Innovation in education is necessary for us all. Without it we run the risk of being out paced, not only by the very fast development of technology but also by the skills of our own learners. However, it is worth reflection on what innovation really looks like. For many schools, the use of ICT in the classroom amounts to little more than the use of PowerPoint and the occasional video. YouTube is blocked in many schools, and students mobile devices are banned rather than utilised as a source of great potential for unlocking learning. The use of ICT as a cross curricular teaching tool to enhance pedagogy has often tended to be relegated to the teaching of ICT or computing as a subject area, however as an non ICT specialist I would argue that using ICT can have a major impact in the attainment of your learners. My teaching practice has been fundamentally enhanced by embedding the use of ICT to enhance learning. In no way am I an expert in the area, but I am willing to experiment with the use of technology, and accept that not every tool will be successful. The openness to risk taking in your teaching practice is crucial here, and I would always advise that you have a plan B in place in case the technology does not suit the learners or the lesson. Fundamentally using technology is just like trying anything new in your classroom, you need to know that you are using it for the right reasons, and know you learners well so that it is appropriate to motivate, inspire and engage them in a way that can be measured in terms of progress.
Here are my top five tools for you to try in your classroom, that I have found have real impact:
1 – NearPod. This is a free we based tool, that allows you to import existing PowerPoints and interweave assessment for Learning Opportunities, for example to answer multi- choice questions, draw a response or write a longer answer. Students are given a PIN number which gives them access to presentation, once they have logged on the teacher controls their device or screen. I have found this tool particularly effective in the BYOD classroom, as it works across all smart phone devices. This ensures that all students participating in a lesson, and involved in every single assessment for learning opportunity possible. I love NearPod as it allows you to recycle PowerPoints and make them a student entered learning opportunity. It is also really easy to use, and can be adapted across subjects and age ranges.
2 – Canva. This is a website which allows students to make very high quality graphic resources. These could be posters, infographics, the only limitation is your imagination whilst planning! My Classical Civilisation students used it to create memes of key quotes from Homer’s Iliad, which helped them to memorise this key information for the exam in a pictorial form. We then had the images printed, and created a wall display of their representation of that book. Not only did this allow them to be creative, but it was also an excellent memory technique to learn what is relatively difficult language. Canva has an in – built tutorial, and is easy to use to create very polished end products. This is Brilliant for building the self esteem of learners as they create some beautiful knowledge based work.
3 – Memrise. This is a revision tool on which learners can complete memory exercises to learn key information. However, it is much more powerful as a tool which students can use to create their own memory activities. My students have made them to learn key theorists and dates, and it has been very successful in assisting their recall of facts. What makes this website more useful in my opinion, is that it uses the visual metaphor of ‘growing learning,’ so that as learners get questions right their grow their learning and this makes visual flowers grow. Obviously learning is invisible, but my learners really enjoyed growing their learning garden, they found it very satisfying and actually spurred them on to work harder and get more work done. This is a teaching win!
4 – ThingLink. This website allows you to embed multimedia into a JPEG image. I know that doesn’t sound very exciting, but actually this is a brilliant tool for engagement in a lesson. For example, my Sociologists have to study Post Modernism for their exam. As part of a lesson I asked them to each contribute to a ThingLink about digital realities using their mobile devices, and that no contributions could be the same. They could add YouTube videos, links to a twitter feed or other websites. The work they produced was brilliant, some were scholarly degree level articles, and some were links to TED talks, it really pushed them to be creative in the information that they curated. Alongside this the ThingLink resource can then be reused as a revision or starter activity, and it excellent for recognising the contributions of the class towards their own learning.
5 – Credly. I have started using digital badges to reward my students, not for producing good work, but for displaying positive learner characteristics. Credly allows you to create very stylised digital badges, and them award them to learners. I use this to reward displays of resilience, or independent working. Students self assess and evidence if they have met the criteria for receiving a badge within a lesson, and I use this to award the badge. I was surprised how eager they were to win the badge, and went out of their way to develop and demonstrate positive learner characterises and habits for learning. A few learners even took screen shots of their Tumblr accounts and sent them to me, so that they could show me they are publicly displaying their awarded badge. It is lovely to be able to award students for trying, and developing the skills that they will need for later life.
These five tools can be used to enhance the teaching of many subjects and many different age levels. they certainly require no ICT specialist skills to use them effectively, and they have had massive impact in my own classroom. Innovation for many teachers may be trying one new thing, and that is what I would encourage you to do. Grow your own confidence, just like you grow the confidence of those in your classroom. Making small changes in your teaching practice, can make big footprint of difference in the learning that you students do, and this can only be positive. Innovation is not doing something new for its own sake, or putting gimmicky ICT into lessons that will not benefit the learning of students. Innovation in the classroom is taking calculated risks, because in the long run we want better lessons for our learning and to enhance our own teaching practice. Ask yourself this, in ten years is it more of less likely we will be using ICT in schools? I believe the answer is a clear yes, and that we owe it to our learners and ourselves to be the best practitioners we can be, not in ten years, but today.