Using Education Technology The Types, Benefits and Exemples to Motivate You
With all the activity in the field of digital learning as well as content creators and teachers seek out new methods to run their businesses in the field of learning. It is a good thing that technology for education can assist in alleviating some friction when it comes to sharing your knowledge in 2023.
Jump ahead:
- What is educational technology?
- 6 types of education technology
- 5 benefits of using educational technology software
- Examples of educational technology applied
What exactly is educational technology?
Educational technology (or EdTech, for short) is a term that covers a variety of general software products that support teachers and digital creators in their attempts to successfully and efficiently distribute course material. While many virtual classrooms are using the use of technology for education to make classes more engaging, traditional classrooms are also able to use this kind of software in order to make everyday chores like tracking assignments simpler. Both online and in-person classes can also use technology for entertainment -- to launch quizzes, virtual labs, as well as online games to help students learn in creative, fresh ways.
Six types of educational technology
Course management software
When you've created a handful of courses, it's likely that you're overwhelmed with a large amount of content to manage. A central place for organizing every course and each cohort can be useful as it makes it easier to offer courses to new students and circle back to older course content when it needs changing. Additionally, you'll be able to measure student progress throughout the course to make sure the material is informative as well as relevant and easy to digest.
A lot of beginners use YouTube as an entry level "course management software" as you can upload video and then organize the videos into playlists. True, YouTube is totally free but it isn't true program for managing your course. It doesn't have the tools essential to allow you to tie the content of your videos with assignments or events, track attendance as well as track lesson and course completeness.
Exam, quiz, and other survey instruments
Whether you're hosting your course on the internet or in person it is important to engage your students somehow! The idea of launching quizzes or polls can be an engaging, fun method to make sure that students pay attentively. Software like Kahoot and SurveySparrow can be great tools for a start If you're seeking to improve participation. Kahoot offers a live, interactive trivia competition, while Survey Sparrow can be utilized to distribute mini-quizzes or questionnaires to your students. Of course, a lot of course management tools, including the ones mentioned, include tools such as these built in.
Exam testing software can be yet another type of educational technology that fits into this class, which is becoming a popular method for schools to detect cheating in the final exam.
Online learning communities
- Enabling students to impart their own information beyond the course, to further improve the quality of their learning through organic methods.
- Seeing how students communicate between themselves, this is important for certain courses.
- The creation of a space that students may use to demonstrate the skills that they've acquired during the course
Live course delivery platforms
One of the essential categories of education technology is video conferencing tools, or similar platforms that allow for the teaching to be given to students in real-time. Zoom is easily the most well-known platform to date, as it allows registration of participants to track attendance and already has its own polling feature but there are many others including Demio, Google Meet, and GoToMeeting. A lot of these platforms incorporate directly into learning management systems as well. Through the integration of Zoom into, say the system, you could provide recordings of content or materials to your students before and during live session.
Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok all support live-streaming events as well. This can be a suitable starting option for digital creators with a community on their social media accounts and wish to get started building a sustainable education business.
Interactive learning labs
Interactive labs for learning are virtual space in which students are able to simulate a real situation. This is extremely helpful that:
- You've got a large number of learners who are kinesthetic in your class.
- It's difficult to create the actual scenario in person, or
- The subject is extremely complicated and difficult to convey in phrases
Right now there are many interactive learning labs catering to a variety of niches. One example is the Science Interactive allows students to make virtual labs for science experiments. In cases where teachers can't buy expensive equipment or chemicals that aren't safe to utilize or students just desire to try out low-risk experiments methods, this program can assist them still meet their learning needs.
Management software for classes
Note that Class management software differs in comparison to the software for managing courses. This one focuses on how students perform, and less on managing the course content and progress. This is a fantastic kind of software for education as teachers can use it to monitor behavior issues, track attendance or assignments, as well as post grades. For example, Teach 'n Go is a software for class management which connects students with the school's system. It also schedules teachers to attend the classroom at times when required.
5 advantages of making use of software for education
Learners can adapt courses to different kinds of
Through the use of technology, you are able to provide any educational course for almost everyone. Every student requires a slightly different approach to learning, even if it's just as basic as being an auditory student versus a visual learner. Students with learning disabilities or cognitive issues Educational technology software may add closed captioning, reduce the speed of learning, or allow the student to access additional information without drawing attention from other students.
It is easy to monitor student's progress
Most education technology tools have the ability to perform some form of analysis. It is great for monitoring student performance and quickly discovering those who are slowing down. If you are planning to teach a large class You should definitely consider stepping away from traditional methods of tracking and consider how tracking tools can save you time. Additionally there is software that automatically calculate the grade average and final marks saving you even more energy and time!
Get quick feedback on your course
By using online communities, you'll be able to instantly connect with your students, and observe what they think of the information. The immediate feedback you receive can be used to adjust your content as needed and help improve the learning experience for your students.
If you're new at the creation of courses, you may use technology to create and test a edition of the course. You'd need a small group of students who can offer initial feedback as you build the course. It's much more convenient to offer the test option online as opposed to in-person.
Profit from your expertise
Quickly scale your course registration
Unless you're working with students in a class that is twenty students or fewer, it's going to be challenging to maintain a manual record on the individual progress of students behavior, requirements, and other aspects. If you're working with large classes or plan to start a class at the scale of a school, you'll require software that can monitor, automate and notify you of the latest changes. Not only is this will save you time and effort, but it'll let you get more precise student data. It might even allow your course to run passively in the background while you focus on other aspects of your work.
A few examples of education technology applied in real life
creating a flipped classroom to increase discussion time during live class
The "flipped classroom" concept is about providing students learning materials like pre-recorded videos that they can watch prior to class and using period to talk about the concepts as a group. This contrasts the "typical" class environment where teachers explain topics in the course of class and asks students to complete assignments independently afterward. This way, students try to understand the topic at their own pace and bring any additional questions to the teacher and group. Course management software can help in the organization and distribution of teaching materials prior to every lesson.
In 2019 Milie Adrian stepped down from her job full-time to focus on the creation of content on Instagram, YouTube, and her own course. Her first three courses with varying prices to see the market's interest in. To ensure that her students are close to one another She's also set up an online group on Facebook where students can ask questions regarding content creation, and to share their inspiration and ideas with each other.
Ariane Cap runs an online company known as Ari's Bass Blog in which she teaches music theory and how to play the bass. Her classes have a significant online community component as course alumni are encouraged to stay connected to support the next generation of students as coach. One-to-one coaching sessions increased accountability, and made students feel more excited about completing the full course. Since Ariane's business is entirely digital, the online communities feature was key to connecting remote students to their mentor coaches.