The Million-Dollar Question Every Teacher Should be Asking

Both teachers and school administrators carry the onus of answering this burning question. 

I recently indulged in a conversation with a few teachers and parents when I was attending my son’s PTA. There were two common topics that both parties seemed quite eager to discuss and share their opinions – should smart technology be incorporated in classroom? And if it has to incorporated, which technology is the most suited and works best for the child, teachers, parents, as well as the school administrators?

As digital technology evolves, more possibilities open up to educate, engage and connect students, parents, administrators and other key stakeholders of the educational landscape. But with so many options available, it can get quite difficult to pinpoint and choose a technology that would be apt for an educational setup. So,

what do you do and where do you start, is the BIG, MILLION-DOLLAR Question?

Start with Research and Asking Questions

You should start by analyzing what the said technology can do for you and how can it change your school for the better.

• What challenges am I trying to resolve with this technology?
• What are the solutions currently available?
• Have other schools benefitted from these solutions?
• Will give you a competitive advantage and improve student outcomes?

Another great way to commence your research is to initiate discussions with parents, teachers, administrators, alumni and any other relevant groups that would be directly impacted by this technology. However, it is extremely important to keep students and teachers at the center of all discussions.

If you have time, you can probe further by observing how tasks are carried out by teachers and students on a daily basis. If someone has been completing a task or action in a certain way for a long time, they may not perceive it as inefficient or as a cause of frustration. This observation method can give you great insights into the processes that are not mentioned during the course of your discussions and surveys but can be improved significantly with technology. You can also research ideas by talking to other educational institutions, attend edtech events, seminars, carry out research online and so on.

The aim of this entire exercise is to find out if there is a better, improved and way of integrating technology in school.

Here’s a complete list of some important questions you should ask before choosing a digital technology for your school: 

• What are some of the repetitive exercises and tasks performed that could be automated? 

• What are the common pitfalls that prevent the educators from completing their task/action?

• What are some of the shortcomings of the current methodologies and what you can do to avert them?

• How well are the students being assisted with their education and anything school related, and how can this be improved?

Talk to Students and Parents

If you interact with students and get to know them better, you’ll come across many instances where a rather shy student finds it difficult to participate in class activities and respond to the teacher’s questions. Another child has not been able to attend school for a while due to a prolonged illness and has been falling behind in class.

You must have also come across parents expressing concern over occasionally missing upcoming events at school as their child keeps losing hand-outs. Then there are those who feel discontented and left out with what’s happening at school because their kids only share minimum information with them. With such feedback, you can easily draw a conclusion that your school needs a better platform for improving engagement, participation, and remote learning for students. Also, there’s a dire need for a better way to communicate with and distribute information to parents with the help of a parent portal or school communication app to see to it that the parents are apart of their child’s learning. 

A Teacher Knows Best!

The challenges are not limited only to students and parents. Teachers also face a multitude of challenges with the current educational setup. If you closely observe teachers performing their day-to-day tasks, you’ll realise that they spend many hours in a week preparing lesson plans, taking attendance, grading, carrying out assessments, and interacting with parents and students. But if that is not enough, they also devote a lot of their valuable time and effort evaluating student performances and making report cards. Phew! That’s a lot of work and responsibilities to deal with. So talk to them, figure out their needs, and choose a technology that can help teachers save time and get a life! 

Problems in a Nutshell

All in all, there are going to a multitude of challenges and concerns you will identify with the current educational setup. 

List of challenges with the current educational setup:

• Improving student engagement and learning – How to increase a student’s participation in class activities?
• Curating and distributing learning material – How to create effective learning material and distribute content among students in an official, secure and scalable way?
• Information accessibility and discovery – How can we better manage documents, resources and other information readily available and accessible, in a way that is easy for various staff to maintain?
• Bringing flexibility and mobility to learning – How to create flexible learning environments for both teachers and students?
• Adopting cost-effective and scalable learning solutions – Which learning platform would be cost-effective, preferably wireless, and scalable?
• Keeping parents in the loop – How’s it possible to keep the parents informed about their child’s progress in school on a regular basis? 
• Automating manual processes – How can we better manage traditionally paper-based processes including forms and workflows, student data and assessments? And so on. 

You can use these insights to create a list of requirements that will guide you in choosing the right tech for your school.

Presenting eins: A learning suite for schools

From achieving school standards to guiding students to succeed in a digital era, education environments around the globe are facing some of their most difficult challenges yet. The answer to all the questions and challenges listed above is eins.ai. einsOS along with the various products powered by eins.ai include SparkTOUCH, SparkHUB, Galileo One, and SparkVIEW that help in bettering learning outcomes by improving student engagement; reducing the time teachers invest in preparing lessons, grading, taking attendance, making assessments, and managing; and provide a competitive advantage to schools. So, if you’re looking to implement an advanced, out-of-the-box learning solution, eins.ai is for you.