Out with the passive and in with the active projects. What’s happening in the classroom is evolving into a technology based environment. Students are becoming more responsible, motivated, and expressive about their education. Not to mention it is vital that students grow and learn with the technology will be using in their future careers.
Responsibility Falls Into Students’ Hands
In a high tech classroom the teacher is no longer the center of attention. They more or less explain, support, and monitor the project. This allows the student to take control. Sound scary? Don’t worry this is a good thing in this context. Technology is distributing the role of teacher to the students. It’s hard for a teacher to teach to each students learning ability. Technology allows students to work at their own pace and interpret the information how they please. The technology is supporting the students while the teacher supports the technology being used. “the students are in the position of defining their goals, making design decisions, and evaluating their progress.” Technology really brings out active mental work.
Provides Motivation For Students
The United States Department of Education states ‘“The most common–and in fact, nearly universal–teacher-reported effect on students was an increase in motivation” when it comes to technology in the classroom. Finally the answer! Motivation is the key to success. Now that the ball is in the students court, they begin to take pride in the the work they complete. By physically clicking and designing their own personal project, their self esteem rises tremendously.
Enables Collaboration With Neighbors
Tech based projects that assigned to individual students or a group of students are more collaborative than other non tech projects. Students take pride in completing their task and want to share their victories with classmates. In addition, students struggling with tasks will turn to their neighbors for help. This supports what we already know that the best way to learn is to teach the matter.
Enhances Design Skills
The US Department of Education says it best again stating “multiple media give students choices about how best to convey a given idea”. Anything that a teacher can do to help a student express his or her ideas, they should. Everything from the choice of font used for a paper to the description given of a ameba under a microscope, can be analyzed to determine more about each individual student.
Stratostar is here to help students express their ideas and becoming more knowledgeable on the skills they are going to need in the future. If you would like to chat about project based learning and technology in the classroom, feel free to drop us a line!
