Since our founder, Tor Ove Henriksen, kicked off our new blog in June 2018, we’ve written about a number of trends, technologies and approaches that are influencing and improving education. Here’s our round-up of some of the most popular trends and topics to date.
Collaboration
This is a subject we’ve written about a lot this year, across multiple different areas of learning (so you’ll see a few more related blogs below), because it’s an ever-present requirement for effective education and for life in today’s connected society.
Build a digital community – At a time when text messages and messaging apps are a major form of communication among young people, it makes sense to build learning applications that take advantage of these essential communications tools.
Got Teams? Just add Skooler to create a full-featured LMS – Collaboration is a powerful skillset to have – whether it’s in the boardroom or the classroom. For teachers, it’s critical to collaborate with parents so that they are aware of what is being taught in the classroom and can better support their children at home. However, what often goes unnoticed is the collaboration between teachers, especially those who teach the same grade level.
Parental communication
Communicating more often and more effectively with parents helps everyone stay more engaged in every student’s learning.
Opening the lines of communication between teachers and parents – Technology has reshaped the way parents and teachers interact and apps for smartphones, such as text-messaging, email and social media, have transformed the entire education process which, in turn, has ushered in a new era of teacher-parent interaction.
All parents aboard! – Good communication between teachers and parents is vital to ensure that both are working toward the same goals—helping students learn and grow. The ability to easily communicate with parents helps them stay informed about the status of their child’s schoolwork (meaning no surprises), and it helps parents be a part of their child’s education both inside and outside of school.
STEM Education
Career opportunities in STEM fields are growing by leaps and bounds, and the key skills learned through STEM education – like problem solving, creative thinking and collaboration – help to prepare students for success in a broad range of careers as well as providing basic household and life skills.
Improving STEM education by creating transformative learning experiences – Exploring new ideas and exposing children to new concepts helps foster curiosity. It teaches children to ask questions and consider how ideas are connected, and it guides them to make conclusions. Cultivating a curious mind is like planting a seed in a child’s mind with the hope that the seed will grow over time.
Successful STEM education requires collaboration – It’s time for STEM education to kick up a notch – to look not only at individual subjects, but also to tap into the naturally collaborative nature of children, help them think in a more systems-oriented way and learn how to work together across multiple disciplines in order to solve complex problems.
Tech-enhanced teaching methods
New technologies support fresh approaches and time-tested methodologies to make life easier for teachers and students.
Using project-based learning in the classroom – As more emphasis is put on the global workplace, teachers are finding ways to prepare students for how to solve real-world issues.
Project-based learning is a dynamic classroom approach in which students actively explore real-world problems and challenges through hands-on projects and presentations.
5 Ways to boost learning using formative assessments – If you aren’t using formative assessments yet, you are missing out on a way to gather valuable information that informs your teaching while setting your students up for success.
How to use OneNote as a digital whiteboard – Chalkboards have been used in schools for more than 400 years. White boards entered classrooms in the 1990’s, and schools are now installing Interactive White Boards. Meanwhile, many teachers have experienced the benefits of using Microsoft OneNote as a digital whiteboard in the classroom, without the costs.
Bringing accessibility to education with Office 365 – More than one billion people in the world have some form of disability. Yet when technology reflects the diversity of all who use it, there are no limits to what people can achieve. Through Office 365 and Windows 10, Microsoft wants to make it easier for people with learning disabilities to achieve more at home, at work and at school.
Future-ready skills
Education is no longer just about “readin’, writin’, and ‘rithmetic” as the old adage goes. Schools today also must prepare students for a range of life skills they’ll use outside of school and in their future careers.
The 6 C’s of education – Most often, the quality of our schools is judged by the performance of students in the basic competency areas of literacy and numeracy. While these fundamentals are absolutely necessary, it’s also important to continuously evaluate how well we are preparing our students for their life outside of school – how to successfully navigate the complex economic, vocational, social, cultural and environmental challenges they will face in today’s working world.
Life skills 101: Being organized leads to success – Teaching students at a young age how to become organized is a skill that will help them for the rest of their lives, from learning how to prioritize activities to settting and achieving goals – even reducing stress. Having good organizational skills also makes it easier to collaborate with others and helps increase productivity and efficiency.
Distance learning
Technology is allowing us to think about education delivery in new ways. For some students and some situations (such as rural education), learning from home can support educating more students on a broader range of subjects.
The “flipped classroom” supports multiple styles of learning – Every student learns differently and at their own pace. Using the flipped classroom approach is a way to address each child’s unique needs, while preparing them for collaboration with others.
Is it time students can have the option to learn from home? – Is it time to rethink how schools can facilitate more flexible online learning for students during weather-related school closures or when children are forced to miss school as they rehabilitate from injury or illness?
Skooler helps advance distance learning – There are many characteristics about distance learning, but for this blog we focus on four key elements: schools run the show, time and distance, interactivity and learning community.
Gamification and engagement
From gamification to digital rewards, technology is helping students become more engaged in learning.
The power of gamification in learning – For parents who are concerned that their children spend too much time playing video games, there may be a silver lining. Video games offer many benefits that can be applied to education that can help students improve their performance in school and learn important skills.
How can we help students be more engaged in learning? – In many ways, motivation is the holy grail of education. When we talk about “motivating” students, what we’re really talking about is creating an environment that helps students become and remain engaged, whether it’s through extrinsic motivation or supporting intrinsic motivation. Often the best way to support engagement involves a bit of both.
We hope you’ve enjoyed our blogs over the past couple of years and we eagerly encourage you to suggest topics you’d like to learn more about. We look forward to hearing from you!
