Ways to Learn by Nikita

Ways to Learn by Nikita - January 2020 Scholarship Essay

When I was younger, I can remember the teacher having to wheel out a projector to the front of the classroom to display the pages of our math workbook (printed on a clear sheet of plastic) for all of the class to see. Not only did this take up time and space, but it also seemed to break down every month. Later on, classrooms started using projectors on screens that could be pulled down over the whiteboards. These showed whatever image the camera over the teacher's desk was filming. This change in technology, while seemingly small, made it so much faster and easier to show something to the whole class.
This also comes with the added bonus of accessibility. Students like me, who used to need to sit in the very front because of poor vision, were now able to sit in the middle or even the back of the class while still being able to easily see the screen, page, or book. The ability to choose where I sat (namely: not where everyone could see me and the teacher could always call on me) greatly improved my anxiety, which led to me receiving better grades and paying attention more to the lesson than my own worries.
Furthermore, with the addition of the internet and things like slideshows and quiz games, students are being given the opportunity, more so than in the past, to actually interact with the knowledge they are being taught. Lectures are important for getting a lot of information across to a lot of people, but children quickly lose interest. By assigning projects that deal with online components, students are able to harness their creative side and implement the information they have learned (and therefore learn about each topic to a greater extent) for others to learn.
It also taps into the competitive side of students. We seem to constantly be in competition, not only socially but also academically. In our push to design the best presentation, or show off our skills with a certain app, we inadvertently push ourselves to make learning more interesting, and therefore more desired.