Using Technology Tools in PBL

Hello everyone, hope you’re doing great! So lets get started on todays topic, and by the title you already have an idea what is gonna be about. 

Successful technology integration is more than just getting the tools into the classroom. Throughout the learning process, technology is used to acquire, organize, demonstrate, and communicate in student-teacher relation. Integration of technology into each stage of the project creates a meaningful learning experience. Effective tech integration changes classroom dynamics, encouraging student-centered project-based learning. PBL challenges students to design and engage in more authentic, extended, and complex learning. But while PBL is a trusted strategy for increasing student engagement and learning, it's not easy to orchestrate. There are tons of moving pieces, and if you're doing it right, students will be engaging in a variety of interest-driven projects all with various needs and on different schedules. So how do you manage it all? Tech can be a huge help. Our students love technology, and let’s be honest there is no shortage of options for technology in our classrooms these days. Technology can be an educator’s best weapon and easy to use if it’s the right fit for you, your students and the learning experience you want to create. 

 Now let’s go on to the first question. What technology tools are important for your students to know how to use?

There are many valuable tools and all are helpful but I would especially outline 3 of them, which I find highly interesting and innovating, so blogging, video conferencing and dropbox. Lets elaborate on them.

A. USING BLOGS IN OUR TEACHING 

What are Blogs? A blog is a kind of website that allows the user to very easily update the content by simply uploading a post and attaching files to it. These blog posts can then become interactive because the author can allow readers to post a reply or comment below the post. So why use Blogs? Before this course, which introduced us with Blogger we had no interest in using it, let along getting so much information on it, and learning about it in details and during our path finding a great appeal to it. Blogs are a great way for us, our class or our students individually to start reading, analysing and commenting on course-related writing tasks. Blogs are also widely used as spaces for reflective learning where students can gather thoughts, collect information and even organise that information into digital portfolios.

Some key benefits are:

 Blogs are an easy way for us and our students to get content onto the web quickly and easily.

 Class blogs can enable students to discuss topics further outside the classroom in a more discursive and thoughtful way and if open widen the discussion to global audiences with similar interests

 Can enable you as the tutor to guage levels of understanding prior to seminars

 The less formal environment of blogging can allow students to explore ideas before producing more formal work.

 Student groups can get to know each other faster, they can engage shyer students and encourage the more confident students to be challenged, because we know not all students are confident in speaking up.

B. VIDEO CONFERENCING 

As any teacher knows, the best way to capture students attention is through interactive teaching. And the more interactive a lesson, the better it is for everyone. Technology holds the key to a truly interactive teaching and learning experience and allows us as teachers to create a more engaged, collaborative environment in the process. One example of such technology actively being used in education today is video conferencing equipment, which is changing our classrooms, for example Teams platform that most of us are using now or even Google Classroom, which in my opinion the second one is much better. Video conferencing allows people in separate locations to connect in real time, providing live images and audio between two or more sites. Video conferencing can bring a whole new dimension to the classroom. It allows teachers to connect with other classes, introduce guest lecturers from around the world, and bring live events to the students, and also it allows students to practice their language skills with native speakers from around the world. It can also be used to teach the teachers, by giving them a student’s eye view of the classroom. In essence, video conferencing brings the whole world right into the classroom.

Benefits of video conferencing :

• Cost-effective: Video conferencing saves educational institutions both time and money. It means students can get the benefits of multiple field trips without having to spend anything or go anywhere.

• Creates a global village: Video conferencing in the classroom draws people together from all walks of life and from all countries. It takes classroom study to places far beyond the confines of its four walls.

• Enrichment: Video conferencing takes the concept of enrichment to new levels. The experiences it brings to lessons enhances the standard curriculum, giving students a more complete understanding of the world around them.

C. DROPBOX 

When I mention Dropbox to friends, I usually get one of two responses – a knowing smile and nod, or a puzzled and quizzical look. Whether you know what the program is, you have likely heard the name. But really, what is Dropbox? Dropbox is many things; it is a free service that sets up an online storage site, students can use it to store and sync documents and files across computers, tablets, and smart phones. I as a teacher can write a lecture or lesson plan on my computer at home, put it in my Dropbox folder, and whoosh it’s synced with any account on any other device that has my access. It makes your life a lot easier and this is why I would introduce it to my students. Another advantage is that using Dropbox eliminates the need of printing copies of all these documents. Furthermore, the  students can have access to all files, and use my Dropbox as a repository containing lesson plans, science standards, experiments, and videos as we have seen our professor do.

In summary, I find it’s features useful not only in teaching, where it can be used to perform collaborative work on the same project, share useful information with a wider audience but also as a tool for collaborative research that helps communicating and sharing data, images and drafts of journal article. It saves both time and effort in research, learning and teaching.

 The second matter of discussion will be this question: What technology tools will best enhance your students project work and presentation of the results?

Technology allows students to help each other and work together across to better understand the material. In that sense, they can sometimes serve as the teachers — and learning through instruction is known to be highly effective for mastering a topic and solving problems and these two tools achieve it perfectly I might say (PPT and MindMeister).

A. POWERPOINT

PowerPoint is, without a doubt, the most important and most widely used presentation tool today. It has been around for so long and everyone knows it. PowerPoint is often given a bad reputation. Many people call it outdated, lacking advanced functionality, and simply boring. However, its ‘bad reputation’ is undeserved and comes from a lack of understanding of what it truly can do. Most of us know Prezi and find it more interesting than PPT, but PowerPoint now makes a Prezi style presentation possible and achievable by anybody, and much more easily than by Prezi itself.

Given all that, it is fair to say that PowerPoint definitely does not fall behind its more modern alternatives. 

Pozitive features of PPT :

o PowerPoint saves time and energy—once the presentation has been created, it is easy to update or modify for other courses.

o Add visuals with easy picture-editing tools.

o Embed and edit video files directly in students or our presentations.

o Quickly add or record audio and synch with your slides.

o Easily access your presentations from more locations and on more devices.

o Classroom training is often converted to an online format – why not continue to use those presentations from the classroom?

o Use slide sections to navigate, organize and print your presentation.

o View and edit multiple presentations individually, side by side or even on separate monitors.

o Students can captivate their audience with new transitions and improved animations, which in the end us as teachers that’s one of the things we want.

o Easily repurpose and edit your presentations, over and over.

B. MINDMEISTER 

MindMeister is an online collaborative, knowledge-based mind mapping tool that students can use to understand and make connections between concepts, ideas, and information and to be honest before this course I didn’t know what it was or how beneficial it could be in my future classes, as a student but also as a future teacher. Mind maps help users collect ideas and facts based on a given topic. Mindmeister has many applications beyond mind mapping, including creating to-do lists, project planning, designing timelines, and brainstorming.

In contrast to regular paper mind maps, online mind mapping offers a range of additional possibilities for both students and teachers that make it one of the most practical applications that can be employed in a classroom. Online mind mapping is a means for teachers and students to work collaboratively and brainstorm together in real-time. The software basically offers a two-dimensional canvas which allows teachers and students to explore ideas, concepts and other types of information visually.Mind maps can easily be shared with individuals or whole groups of students, who can then contribute to them by adding their own ideas, images, links to external websites, files, notes or even tasks. It can easily be managed by teachers, who are able to add new students to the system with just a few clicks.

Benefits of Mindmeister :

As I have found form the researches I did, MindMeister has helped millions of students optimize their study time and improve test scores, and more and more teachers, and now also me are convinced by the numerous benefits this technique offers:

• Improves collaboration and teamwork

• Structures information visually

• Displays connections and hierarchies

• Enhances memory through the use of mental triggers

• Increases productivity and makes note taking more efficient

• Facilitates a free flow of ideas and fosters creativity

• Is a great presentation tool

• Doesn’t feel like work!

Hope you enjoyed my work, and sorry for such a long post I hope no one got bored reading it!     :)