Technology in The 21st Century Classroom
The use of technology in education has over the years become a subject of discussion and attracted the views of differen scholars. Technological advancements can play an important role in improving teaching in the 21st-century classroom through excellent curriculum delivery and assessment methods. It is important for the educators to be savvy of relevant developments in technology, which could make their work easier and efficient. Technology has considerably helped in the delivery and assessment of education curriculum through devices such as smartboards, laptops, internet connectivity, e- portfolios, wikis, distance learning, online homework system, blended teaching approach, flipped classrooms, and technology-based classroom layouts.
Smart Boards
Smart boards are important devices that can improve teaching and assessment significantly. They are a brand of interactive whiteboards (IWB), which display the images from a linked computer (Preston & Mowbray, 2008). The device’s screen surface operates as a giant touch screen that enables the operator to navigate through any displayed platform. The device has varied forms, which enable the device’s customization to fit the users’ needs as seen later in this paper.
Smartboards can help learners to quickly understand complicated concepts due to their interactive nature. As Preston and Mowbray (2008) explain, the boards have interactive features that increase the learners’ learning experience in 21st-century classrooms. These features include things like prerecorded statement features and features to save notes for future use. The interactivity has a resultant increased concentration and understanding (Preston & Mowbray, 2008).
Additionally, the boards greatly help to the educators to handle complicated learners such as kindergarten students. They facilitate learning of children in a kindergarten class despite the challenges associated with managing children (Preston & Mowbray, 2008). The smart boards give the children the opportunity to share important ideas, videos, images and audio recordings with their teachers (Hollingsworth & Ybarra, 2013). The interesting nature of videos and pictures helps the students to spend more time repeating the same things without getting bored. This repetition helps them to remember and learn.
Additionally, the smart boards can help the educators to assess the progress of their students efficiently. According to Preston and Mowbray (2008), the smart boards have enabled the students to demonstrate their understanding of various concepts to their teachers. They further explain that the students do not need a perfect knowledge of a particular reading and writing skills for them to demonstrate their understanding (Preston & Mowbray, 2008). This advantage provides an equal platform for the students having communication barriers.
Further, smartboards have a particular way of reinforcing key ideas for the learners to understand complicated concepts. The educators achieve the reinforcement of important concepts with the help of experiments such as the push-pull interactive activity (Preston & Mowbray, 2008). These tests provide the framework for the interactive reinforcements while the smartboard provides the platform for the interaction.
Moreover, teaching through smart boards builds the students’ problem-solving skills. The method of teaching ensures that the students are fully involved in the whole learning process. The students do activities like making predictions, recording results, and building instructions for various practical tasks on their own (Preston & Mowbray, 2008). These tasks build their problem-solving skills when they become successful.
Computers and Laptops
Besides smart boards, computer and laptop integration into the curriculum teaching methods can help students to improve their learning experience. The experience can be more efficient, especially when there is an increased computer to student ratio. This improved proportion ensures that each student gets more time to access a computer and understands how to use the devices properly (Russell, Bebell & Higgins, 2004).
Furthermore, the laptops increase the students’ motivation and engagement during the learning experience. This improved motivation comes when the student to computer ratio is 1:1 as compared to cases where more students share the same computer (Russell, et al., 2004). Illustratively, the level of engagement in a classroom having the computer to student ratio of 1:1 is 3.8 out of 5 as compared to the classes where students share laptops (Russell, et al., 2004). The later classes had a level of engagement of 3.3 out of 5. The reduced computer-student interaction with the case of students sharing laptops explains the reduced participation (Russell, et al., 2004).
In addition to the increased engagement, the computers and laptops can help the students to accurately and efficiently capture the teacher’s crucial in a lesson (Russell, et al., 2004). Especially in the context where the ratio of computer to students is 1:1, the students are observed to frequently use the laptops as their primary writing tools (Russell, et al., 2004). Thus, it becomes easier for the students to retrieve the information later.
In addition, computers and laptops can help the educators to assess their students individually. This assessment is possible because the technology encourages the students to work independently. Russell, et al. (2004) observed that those students with more interaction with the computers tend to work alone as compared to those students who had less interaction with the computers. These other students were observed to be working in groups (Russell, et al., 2004). As such, the educator can easily make assessments of individual students.
The Internet
Apart from Smartboards and laptops, internet connectivity and infrastructure can be a great asset in the delivery and assessment of students in the 21st-century classroom. In fact, Brändström (2011) argues that the technology offers the basis of operation of various other technologies in the 21st-century classroom. The internet does not function alone because the technology requires other devices to become fully effective.
First, the internet helps the teachers to access teaching materials quickly. The internet has varied teaching content that is readily available once the teacher has a laptop or a personal computer (Brändström, 2011). The educator can then use these educational materials to teach the students whatever topic the teacher wants. This provision makes it easier for the educator to find information which was initially hard to find.
Moreover, the internet improves the students with motivation to learn. According to Brändström (2011), the internet greatly motivates the students in Canada to learn because of their interest in the web as one of the new teaching aids. The increased motivation is also because the students are personally interested to know more about the internet. It is the increased motivation that makes learning effective.
Besides, the internet gives the educators an opportunity to evaluate how much the students have understood from the teacher’s lessons. For instance, the technology provides the teachers with a platform to administer online exercises and crosswords so as to assess the progress of their students’ learning (Brändström, 2011). This manner of evaluation encourages the student to participate since they do the exercises at their convenience.
E-portfolios
In addition to the above technologies, the e-portfolio can also help the teacher to teach and evaluate the progress of the students. The technology has a variety of features that makes learning through the platform possible. The technology enables the learner to upload information in varied forms which include images, electronic files of the assignments and input texts (Alawdat, 2013). The features thus allow the teacher to interact with the students even at different geographical locations just as the information indicates below.
Notably, the e-portfolio provides a forum for the teacher to send teaching materials to the student. As Alawdat (2013) suggests, this form of learning makes the student be a partner in the teaching-learning process. Alawdat further explains that the technology provides an opportunity for the student to adopt new ideas and methods of learning (2013). Thus, the students can then try new learning methods until they find a perfect one.
Moreover, the e-portfolio improves the student’s academic performance. Notably, the technology helps the students to develop their oral language assessment regarding the lexical richness and language expression quantity. The use e-portfolios also motivate the learners to improve their learning outcomes. The curriculum delivery finally gets improved as a result of hard improved learning outcomes (Alawdat, 2013).
E-portfolio also helps to overcome the challenges that language barrier causes in the learning process. For example, the portfolios offer a better platform for the student learning English as a second language as compared to the paper portfolio (Alawdat, 2013). This advantage clearly manifests when comparing the results of writing and reading skills assessments between students who use paper and e-portfolios (Alawdat, 2013). The students using the electronic portfolios tend to be better than the ones using paper portfolios.
Wikis for Peer Evaluation
The use of wikis can help the students to learn valuable skills besides helping them to solve their problems. In particular, they help the learner to learn how to get organized when handling various issues that affect them. For the peer evaluation activity to be successful, He states that the instructors need to clearly define the organization of the whole process before they begin the peer evaluation (2011). This clarity and order helps to cover the process absolutely and systematically.
Additionally, the wikis also help the student to be self-driven team players. The various processes that the students engage in when managing the wiki sites ensures that every student participates in the management of the sites (He, 2011). The students engage in activities like organizing posting on groups wikis, which enables them to be self-driven. Managing wikis require that every student who contributes on the wiki pages gets acknowledged so as to make the learners be team players.
Learning Management Systems for Distance Learning
Further, the technologies used in the 21st-century classroom can also be used to facilitate distance, e-learning and online learning. The programs mainly apply to the individuals who live away from the school and cannot be able to attend classes due to the difference in geographical locations with the school (Moore, Dickson-Deane & Galyen, 2011). The learning process greatly depends on the internet, which provides the channel of communication between the participants.
First, the distance learning is the commonest form of learning for individuals staying far from the educational centers. The method mostly involves the instructor giving instructions to the learner about what the student is required to do (Moore, et al., 2011). The instructions can be in various forms which include both electronic and print media. The learner then executes the instructions and gives back the feedback for evaluation.
Additionally, e-learning also helps the distant student to access education. The method works the same way as distance learning. The difference between e-learning and distance learning is specifically in the use of web-based services in e-learning (Moore, et al., 2011). The method covers a broad range of media to deliver the learning materials to the students. The media used for delivering learning materials include things like the audio tapes, internet, intranet and video tapes. These media are used singly or in a group to facilitate the learning process.
Besides e-learning and distance learning, online learning is another variance that promotes learning for distant learners. The variance is an improvement to the distance learning program through the method offers more improved interaction opportunities (Moore, et al., 2011). This enhanced interactivity helps to educate both traditional and disenfranchised learners. Thus the improvements to the distance learning have made the program beneficial to a bigger group of students.
Furthermore, these distant learning programs have exemplary curriculum evaluation methods such as online quizzes which guide the teacher in assessing the students’ performance and progress. Most of the learning platforms have analysis features that help the educator to efficiently and accurately analyze the learner’s feedback to the teaching materials and assignments (Moore, et al., 2011). The teacher, thus, gets a personal interaction with the students hence increasing the chances of the student understanding of the curriculum.
Nature of Homework in Technological Environment
Assigning work to the learners through online homework also help to improve the learning experience. The student’s performance can be used to assess the use of the technology in curriculum delivery and assessment (Dodson, 2014). If the learning is effective, then the performance will improve as compared to the case where it is ineffective. The educator can withdraw the whole process if the performance is poor. If the process is successful, the educator will maintain it as they gain the benefits as discussed below (Dodson, 2014).
First, the use of online homework improves the performance of the learner in the learning process. The improved grades which the students who use the online homework systems get can provide an evaluation criterion for the learning method (Dodson, 2014). The important content in online homework and the great homework grades explain the reason behind the high grades achieved by those using the online homework system. This makes the system more preferred.
Finally on the nature of homework in a technology environment, the use of online provides necessary motivation required to make the student complete their assignments. The motivation is important to the students’ upbringing since the students eventually need less supervision to do the homework (Dodson, 2014). This morale saves the teachers and the parents the need to closely supervise the students to do their assignment.
Blended Learning Approach and Flipped Classrooms
The use of blended learning and flipped classroom has a significant advantage in improving the delivery and assessment of the curriculum in the 21st-century classroom. First, most students prefer using blended learning to didactic learning. The students attributed their preference of blended learning to the provision that blended learning gives to them regarding exam preparation and clarification of objectives (Sajid, et al., 2016). These privileges made the learning experience in blended learning more student friendly.
Despite the students’ objection of blended learning on new topics, the students still believed that the system could be improved. The students suggested that if blended learning were complemented with other methods like the didactic method, then the whole curriculum delivery succeed (Sajid, et al., 2016). Blended learning would be used for the topics already discussed with the teacher while the didactic method would be used for the new topics.
Although the use of blended learning has little impact on the performance of the students, the method has high impact in the satisfaction of the students. The satisfaction plays a major role in the motivation and morale building of the students (Sajid, et al., 2016). The more they get motivated, the more improved their results become. Hence the improved results justify the necessity of the method in delivering the curriculum.
In addition to the blended learning, the use of flipped classrooms helped the student to understand the curriculum better. The flipped classrooms provide the students with more time to interact with others on a particular concept (Sajid, et al., 2016). The students get the chance to hold discussion groups which enable them to improve their weak areas. The students eventually progress together in the understanding of the various concepts.
Technology in Classroom Layout Schematic
The use of technology to improve the schematic of the seating arrangement is important to improve the delivery of the curriculum. The use of technology like technology enhanced classrooms has helped the educators to make the schools a suitable learning environment for the students (Harvey & Kenyon, 2013). This suitability is necessary to improve the students learning experience and curriculum development.
First, the students get more satisfaction from the improvements through by technology. These improvements include the modern mobile chair. The students get fascinated by the mobility of the chairs. As a result, they get motivated to complete the class work allocated to them by their teachers (Harvey & Kenyon, 2013). The improved performance of the students demonstrates the importance of this motivation.
Another significance of the use of technology in the schematic of the classroom layout is the associated flexibility. This flexibility is important in helping the educator to shift from one teaching model to another (Harvey & Kenyon, 2013). Furthermore, the technology makes the transition to be smooth and quick hence saving the time required to learn. This efficiency is critical in enabling the students to maintain focus during lesson changes (Harvey & Kenyon, 2013).
Conclusion
From the information above, the use of technology is conclusively a valuable asset in the improvement of curriculum delivery in the 21st-century classroom. Technology provides the solution to the various challenges that face the education sector through improving available resources, inventing new devices and customizing available devices, and learning programs such as laptops and distance learning programs to fit the educational needs as this essay discusses. Apart from improving the delivery of the curriculum, the information above also contains demonstrations of technology developing the assessment criteria used in the curriculum. Technology has simplified the role of the educators in assessing the curriculum through the efficient methods that technology has provided. These techniques employed in the assessment include smartboards used for predictions when evaluating the students, laptops used for individual evaluation and effect of online homework on the performance of students among other technologies that paper describes above.
References
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Sajid, M. R., Laheji, A. F., Abothenain, F., Salam, Y., AlJayar, D., & Obeidat, A. (2016). Can blended learning and the flipped classroom improve student learning and satisfaction in Saudi Arabia? International Journal of Medical Education, 7, 281. Retrieved from https://www.ijme.net
