Introduction
One of the most popular problems that we as teachers face in the classroom is getting our students motivated and interested in learning. As we know, if the students are motivated and enjoying themselves, learning becomes easy and fun. However, Motivating the students and getting them involved and engaged in learning can be a very challenging task for any teacher. But it is not impossible for creative teachers.
Using Technology in the Classroom
As an English language teacher, I think there are many different ways and one of them is applying technology in the classroom. Today, most of our students are becoming more and more dependant on technology in their lives out of the classroom. They have become accustomed to have TVs, iPads, computers and smart phones always within reach and nearby. Every day, they come in contact with these different types of technology outside of school and they can be already familiar with them.
Nevertheless, education is supposed to be individualized to suit every student’s separate need and it could be very valuable and stimulating to incorporate the students’ interests and experiences into the English classroom. Technology can be a fantastic tool that is very versatile and useful in order to promote language learning. We as teachers can use new media as a way of incorporating our students’ experiences and everyday lives into the field of education. Technology is a tool that can be molded to suit different needs and resources. The only limits are our own creativity and our willingness to try new things with our students.
Using Digital Tools in the Classroom
using digital products can be the right impulse for catching their attention and interest in learning a foreign language. Even if integrating such products into English lessons does not succeed in motivating every student in the classroom, teachers still have the opportunity to make the lesson more interesting, or at least different than the everyday routine which gets the students bored most of the time. As a navy teacher, I have been using digital products for two years in my classroom for different purposes. Out of various digital learning products that I use, I have had great success with Quizlet.
This program has been shown to have the highest impact on my students in terms of learning vocabulary. Its games, including Space Race and the new Gravity, are the best tools I have found for my students to learn and remember their words. I usually use these games weakly to review the vocabulary of every taught unit. I log in to Quizlet and create a set of flashcards for all the words of the previous unit. Then, I go back to my current flashcards and add an appropriate picture to everyone. As an ESL teacher, I sometimes prefer not to have the english definitions on the cards, but rather only the picture. Finally, I print out my activity from the website directly in a PPT form. In the classroom, I put my students in two teams randomly. In turns, one student from each team stands in front of the classroom with a flashcard projected behind him/her on the classroom screen. The rest of the team members has to describe the picture to their partner by explaining or miming the meaning without using its stem. The student has thirty seconds to guess the meaning of the picture depending on the explaining of his/her teammates. Each team gets one point for every correct guessing.
In addition to motivating and engaging the students, using technological materials could be an amazing opportunity for shy or standoffish students to interact with their classmates in a low pressure way.
