A Challenge for Teachers: Produce Better and Brighter Students through IT

In my previous blog, I have already described the traditional classroom instruction that is proven to produce smart students who can openly receive, recall, and recite knowledge learned inside the classroom.

A categorization of the learning outcomes achieved in the teaching-learning process is best illustrated in Bloom’s Taxonomy:

 As you may notice, the skills achieved by students in the traditional setting are found the lower levels of the diagram. A challenge is hereby presented to teachers – to produce better and brighter students who can achieve the abilities on the higher level of the taxonomy.

Information technology (IT) is one of the keys to achieve that goal. In Lesson 7 – IT for Higher Thinking Skills and Creativity, there are proposed ways on how teachers can use computer-based technologies as an essential part in developing the higher order thinking skills (HOTS) and creativity of students.

As teachers, it is more fulfilling to give projects not just for formality or for grading purposes; we should plan our activities well. We have to consider the gains our students can have after finishing the tasks we assign to them. Plus, we can make the project method more exciting, collaborative, and applicable when we allow students to make use of technology that is unquestionably a huge part of our lives today.

One way that a teacher can use is the Upgraded Project Method (UPM). Here, students are assigned to do tasks that are very much related to the real world. The projects to be given are more complex and in-depth than the ordinary library research or summarization tasks. Moreover, this new method involves students into active discovery and manipulation of information as they connect ideas on topics to their daily lives. Various computer-based projects can be assigned to student groups such as doing research works that are relevant to their daily lives, and then producing newsletters that they can publish in the Internet through blogs.

In UPM, the students are the ones to decide on what information to put, the ways on how to gather data, the methods to interpret the collected information, and the strategies to present the results in class. An important principle should be followed in UPM:

“The process is more important than the product.”

The teacher, as moderator/facilitator of the activity, focuses on the students’ performance DURING the production of the project. Although the final outcome greatly matters, the PROCESS is the period when students show off their capabilities and apply HOTS specifically in analyzing ideas, problem-solving, and decision-making, which lead to their individual and even group development.

Naomi Moir, a teacher trainer at Oxford University Press, 

talks about her experience of using projects in the classroom 

and whether they convey any benefit to the students.

As teachers and teachers-to-be, let us remember that a student’s gain is his teacher’s as well. Thus, when we see our students being more in control of their skills and themselves, we, as teachers, feel fulfilled with their achievement.

Enjoy your day!