Month: May 2016

Teaching wirelessly in class

All too often classrooms are designed with a ‘front’ or main teaching wall. Associated with this is usually a lectern with and networked computer at which it is so tempting for the tutor to stand, protected from their audience and with their back carefully protected by having a wall behind them.

All joking aside how often have you seen that happen – how often do you do it yourself?

Wouldn’t it be more fun, more interesting to be free of the lectern and have a device in your hands with your materials on, be they slides or websites or an app, and just move around the room confident that whatever you are showing or doing on your device can be seen by everyone in the room on the main display screen? You can do that using Reflector as described briefly in a previous post.

Watch some videos about how staff are teaching wirelessly with tablets.

It’s a brave thing to try if you’ve never done it before and like all things new what you needs to be planned carefully. But if you try I think you will find some useful benefits for you teaching in class.

Use Padlet for Topic Summaries

I saw a great use of Padlet by an academic in the sciences last week which seems to have really gone down well with their students.

They decided to summarise a key biochemical process on a Padlet wall using a mixture of media on the wall to illustrate different points. Several students commented how they found it more interesting to explore the Padlet to discover the key points about the process.

It strikes me this is an appraoch that is simple and could be used for any subject area.

Mobile devices – to give or not to give

Smart devices, (mobile phones or tablets) certainly do support a number of in class engagement approaches. However before we can start to exploit these wonderful tools in teaching, do we need to ensure that every student in a class has a smart device and further, does it need to be the same device in everyone,s bag or pocket?

I would argue no, for a number of reasons. First high percentages of students now have at least one smart device of their own. Second there are excellent web services, that can be used to support for example in class brainstorming on virtual writing walls or in class polling, that are completely device agnostic. In addition the same web services can be used on laptops which many students will have in addition to a smart device or indeed, instead of a smart device.

It is also worth questioning whether for such engagement activities each and every person actually needs to have a device. So long as there is one smart device or laptop per group of say 5 students this is sufficient as some of the best in class engagement approaches come from exploiting the dynamics of group output. As well as the above, students can get quite irritated if, in addition to their own personal devices they have to remember to bring in n institutional device as well.

Of course there may be some circumstances where it may make sense for all,students to have the same device, possibly pre-configured in some way. For example this may be appropriate on a specific course where particular software of device specific apps are integral to the subject and/or learning strategy.

Generally however institutions and departments should think twice, and then a third time, before abandoning the wealth of equipment students bring with them before going to the great expense of providing devices.