Manage Technology in Classroom Effectively to Enhance Learning

The implementation of technology in the classroom setting has radically changed the way students think and learn. Multiple schools have deployed mobile technology and have allowed students to bring their own gadgets in the classroom. The one-device-per-student trend has provided an opportunity to the teachers to enhance the digital citizenship skills in students.

Right integration of classroom technology can offer students the ability to learn through innovation and creativity enabling them to get immediate access to the most up-to-date information and research materials. However, while some educators view classroom technology as a tool to break the barriers of traditional passive learning models, for some, it is more of a burden than a strategic tool.

Why Do Teachers Need to Manage Technology in Classrooms?

For today’s kids, technology plays many roles – of a pacifier, a playmate, and an instructor. Constantly drifting between the analog and the digital world, it is difficult for any modern-day student to differentiate between the two. This lack of right understanding can also impact the way students use technology in the classroom.

Easy and unrestricted access to the internet can be a major source of distraction to the students in the classroom. For example, they can be engrossed in playing video games, tweeting or browsing non-educational websites during an ongoing class, which severely disrupts the flow of teaching. Also, lack of knowledge of how to navigate the web safely can present additional challenges. Students can increasingly expose themselves to the risk of browsing potentially harmful/inappropriate web materials, which pose threat to both their privacy and safety of the school network.

This makes modern educators apprehensive about the role of technology in the classroom and leads them to take recourse to traditional teaching methods. However, manual ways of classroom monitoring and management can prove to be really ineffective in a digital class with students having multiple devices. Ineffective supervision by the teachers can also reduce student participation in the class affecting their academic performance in the long-run.

For effective classroom management, modern instructors need to be provided with right technological tools that not only simplify their job in the classroom but also help them ensure fair and safe web usage by students. The use of classroom management software solutions can help teachers eliminate classroom diversions and keep students engaged in the lesson, thus making teaching and technology mutually inclusive in digital classrooms.

How Can Teachers Effectively Manage Technology in Digital Classrooms Using Classroom Management Software?

With the rise of the technological resources in a classroom, the teacher’s job is bound to go through some inevitable changes. A potent classroom management software can help make this transition easy and smooth for the teachers. Such software solutions can facilitate intended use of technology in the classroom environment by helping teachers coordinate better with students and inspire them to reach their maximum potential.

Here are 5 ways in which classroom management software solutions can help teachers effectively integrate and manage technology in the classroom and enhance student learning:

Increased Classroom Visibility Rendering Teachers More Control

Conventional student monitoring methods such as walking around the classroom and hovering over particular student’s screen will only lead to sheer wastage of time and energy of teachers without any productive result. Students can indulge in disruptive online activities when the teacher is not looking. Besides, carrying out such monitoring methods in a high-density classroom poses great inconvenience too.

With the help of a classroom management software, teachers can monitor all students’ activities in the classroom anytime from their own computer. Teachers can review live thumbnails of all students’ screens, which allow them to monitor what each student is doing on their individual device. This completely eliminates the need for moving physically or rearranging students’ seats for monitoring purposes. If any student is found to be distracted, teachers can immediately blank out their screens and disable their keyboard and mouse activity to capture their attention. Teachers can also block students’ access to certain applications/websites if those are found to be inappropriate/not related to class content. Such increased visibility helps teachers to be always in control of students’ classroom activities and proceed through the coursework smoothly without any disruptions.

Web/Application Limiting to Promote Responsible Web Usage

To retain students focus on the class lecture, teachers can allow students to browse only an approved list of websites and block their ability to access the rest. A class monitoring software helps teachers to classify an authorized group of websites by their domain names and IP addresses, making it hard for the students to bypass. Teachers can also specify the nature and type of applications that students can access during an ongoing class. A classroom management software also provides teachers with the visibility of the number of applications running on each student’s devices. Teachers can then choose to whitelist/blacklist any application as per the lesson requirement. Thus, a classroom computer management software can help teachers provide each student with a controlled yet simplified interface to work on that increases their ability to engage in classroom activities and learn better.

Any powerful classroom management software also enables teachers to monitor and control students’ online behaviors and take proactive measures if some student is found to be using the technology inappropriately. This can make students aware of the possible consequences of technical transgressions and instill a sense of fair, safe, and responsible web usage in them.

Building a Digitally Collaborative Classroom to Enhance Student Learning

One of the most effective ways of increasing student participation is to arrange the classroom activities in a way that students find interesting and engaging. Students also learn better when they are encouraged to take an active part in group discussions and team projects. Peer-to-peer discussions can also help students approach critical concepts with a deeper understanding and retain that knowledge for a long time.

Multiple classroom management software offers teachers with screen sharing facility with which they can choose to broadcast their own screen to the rest of the class to provide them with a hands-on learning experience. Teachers can also share the screen of a well-performing student on all students’ devices and inculcate a competitive spirit in all to excel. Through the group chatting facility, teachers can encourage their pupils to participate in brainstorming activities and share ideas. A class management software also helps teachers to provide one-to-one assistance to introvert students through private chatting without disturbing the rest of the class. Thus, teachers get to plan the instructional methods as per the different learning styles and abilities of individual students and can provide undivided attention to their unique learning needs.

Providing Secure Environment for Assessments

With uncontrolled web access during a test, students might indulge in online cheating methods and can copy answers from various unauthorized websites and digital materials. Plagiarized content also causes inconvenience to teachers as students can source relevant essays, class notes, and reports online to pass the exam. Without the right tool in place, it becomes increasingly difficult for the teacher to ascertain whether the answers submitted by the students in the exam are original.

With the help of classroom management software, teachers can conduct assessments in a locked environment, in which students’ access to unapproved websites/applications can be completely blocked. Teachers can also monitor each student’s activity in real-time during an ongoing exam and provide immediate feedback through the electronic grading facility of a class monitoring software. In addition, teachers can also conduct quick tests by incorporating short and multiple choice questions at the beginning or in between a class lecture. This helps teachers evaluate the understanding of students on the lesson taught and modify their instructional strategies accordingly.

Building Automated Classroom Environment to Foster learning

Classroom computer management software solutions can open up endless possibilities for enhanced learning by enabling teachers to automate certain tasks in the classroom. For example, a robust classroom monitoring  software can help teachers involve in co-browsing activities with students so as to help them open/navigate to the right webpage. Teachers can also launch the same webpage on all students’ screens for the convenience of teaching. Instant launching of predetermined applications/websites on all student machines and automatic generation of a class list are also possible with a class monitoring software which greatly accelerates the pace of both learning and teaching.

Classroom management software can enable teachers to define and control how technology would be incorporated into the classroom by providing them appropriate control over the student devices and online activities. Robust class monitoring software like Faronics Insight can help teachers ensure the intended use of technology in the classrooms, eliminate distractions, and assume the role of a facilitator while students learn and grow in a cooperative learning environment.