Students in Group work
Imagine teaching in a school where all students have laptops with unlimited access to the internet in all corners of the school. A school where all the students can ably use the ICTs to find information, and are allowed (or rather required) to accry their laptops to classes. Great!
Now imagine yourself as the teacher who is supposed to teach those students a subject, such as physical geography, knowing fully well that all the content they need is on the laptop by the click of a button. So, how do you motivate the student to listen to you let alone attend your lesson? How do you justify standing before him or her?
Surely, you cannot simply read them your notes, nor will you show them any powerpoint that you prepared out out your notes of the previous. You nannot mesmerize them by playing a video clip you downloaded form Youtube (for the clip is clearer on their laptop!)
Presenttation before whole class
Such a class calls for new strategies and a new relationship between the teacher and the learners. I realise that my role is no longer to provide information, but to help students make sense of the information they have before them, and believe me – its a lot of information. My role is to internalise the curriculum and guide to students on the journey to learnng.
Thats why I made the decision; rather than fight the technology and ask the students to shut their laptops, I chose to deploy the tools. Introduce the concepts, filter the key elements and give them assigmements that require them to think about and process the information they find.
Then make sure they present their findings AND CONCLUSIONS to the class.
I have found this to work for now.The students leart to process information and as a bonus gain presentation skills.
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