Last week I wrote about how teachers and schools are facing challenges  they have never faced before (such as administrative tasks, student devices, internet access and fast-moving yet disconnected curriculum), and how these new challenges have pushed teachers and learners apart… It is also apparent that some of these distractions, such as the Internet, will be impossible to “get back into the bottle.”

So now we must turn these distractions into opportunities.  At Naiku, we believe that using the devices to engage students in educational activities is a key component to holding on to the student’s attention.  The challenge however is making the technology transparent. Technology-use should no longer be an anxiety-ridden event, but simply something that “happens when needed.”

At Naiku we have done things such as:

• working across multiple devices (iPad, iPhone, Android phones and tablets, Amazon Kindle Fire, desktops, laptops and chromebooks)
• scoring items immediately – even short-answer items
• building a robust communication protocol between the device and the server. In fact, the Internet connection can go down, but the student experience is not affected – they continue until they’re finished.
• enable the teacher to use the assessment as a way to interact with students via the technology itself using reflection, student journaling and goal-setting, and teacher-to-student feedback.

While these are important features for a balanced assessment system, as more education technology vendors make the technology “transparent,” it will be easier for teachers to leverage these great new tools without anxiety, what used to be a distraction (e.g. the cell phone), the distraction suddenly becomes a valuable tool re-connecting the student and teacher.

 

This is the second in a series of posts on using technology to reestablish the learning connection between the student and teacher.