Education, like nearly every other area
of our society, has evolved in leaps and bounds in recent years. conventional
teaching methods, based mainly on a teacher explaining a topic and students taking notes,may still be useful on incident, but education today revolves
more around encouraging the student to stimulate their curiosity and desire to learn.
A number of different
teaching methods have emerged due to this change in education. Many of these teaching methods are
not actually new however! The use of technology in the classroom has simply given education a new lease
of life allowing us to approach old ideas in new ways.
Outlined below are
some popular teaching methods that have arisen from the integration of
technology in education.
6 Teaching Methods You
Should Know:
1. Flipped Classroom (Inverting your class):
The Flipped Classroom Model basically involves encouraging students to
plan for the lesson before
class. Thus,
the class becomes a active environment in which students elaborate on what they
have already studied. Students plan a topic at home so that the class the
next day can be devoted to answering any questions they have about the topic.
This allows students to go beyond their normal boundaries and explore their
natural curiosity.
Exam Time’s open online learning tools can be integrated into the Flipped
Classroom teaching model. Using Exam Time, you can easily share resources with
a group, in this case a class, allowing students to study these resources from
home and plan for the next class.
2. Design Thinking
(Case Method):
This method is based
on resolving real-life cases through group
analysis, brainstorming, innovation and creative ideas. Although
“Design Thinking” is a structured method, in practice it can be quite messy as
some cases may have no possible solution.
However, the Case
Method plans students for the real world and arouses their curiosity,
analytical skills and creativity. This method is often used in popular MBA
or Masters classes to analyze real cases experienced by companies in the past.
Ewan McIntosh, an
advocate of Design Thinking, created The Design Thinking School as part of his “No Tosh” consulting group. No Tosh
harnesses the creative practices of some of the best media and tech companies
in the world to coach educators methods to implement the concept. Design
Thinking for Educators also
provides teachers with an online toolkit with instructions to explore Design
Thinking in any classroom.
3. Self-learning:
Curiosity
is the main driver of learning. As a basic principle of learning, it
makes little sense to force students to memorize large reams of text that they
will either begrudgingly recall or instantly forget. The key is
to let students focus on exploring an area which interests them and learn about
it for themselves.
An ideal example of a
teaching method based on self-learning is outlined by Sugata Mitra at the TED conference. In
a series of experiments in New Delhi, South Africa and Italy, the educational
researcher Sugata Mitra gave children self-supervised access to the
web. The results obtained could revolutionize how we think about
teaching. The children who until then did not even know what the internet
was, were capable of training themselves in multiple subjects with
unexpected ease.
A common method for
exploring self-learning is the use of Mind Maps. Teachers can create a central
node on a Mind Map and allow
students the opendom to expand and develop ideas. For example,
if the focus is the Human Body, some students may create Mind Maps on the
organs, Bones or Diseases that affect the human body. Later the students
would be evaluated according to the Mind Maps they have created and could
collaborate with each other to improve each others Mind Maps and come to a more
comprehensive understanding of the Human Body.
4. Gamification:
Learning through the use of games is a method that has
already been explored by some teachers, especially in elementary and preschool
education. By using games, students learn without even
realizing. Therefore, learning through play or ‘Gamification‘ is a learning method
that can be very effective at any age. It is also a very useful method to keep
students motivated.
The teacher should
design projects that are appropriate for their students, taking into account
their age and knowledge, while making them attractive enough to provide extra
motivation. One idea may be to encourage students to create quizzes
online on a certain
topic. Students can challenge their peers to test themselves and see who gets a
higher score. In this way, students can enjoy the competition with peers
while also having fun and learning.
5. Social Media:
A variant of
the previous section is to utilize social media in the classroom. Students
today are always connected to their social network and so will need little motivation to get them engaged with social media
in the classroom. The ways you can use this method of teaching are quite
varied as there are hundreds of social networks and possibilities.
A good example is the
initiative carried out by the Brazilian Academy of Languages ”Red Ballon“, which encouraged students to review the tweets of their favorite artists and correct grammatical errors that
they committed in an effort to improve their English language skills!
6. Open Online Learning
Tools:
There is an array of open
online learning tools available which teachers can use to encourage engagement,
participation and a sense of fun into the classroom. Teachers can create an
interactive and active classroom environment using, for example, online quizzes to test student’s knowledge.
If you haven’t used ExamTime’s open online learning tools yet, sign up now to create Mind Maps,Flashcards, Quizzes & Notes.
Encourage your students to sign up to ExamTime too so you can create a Group and
invite each of your students to become a member. This means you can share study
resources directly with each student online and even apply the Flipped
Classroom Model to your method of teaching.
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