Technology For Education

Is there anything a teacher can do if they don't want to see the painful expression on the face of the student when the writing or speaking task is announced? Perhaps they should try using technology in their classroom?

There are several things a teacher can do to enhance student learning and one of those things is to engage them in student centered online learning. There are a lot of tools available at the moment, which can be used to meet these goals and can be time intensive, and all of them serve different purposes. The first group are the information visualization tools   that allow users to view, analyze, manipulate and/or communicate complex information, such as historical, spatial, and statistical data. They are freely available nd can produce simple visual representations of small data sets to proprietary tools that can manipulate complex data.

Another interesting group are collaboration tools
- using them the students work together to solve a problem, create a product, or derive meaning from a body of material. A central  question or problem serves to organize activities and  facilitate application, analysis or synthesis of the course material. Wikis, Project Management tools, Real-time communications are all available to  the teachers and can be easily activated.

There is a vast list of all other tools

which are also freely available to the teachers and which can serve such purposes as online assessment, student comprehension assessment, lecture webcasting or podcasting, and also concept tests, which monitor and support student learning.  For those who would love to practise speaking or writing outside of their classroom there are numerous discussion boards where, as many instructors would say, some of the most important learning can happen.