With the start of a new term looming, teachers turn their thoughts to induction and setting high expectations with their learners, this includes introducing class routines .
We are all aware of the benefits of a good induction and the introduction of class routines can bring about including a swift start to the lesson, with students being ready to learn having stowed their bags and hung their coats.
Your students may have the confidence and bluster of use when it comes to using their mobile phone but in my experience, their knowledge and confidence relates only to the use of specific instant chat messaging apps. When you push them a bit further into the use of productivity tools or making use of cloud-based storage their confidence and knowledge dry up.
That’s why it is equally important for you as the teacher to provide similar style induction and support for your students in the use of Digital. This would typically include making sure they are aware of how to log in, how to reset their passwords, highlighting what apps are included as part of their college account, such as cloud storage with OneDrive or GoogleDrive ,immersive reader etc.
However from my experience it is not enough to run through the digital tools at the start of the term, you need them to be getting into a routine of using them. One way to achieve this is to model the digital behaviours you want to instill in your students, through your own practice in the classroom.
Making use of specific apps and technology in certain ways to highlight their functionality and features, such as talk to type and autosaving. By setting tasks and activities in lessons in which they use these tools, will further help them to build their confidence and enable them to see the benefits such as the amount of time it saves them.
Typically as they move into FE there is a greater expectation that they will work autonomously this requires practice but there are wealth tools that can help them to organise themselves, for me I believe there are the 4 C’s of Digital skills, Communication, Creation, Collaboration and Curation. I have created this infographic in which I highlight my top apps for students to have on their mobile devices.
