By Michelle Nolte and Danielle Judy Technology is emerging at an exponential rate. Technology reaches into every facet of life: Agriculture, Biomedicine, Electronics, and Neuroscience. We cannot even begin to fathom the technological advances that will occur in our lifetime. Here are a few examples of the technological innovations that are currently being developed. In Agriculture, a robot, or an agribot, is being developed to help with the fall harvest. In biomedicine, artificial uteruses are being developed so that every woman has an opportunity to reproduce. An electronic nose is being developed in order to detect spoiled food. Scientists are learning how to harvest energy so that our phones will never need recharging. In transportation, airless tires are being developed. How wonderful it will be when we do not need to worry about having a flat tire!! Emerging technologies are also being incorporated into the classroom. Teachers are utilizing phone and tablet applications in order to engage students. There are numerous phone applications which cover several subjects. Some links to consider are: www.apple.com, www.itunes.com, www.tabletapps.com, and www.appcrawlr.com. Stack the States, for instance, is a wonderful tool to teach young children the geography of the United States as well as state capitals. Keeping with a social studies theme, Social Studies Friendzy is another way to engage students in learning. This app allows students to challenge classmates in a game of answering social studies based questions. Another phone application is Today in History. Students will receive information regarding an event that happened on that day in history. Teachers could assign small reports detailing those events. There are also applications for tablets. Sketch Book Express is a great tool for artists on the go. Quick sketches or digital painting can be done in a flash. Another tablet app is Duolingo. Duolingo uses small lessons to help students learn a new language. Languages include German, French, and Italian, among others. This is great for foreign language teachers and those students who have a more difficult time learning. Emerging technologies not only benefit students, they can also help teachers manage their lessons and classrooms. There are a number of excellent apps for tablets and phones that can track student progress, help with class management issues, and common core guides. Teachers can start dedicating more time to teaching and learning and less of the managerial chores they are required to do day to day. 50 Fab Apps for Teachers is a great site to find a variety of useful apps, but there are also quite a few that will help teachers. One app that may prove to be useful is MasteryConnect. This helps teachers deal with the Common Core more easily. They can search standards, track students mastery, and even connect with other teachers in their same grade and subject areas to collaborate all over the country. Watch the video to see how beneficial an app like this could be. TeacherKit is another app that will make the everyday tasks a teacher must perform more painless. This app allows teacher to quickly manage all of their classes all in one program. They are able to record attendance, grades, classroom behavior issues, and lesson progress with just a few finger strokes. The possibilities with this app are endless. Again, please watch the video to get a better idea of all the features this app offers and how it will help make classroom management tasks easier. There are even apps that can help teachers manage behavior issues in their classrooms. ClassDojo is a highly rated app that can assist teachers in the daunting task of maintaining proper behavior. It keeps track of students’ progress, provides instant feedback to the students, and creates reports that can be shared with parents. This app is more appropriate for younger students, but it looks like it could be tweaked, so that it can be used with higher grades as well. Overall, new technologies are making learning and teaching more accessible to teachers and students. Students can become more engaged in their learning through these apps and “smart” devices and teachers can manage their classrooms more efficiently, which will allow them to dedicate more time to teaching their students.
2 Comments
Michelle Nolte
4/21/2014 11:12:32 pm
Terrific Work!! I like the cartoon!!
Garth
4/29/2014 12:14:42 am
Grandpa has it right... ClassDojo is a cool little program. Behavior or game show points, it works well. I tried teachertoolkit, was not impressed but if you end up using it let me know how it works for you. Looking forward to your last posts. Leave a Reply. |