with. You want to set the year off with positivity and proof that you are willing to partner with parents to help your students reach their goals for the year.  A great platform for this communication and collaboration is Seesaw. Seesaw is a website and app that teachers, families, and students can use to foster collaboration and share news, pictures, videos, school work, activities, etc.  Below you will find a Google Slides presentation tutorial on how to begin using Seesaw. It takes you through ...

I recently read the book, The Immersive Classroom: Create Customized Learning Experiences with AR/VR  by Jaime Donally. This book looks at augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) in the classroom. Using AR and VR in the classroom helps teachers create a fun and immersive learning experience for their students, helping to meet all learning styles. Students no longer need to read about a medieval palace in their textbooks or look at famous artwork from the Louvre. Instead they can be transported through AR and VR technology to walk through these famous places and landscapes, and see a 3D version of the artwork, almost as if they can touch it.  AR and VR technology has been around for awhile, but it has only been recently where it has become more accessible for teachers and students. There are many new websites, apps, and devices that allow for students to become completely immersed in what they are learning. Al-Ansi et al. (2023) state, “As AR and VR become more common...

  The world of teaching has changed, as it has throughout the years. Today’s students have access to so much more information (rather true or not) than ever before. Social media has come to dominate the technology scene, reaching millions of users a year. Children as young as toddlers have access to some form of social media, whether it is watching kid videos on YouTube or even platforms that are made for children like Seesaw , Zigazoo , or Azoomee . Lawrence states, “People continue to find ways to use social media to organize peaceful protests, share useful information instead of misinformation, build personal and romantic relationships, launch careers, and connect with fans, audiences, and consumers.” (p. 49). No matter your view of social media, it is here to stay and as teachers we should help guide students to use it safely and effectively.  Teachers today have to learn to harness their students’ ability and excitement in social media to reach all learners. Social medi...

     A large portion of technology in the classroom is the use of multimedia video. Children today are constantly bombarded with videos throughout the day, whether on tablets, computers, and television. Over the years, YouTube has surpassed anyone’s expectations of how big it has become. According to Digital Writing: A Guide to Writing for Social Media and the Web, “...there may be as many as 300 or more hours of new content being uploaded to YouTube every minute of every day.” (Lawrence, 2022, p. 112). In order to become an effective digital writer and educator in today’s world, one must become comfortable with video as a media form to reach your audience. Videos are a great way to record a moment in time that can be saved for years to come. Sui et al. (2022) state, “…they can be utilized as a ‘window to the past’ or as representatives of trends across social and cultural movements.” (p. 4). Videos can capture moments and ideas like no other form of media. Lawrence (2022...

       Social media is one of the major buzzwords in today’s world. If you went on the street and asked strangers if they knew what social media was, most of them would answer in the affirmative. It is everywhere and with everyone. Lawrence defines social media as, “a variety of media platforms that allow people to communicate with one another, combining a number of mechanics such as direct messaging, user profiles, photo galleries, and comment walls” (Lawrence, 2022, p. 48). Some examples of social media are Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Twitter, Snapchat, Reddit, and more.  Students in today’s classroom have more access to social media than ever before. It is extremely prevalent in today’s society, with more and more students having access to different forms of social media at a young age.  While many teachers must be vigilant when promoting and educating with social media, it can be used as a great teaching tool to help enhance a classroom l...

Motivating Learners!  When trying to reach all learners, it is vital to not only capture their attention, but keep it for the duration of the training. If you lose them midway through your presentation, you most likely will not get them back! “ By requiring students to participate in ways that help them make meaningful connections with the course content and perhaps also with each other, instructors draw upon learner-centered principles and support active learning.” (Shi et al., 2023). Using fun and engaging ways of teaching helps students become more involved in the learning process and keeps them motivated to learn the new material. It can sometimes be easy for teachers to fall back on how they themselves were taught, but “as an instructional designer, it is important to think beyond what has worked for you personally and consider what will work best for your target audience.” (Brown & Green, 2024, p. 138).  Two ways to engage learners in your training and teaching is ...