As technology continues to advance, I believe education is constantly trying to think about how to be more engaging as “multitasking” becomes more of a thing amongst students. There are so many distractions in this world as opposed to 50 years ago. But like anything that has ever become worth talking about, education must become viral. But going viral isn’t easy. Different things engage different people and when the ultimate goal is to get a few learning outcomes across, things can get messy. However, we can’t sit around and expect students to just read the textbook or review the powerpoint slides (I just tested the latter last week) – no matter how much we’d like them to. As educators, we have to figure out how to meet our students where they’re at.
Part of my teaching philosophy is to create an environment where active learning is a core part of the syllabus. As a GTA I haven’t much time to integrate this into my own classroom as of yet but I’ve noticed the difference in levels of engagement of students during modules that portrays active learning. Carnes states that “When absorbed in intellectual games of this nature, students find the customary diversions of college—beer pong, World of Warcraft, Facebook, fraternity hijinks—less compelling.” A classmate wrote about Pokemon Go and how that could be translated into the formal learning space and I believe that this is aligned with those thoughts. In order to make learning more interesting topics should attempt to be taught in such a way that inspires students to continue the conversation beyond the classroom.
Good post. While I tend to agree with you that we need to meet students where they are at, I also want to challenge them in the classroom and struggle with that balance. I also am not personally very tech savvy, so while I agree with the importance of your points, I wonder about my ability to incorporate some of the changes I might want to. But I think you’re right that we need to keep thinking about ways to make changes in the classroom since the “traditional” methods won’t work for most students anymore.
Sorry, I am Saad Alabdulkarim not Sarah (thanks to the auto correction).
When you mentioned your GTA experience, I stopped thinking if there should be practical training for teachers before formal teaching. Teachers sometimes most focused on the scientific aspects of their majors, and ignoring to learn the different teaching modules. It is clear that teachers evaluation methods should contain such things…
The digital media is an excellent intermediate for the people to know better about the knowledge more efficiently. The knowledge transmission during the discussion is also a traning process for a person to polish the knowledge and get ability enhancement.