The Raging Powers of Classroom Technologies by Novera

The Raging Powers of Classroom Technologies by Novera - January 2020 Scholarship Essay

I was born into the millennium of mundane technological advancement where screens are the new paper and one’s cell phone is simply an extension of the body. Still, it is surprising to me how most of my classes throughout my academic career maintain the same structure and equipment of classes from decades before. It is true that the grade books may now be electronic and the projectors may be less janky, but the ideology of the classroom framework remains the same. The select brushes of the technological revolution that I have been lucky enough to witness stand within my memory in stark contrast to the stale, traditional teaching style. In these instances, I have seen the raging powers of technology within the classroom through expanded resources, enhanced interactions, and hyper-engagement methods.

Incorporating internet programs, software, and apps into teaching methods place countless resources within the teacher’s repertoire. I had a Biology teacher my senior year who took full advantage of what each nook and cranny of the internet offered. Our highschool offered in-class laptops so each student in a class would be able to use one within the duration of a class. My biology teacher took good use of these amenities by incorporating them within our curriculum. He would find an adequate interactive online program that could allow us to improve our understanding of different biological concepts. Take for consideration, to teach photosynthesis, he found an online game that allowed for us to explore the different processes within different parts of the plant as if we were a small bug taking a tour of the plant’s anatomy. This is merely one example of the many engaging activities that my teacher introduced into his teaching methods with the use of the school laptops. He used several different activities, and the change would keep students engrossed with and connected to the material. Using online resources gave many different advantages when compared to traditional PowerPoint lecturing. I used these activities to learn at my own pace in class and I was able to access the exact same enriching materials at home to review. Overall, in a classroom, technology can provide countless resources for a teacher to take advantage of, helping them branch out their curriculum through the incorporation of various learning styles.

Technology allows for enhanced interactions between the student and the lecture. I experienced this in my freshman year of college. I had a professor who, to my dismay, used an interactive quiz website that my middle school teachers had used. I was put off by this as I had interpreted it as a technological regression. However, it was a very clever move on his behalf. We were able to input answers from our phone’s browser. Because every college student has a phone at their disposal in all seconds of the day, it felt very natural to use it as a learning tool. His method of teaching involved posting the quiz question on the website after brief segments of lecturing. The program allowed me to facilitate the process of applying the knowledge that I had just before garnered. Furthermore, the program also gave instantaneous results, telling me if my answer was correct or incorrect and why thus shaping and reshaping the information in my mind. This enhanced interaction of learning and applying immensely helped ingrain what I was learning in class. With the technology’s help, I was able to comfortably use my own personal device with my professor’s teaching methods for an enhanced interaction between my mind and the lecture rather than the traditional classroom setup of sitting down and listening to a professor drone on. Thus, the technology can be used within a classroom to simply ameliorate the informational gap between the professor and the lecture and then to the lecture and student.

Adding technological devices designed for lecture allows students to be fully involved within the lecture. I witnessed this firsthand with my freshman chemistry professor. She used online engagement systems to engross the students during her dense lectures by offering credit for showing up and participating. She had us buy clickers with four buttons, one for each answer choice. Having us complete polls between PowerPoint slides ensured full classroom participation, instead of the usual absentmindedness. She placed importance on the polling system by making it apart of our grade, thus captivating students within the lecture by having us hyperfocus on each and every morsel of information. Therefore, this online engagement system forced me to learn the material, allowing the professor to enforce and fortify the knowledge taught with a higher level of success than with pure, dry lecturing.

Through my experiences, I believe that the inclusion of higher levels of technology can leave a powerful imprint on a student’s learning experience by offering a trove of expanded resources on the internet, enhancing the interactions that a student may receive from the lecture and professor, and offering hyper-engaging lectures for the student's benefit.