How Is Technology Improving the Way Students Learn?

Technology has infiltrated literally every area of our lives from healthcare to education and beyond. In fact, even our homes are being governed by the latest advances in technology, so why shouldn’t technology be a huge factor in the way students learn? If you are looking at finding a position as a Student Support Specialist, check out the duties listed on The Job Explorer. Here you can clearly see that technology helps you better assist students and their teachers in achieving goals. Just take a brief look at some of the ways in which today’s educational institutions are using technology to improve the way students learn, and your role in providing that technology for them.

Virtual Simulations Speed the Rate of Learning

What used to take years to study can now be completed within moments due to technology, especially in the sciences. Today, there is software which provides a simulation of plant growth under certain specified conditions. In fact, this type of virtual simulation is endorsed by the US government’s National Library of Medicine/National Institutes of Health as an amazing aid in conducting research through growth modeling. It could be concluded that technology is enabling students to learn more in a much shorter period of time because of virtualization models.

Visualization Tools in Math

For many students, math has always been a difficult subject because they have trouble visualizing the concept being taught. Now there are programs designed to let students see relationships on the computer screen in front of them. Pardon the pun, but they literally get the picture. A team from Utah State University has assembled a long list of these math tools on the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives, which are listed by grade/developmental levels. Students get to enter data and the chart in front of them moves around as the data changes. Abstract concepts are often hard to visualize, there is no doubt about that. With these tools, those concepts become less abstract and more concrete because they are right there in front of you – picture perfect.

Making Tasks Easier

Most schools now issue Chromebooks or tablets instead of costly, and extremely heavy, textbooks. All subjects, worksheets, and assignments are on a little device weighing less than two or three pounds, which they can easily take with them, no matter where they go. Students can no longer use the excuse “I forgot my assignment in my desk” or “I left my homework at home” because they upload each assignment to the Cloud as it is completed. All they need to do is log into their student account, pick up the assignment and tab to the appropriate file. The only excuse is that they left their computer at home and obviously, that would leave them without social media at lunch if the school provides Internet access.