How+can+technology+be+incorporated+in+teaching?

When a teacher fears that his or her typical teaching strategies may not be engaging enough for his or her digital age students, there are many ways to transform a classroom into a more technology-friendly environment. In fact, by creating a sort of virtual classroom on the Internet (in the form of a blog, wiki, or even as a group on Facebook), students can feel more involved in the classroom's events, and may even spare some of their free time online at home to contribute to the information within this 'virtual classroom'.

The actual classroom, itself, could be turned into a digital workspace, with the use of SmartBoards instead of plain old whiteboards, access to computers, and a projector, so that the teacher could easily display information from the Internet for the entire class to see. From this projector, Internet videos could be shown, as well as virtual public speakers from websites such as Ted Talks. With the random but often usage of such technologies, students would feel that their classroom is current enough, and would probably find themselves relating to material more easily.

A class website could also be created in the form of a wiki, with pages that students could contribute to, and then other pages for only the teacher's access. The teacher's pages would include assignments, important information on tests and due dates, and maybe even information for parents of students. Since most students already have a password to a social networking site, such as Facebook, it may help them feel more connected to the classroom if they were to have a password to a class website, as well.

Included below is a video of a classroom of the future. Though this is an ideal, not yet realistic, digital world for a teacher and students, many of the elements may be used now in today's classrooms. It is a helpful video for teachers to watch, in order to obtain new ideas for engaging their students as digital natives.

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