I believe the teachers can motivate their students with assignments that excite them and help them to learn the topic at the same time. Students are exposed to a lot of new information at school. We as teachers must use a variety of strategies to motivate students to learn in the classrooms. If we look at students attending schools today, we see that they are very technologically savvy. They have no problem navigating the internet and more importantly, contributing to the content on the internet. There are many ways teachers can motivate students with their assignments.
- use the students curiosity
- use technology
- use mystery
- shorter assignments
- different types of assignments (not just paper/pencil)
- student involved assignments
- assignements related to students lives or environment
Teachers can make assignments that require students to publish their work on the internet. Students would think more critically before writing anything that was going to go into the digital sphere for the whole world to see. Also, if they wrote and received comments from people all over the world it could encourage them to improve and write more.
Teachers can motivate students by impelling them to inquire, think and interact in lessons. Posing qustions as mysteries is a great way to involve students in discovery. By having students debate and pose questions makes them think and come up with different answers. Then they are curious to prove their answers are right, so they become engaged in ways to learn if they are right or wrong.
Teachers, I believe that we must change and use technology to motivate our students to learn and help prepare them to be 21 Century Learners.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZJ7fkaCRFI&feature=related
I agree with you that it is our jobs as teachers to motivate our students. No, every lesson I plan won’t have my students pushing and shoving to get through the door but I want my students to be engaged in activities and excited about learning while they are in my room. Technology is just one tool in my arsenal that includes enthusiasm for my teaching and their learning, the ability to plan meaningful assignments and providing them the opportunity to collaborate and solve problems with each other. Research by Means and Olsen which is detailed in Martinez and Schilling’s Using Technology to Engage and Educate Youth (2010) found that using technology in the classroom “dramatically raised student motivation and self-esteem.” As you said, technology can give students options that may motivate them to produce a better product. Vokis can deliver speeches, Glogster can display more than a poster and Animoto can impart any information that can be found in a book report. I need to use every tool at my disposal to motivate my students and technology is one of them.
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Martinez, M., & Schilling, S. (2010). Using technology to engage and educate youth. New Directions for Youth Development, 2010(127), 51-61. doi:10.1002/yd.362
My mom always say this” to catch a fish you need to give the fish its food(worm)”. The same apply to our learners in the 21st century. To get them to participate and be productive in the teaching and learning process we have make use of the things they like; new technologies.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that, they can be motivated with these new technologies and we need to use them for teaching, but affordability is the problem, now that every school district is trying to cut cost