8 ways technology is improving how we teach

Oftentimes it can be difficult to make changes to the way teachers teach. After all, why change something if it’s tried and true?

However, incorporating technology into teaching methods allows teachers to expand their teaching capabilities and even make it easier for students to learn.

Here are a few ways technology improves how we teach:

1. It uses the students’ vernacular
Kids these days live in a virtual world. You can complain about this fact, or you can use it.

Because kids understand much of the terminology used by software programs and websites, teachers can use these mediums to speak the vernacular and make their lessons more impactful.

2. It offers control over differentiated instruction
There can be no doubt that the practice of differentiated instruction has improved the quality of education teachers provide to students who possess learning disabilities.

As great as it has been to be able to give every student equal footing in the classroom, offering customized assessments and study materials is an awful lot of work. Thankfully, technology has made teachers’ jobs easier in this regard, and it has made both teachers and students more successful in the classroom.

3. It allows teachers to engage students based on their learning styles

I am among the small minority of people who actually learns better from didactic instruction. It used to be that didactic was the only method of instruction, and students who didn’t receive it well were labeled poor students.

The trouble is, there are many different learning styles. Some students learn visually, some with auditory aids and still others learn through hands-on experience. Some, still, learn best by reading.

For every style, there is a technology to help deliver the lesson more effectively. Even with didactic instruction, PowerPoint has saved thousands of teachers from the chalk-stained hands of their predecessors.

4. It helps to prepare teachers
I have always firmly believed that a person must master a subject before he or she can teach that subject. If you are stumbling through an American history course because you were a geography major in college, your students will know immediately.

With the world’s largest libraries at your fingertips via the Web, teachers no longer have any excuse to walk into the classroom without all of the knowledge they need.

5. It cuts down on prep time
Teachers have a lot on their plates, and technology has allowed them to speed up their processes so they can prep for all of their subjects efficiently.

Teachers are responsible for creating lesson plans, lectures, review sheets and assessments, as well as writing curriculum and communicating with students, administration and parents. All of these tasks have been made easier, which has allowed teachers to improve the quality of their education curriculum.

6. It allows teachers to better asses the curriculum
Cutting down on prep time is great, but the purpose is not to help teachers spend less time on their jobs.

Bad curriculum is bad curriculum, whether it took three days or three weeks to write. Once again, technology can help teachers ensure the quality of their curriculum. There are quite a few different kinds of software packages developed for curriculum management, and they can all help you deliver the best possible instruction to your students, depending on your curriculum management needs.

7. Tech reaches students everywhere
I am not advocating for a 16-hour school day. Kids need time to be kids and unwind from the school. Homework is important, but it shouldn’t consume a student’s life. That said, technology does help teachers keep school lessons in front of their students no matter where they go.

In the current world of technology, a student can no longer offer excuses like “my dog ate my homework” or “I couldn’t do my homework because I forgot to take my book home.”

The flip side of this is the ability to be available to your students during more than just your 45-minute school period. I am not advocating that you give up your personal life, either, but are you really put out that much if a student asks you a quick question via email the night before the big final exam?

8. It makes learning more fun
Students today have hundreds of options for how to spend their time that are “more fun” than sitting in a classroom listening to a lesson plan. If technology can help teachers make their lessons more fun and engaging for students, they owe it to the students – and themselves – to adapt and fit in with the current culture in which the students have been raised.

You may be hesitant to incorporate technology into your traditional teaching methods; however there are a slew of benefits for you as well as your students. Try it out, and see for yourself.

Images: meineresterampe, RGMontgomery and K.W. Barrett