Activating students thanks to the new technologies and online teaching

In previous years, especially because of the Covid 19 pandemic, traditional education had to leave space to virtual education and online learning.

We had to become to apply a new way to teach and learn remotely. Using new technologies, digital tools and interactive learning platforms turned to be a helpful strategy. These technologies allow teachers all over the world to maintain an engaging and dynamic environment in virtual classes. Moreover, it was observed that inside a real classroom and during the traditional way of teaching the online tools proved their utility as well, especially when it came to students’ attention and enthusiasm.

The next edition of the course “Making the most of new technologies, apps and social media in the classroom” focused exactly on these issues. The session of the course took place in Bologna from 30/10/2022 to 05/11/2022. The participants came from all across Europe, with Lina Uzdilienė, Inga Ulevičienė, Sandra Brazauskienė from Karalius Mindaugas Vocational training centre in Lithuania, with Anna Dubowska from Heuresis in Poland, Michelle Bastien, Wendy Malgouyres and Naziha Besbas from Ensemble Sacré Coeur in France, Elisabeta-Monica Ban and Elena-Alina Bucur from Școala Gimnazială Nr. 12, Timișoara in Romania, Vanessa Beckert and Diane Kruse from StS Kirchwerder in Germany, and with Murat Kağız, Aytek Öge from Gebkim MTAL in Turkey.

Thanks to the course the participants had an opportunity to learn how to use a vast range of technological tools and they could put them into practice by integrating them into their teaching methods. The main aim of the course was to apply these new technologies into both real and virtual classrooms in order to teach students in more similar way to their daily life surrounded by social media and new technologies.

During the course participants had a look at the simplest tools to edit pictures and videos. Such tools can be used for different reasons in the teaching process: preparing multimedia content, introducing a new subject or summing up an old one, challenging the students’ to create their own work in order to engage their creativity. They seems to be very effective especially combined with the other method of traditional ways of education.

Furthermore, another very effective tool explored during the course was how to build a website. The ability of building it can serve multiple options of use in distance learning. Setting up different pages and enriching them with contents allows our participants to lead their lessons in the classrooms in more effective and interesting way. They had the opportunity to personalize their websites, write a blog to report the development stages of a project as well as create portfolios.

What is more, the course went on analyzing the other tools for collecting and sharing resources and content. The participants could learn about platforms that help them to collect and enrich videos, images, texts, pdf, and other materials. They could see how to share all this content with their students in just a simple click. Participants can use that kind of new technologies to the scientific subjects or foreign languages by providing a deeper context in describing different parts of a pictures. The other tools as collaborative walls were also practiced, allowing every user to post and contribute in building a more exhaustive collection of information.

Participants had also a chance to discover an interactive presentations in which they could request the class’ opinion by submitting polls, creating word clouds, or asking for questions or feedback on the topic being presented. The other very useful tool was creating video lessons, particularly effective nowadays, and online learning quizzes, very effective as well as funny tool for students to test their progress in the educational process.

The course provided the participants a new knowledge of interactive learning and new technologies and a set of new, interactive tools, as well as allowed them to practice them and then to be ready to use them in their real and online lessons. This approach would increase not only the students’ enthusiasm but also their creativity, engagement, attention and motivation. We are sure that taking a part in the course helped the participants to transform learning into a funny, happy, dynamic and professional activity! Version 1: Discover more about this course at https://www.erasmustrainingcourses.com/social-media-in-the-classroom.html

Erasmus Learning Academy