The Profession of teaching is a challenging career and of course it’s an art. A Good teacher is always a gift to every student because, without him, one can’t learn something efficiently. Now days, the technology is playing a good role in Pedagogy. It makes teachers to express exactly what they want their students to understand. There are lots of technological tools which help teachers in order to deliver a perfect lesson and also help students to learn the lessons efficiently.
For example, to explain how a human heart works, the teacher has to draw the diagram on the board and also mark its parts and then start teaching about its working. With the whole process, the student will get to know how to draw and what are the parts and afterwards the working too. Including this process, if the teacher shows an animated video of “working of heart” in projector, the student will easily remember the concept.
Instead, if the teacher directly teaches the concept through projector and just shows the diagram and video without drawing on board, Student will lack the skill of drawing diagram; his time of learning is more than earlier one.
From the above two paragraphs, we can understand that Technology helps in Pedagogy if we use it in a proper way. Being in 21st century, one should understand the role and usage of technology in pedagogy, and also it’s not compulsory to use it if we fail to understand its advantages. Let me tell you the reason why I’ve mentioned this line “It’s not compulsory”.
As a coin has two sides, everything is a combination of both positive as well as negative aspects. Technology is not an exception here. One of the things that I see happening far too often is people stressing over how they are going to create lessons around the new piece of technology they have in their classroom. It is this approach that is causing headaches to many and giving tech tools a bad reputation in the classroom. There is a right way and a wrong way to infusing technology in education.
The wrong way
We all have read the statement that “One has to be clear with the ‘why’ before the ‘how’ ”, which is why the wrong way to deal with educational technology is to look at a tool and try to build a lesson around it. I have seen administrators forcing teachers to use a specific tool in a specific lesson. This is not the right use of technology and can prove disastrous. Some tools do not work for certain lessons, and this is to be understood by decision makers. Sometimes they are not needed and can just cause more confusion than anything else. Technology tools are not easily replacements for all lessons in all subject areas. This concept needs to be understood by all stakeholders involved in educational institutions when it comes to infusing technology into the classroom. The tech comes at the end of the process with a clear answer to the WHY???????.
The right way
The right way to deal with educational technology is to not think of its integration until the lesson is planned. Keep the technology tool close enough, but do not stress over it. A teacher should put efforts in creating lessons that will best meet the educational goals and are engaging to the students in the classroom. And when the teacher has created this amazing lesson, they can have a look around and see what technology tools they have available to them for their needs. Will actually those tools make this lesson better? more engaging? More easier to understand? Will it save the teacher or student’s time and/or energy if it is used with this lesson? If the answer is no to these questions, then technology is not required for this lesson. If the answer is yes to one of these, the teacher should look to introduce this technology into their lesson plans.
That’s it, sounds simple although it’s not.
Teachers still have students writing impromptu essays on paper with pen as well as set of iPads the students use daily. However, most of the teachers answer those questions with a “no.” Teachers are actually overwhelmed with the given device thinking that everything they do must now revolve around this device. World has seen this happen with interactive whiteboards and now we are starting to see it with tablets and laptops. Teachers are amazing not because of the technology they have in their classroom, but because of the lessons they create (with or without technology).
Some of the best lessons were created years ago that did not involve technology in anyway. People practice those lessons and slightly tweak them to add elements of technology to make certain aspects a bit smoother. This approach to tweaking great lessons has allowed teachers to have a great impact on students.
A message to decision makers and teachers out there: Take out the time to focus on the lesson and let the technology find its way into the system when it is needed.
