Recently, many countries have started incorporating more and more technology in the classroom. Of course, it is always easy to order the implementation of technology in the classroom. With adequate support and funding, technology can be used to enhance the learning experience. However, many teachers are left to fend for themselves. They are asked to figure out how to implement technology in the classroom with zero cost and quickly.
I have faced many teachers in similar situations. I was also involved in a think tank to help come up with a fast free method to incorporate technology in the classroom. Without any budget nor any time to plan, we were left with the following tools to incorporate technology in the classroom.
Google Documents
I have incorporated Google documents as part of my masters thesis and managed to help some students improve on their writing skills after a few weeks. Granted it is through practice which helped these students improve their writing ability. However, it was the use of technology which facilitated the practice.
Conventionally, many writing practices are completed on their own. Students are expected to complete these writing tasks without any help from their friends. Google documents changes this in the form of a large blank piece of paper akin to any word processing program you would see. The difference is that it can accommodate up to 50 students simultaneously writing at the same time. I however would not recommend all 50 students to write on the same document. I would limit this to about 4 students to one document.
Of course, there are collaborative writing activities that are being executed offline. However, it can be difficult to monitor the students' progress especially once they have left the classroom. With Google documents this is possible and it allows for the teacher to monitor a writing task even after class has ended. Compared to traditional writing tasks, it can be difficult to monitor what the students are doing once they have left the classroom.
Google Slides
Google slides is similar to Google documents. You can monitor the students' progress within and without the classroom. In addition, you get to have 50 students collaborating on the same slide as well. However, Google slides, just like powerpoint, allows for the students to build slides collaboratively.
This is necessary in getting students to present what they have learnt collaboratively or as a form of studying. With traditional studying methods, most of the students would go to school and write down what they have learnt in a notebook. However, if students were to create their own slides and write down what they have understood, they could refer to that same document a few months from the day they create it, especially near exam season. That's because Google slides and Google documents would store all these documents on the cloud (Google Drive).
The teacher can start a joint class account where all students have access to slides, documents and notes that were completed throughout the year. This way, the use of Google documents and slides not only serves as a way to enhance the learning experience of the students in the classroom, it also helps them better prepare for their studies before the exam.
Kahoot
While both Google documents and slides can be used for students' tasks and studying, Kahoot can be used to enhance the testing experience. Imagine building your multiple choice question test on Kahoot and making it into a competition. How this works is that students would sign on to the test using their smartphones or computers.
From there, students will be rewarded based on how fast and how accurate they answer each question. I have tried this with students from varying age groups and no matter how old you are, you would definitely enjoy Kahoot, so much so that you forget that you actually have an exam. One of the limitation of Kahoot however is that KAhoot can only be used to test multiple choice questions and not short answer tests.
I hope with this post you will be able to incorporate some technology to enhance the classroom learning experience. These tools are especially helpful too if you don't have access to Google classroom or a national learning management system like me.