Empowerment of learners by using ICT in Teaching and Learning

 

Empowerment of learners by using ICT in Teaching and Learning

 The students of today are growing up surrounded by technology. They use it every day, in the form of their phones, laptops, computers, Smart TVs, and more, so it only makes sense that technology should become a core part of the classroom. In modern education, there's a focus on helping students take control of their learning and become responsible for their education. The trend towards empowering students, or helping students take ownership of learning and be excited by their education, has been facilitated by an increasing access to technology. We’re going to look at some of the ways that you can empower your students with technology. Here they are:

ICT tools for enhancing creativity

ICT propose new space for access, extend, transform and share ideas in different styles and format. It helps the learner to share learning resources and spaces, promote learner centered and collaborative learning principles and enhance critical thinking, creative thinking and problem solving skills. Tools like social networking sites (Facebook. My Space, Twitter), sharing bookmarks, multimedia (Flickr, YouTube), and blogging offer new opportunities for people to express their creativity, make it available to a large audience and get feedback. Here are some ideas of ways you can empower students with ICT in Teaching and learning.

§  Blogs develops creative thinking and writing skills of students, because they can post whatever they want and comment upon or share each other’s material, openly write on topics that intrigue them and give vent to their ideas without having to worry about grading or grammatical errors. Blogging makes students feel responsible for their own learning and they are encouraged to incorporate creativity in their learning through them, which they could not do before. Well known and used are Edublogs, Blogger, WordPress.

§    Cartoon and Comic Strip Tools are great tools for education, because students love cartoons and comics. Using them in teaching, students automatically get engaged more than ever. Creation their own comic strips or cartoon animations give them a chance to let loose their creative powers and delve into the world of creativity without any hindrance. One of websites with such resources is ‘Cartoons for the Classroom’ website. Stripcreator, bitmoji etc.

§  Mind-Mapping and Brainstorming tools boost students’ creativity and provide them with different ways to interconnect their thoughts. Brainstorming on topics is a great collaborative way in today’s teaching practices, which encourages students to think out of the box and creatively. Using ICT students can use a set of easy and free tools to make fantastic mind-maps and visual graphs to illustrate a topic or a concept. Applications like Online Brainstorming, Mind Mapping software, Whiteboards for distributed collaboration, Spider Scribe, Wise Mapping, ChartTool, Creately and more help to facilitate the idea generation (ideation) and allow a group to participate in an ideation session without being physically together. More complex tools – Platforms for handling the creativity process and Crowdsourcing platforms – help to handle the creativity process itself.

§  Infographics represent data in a colourful and catchy way. By using free tools for infographics, students can create awesome graphs, which make the interpretation of information easier and quicker. They can employ their creativity and imagination to create an infographic about a topic, concept or anything they want. They can share these infographics and also embed them into their classroom blog. Some free tools for creating infographics are Wordle, Tableau, Inkspace, Pikochart, Easel.ly, or Canva and more.

§  Video and Audio tools let the students to create their own videos/audio output and share them with their class on the class blog or school website. Some video-making tools for students and teachers are Jing, Camstudio, Screenr, Powtoon, Animoto, and Movenote. etc. Some audio-recording tools are Vocaro, Audio Pal, Record MP3 and more.

§  Digital storytelling tools presents a powerful way to communicate with others. It improves the creative skills of students and helps them explore the meaning of their own work and experience. Students can create their own digital stories with many available free tools, namely, Story Bird, PicLits, Slidestory and more. In present there are available also application for their mobile phones, using which students can create their story anytime and anywhere.

§  Games are one of the best ways of promoting co-operation and creativity. Educational games keep students engaged with their study, ignite the interactive and imaginative element in their thinking and mold it towards creativity. Some educational games freely available online are Capital Penguin, Grammar Gorillas, FunBrain.com and more.

 

All of these are great ways to implement technology to empower students.

Concluding Thoughts

Students’ empowerment through technology should be obvious, as today’s students live their lives surrounded by it. Tech can do many things in the classroom, but one of its most important functions is putting the power of learning in the learners’ hands.