How Software Can Be Utilized in Education in 2019

Business | October 25, 2018, Thursday // 10:27
Bulgaria: How Software Can Be Utilized in Education in 2019

Software and education go hand in hand, and that isn’t even touching the fact that, for today’s youth to thrive, they will need to learn how to code. Educators around the world are looking at ways that digital interfaces actually help improve the learning process. Games are even being considered to boost the learning curve. When you are having fun, after all, there is no shortage of things you are willing to absorb. Not only are educators looking into the possibility, but so too are game developers. Historical games in particular that relied on academics’ input to generate the 3D recreation of ancient settings like those in Greece or Egypt can actually be used to give more context to these topics in the classroom.

With the power of technology, students of all learning capabilities can engage with their coursework easier and with greater vigor. It will help them learn, connect, and of course, become more technologically adept in the future.

The Global Push for Digital Literacy

When various countries teach children coding in their classrooms, it only highlights how much of a disservice we are giving to our children. Academics are investing in methods to simplify coding for children. What this means is that children, even in elementary school, can start to learn the basics of PYTHON and other coding languages right from the start. From drag-and-drop program builders to other fun tools, beginners can find that learning coding is more approachable than ever before. We will need this in order to create a generation that is coding competent. If we don’t, then there will be too many people who do not understand, read, or even know about the most prevalent languages on our planet. We need a coding-literate society to improve security and job prospects for our future generations.

Parents want it too, with 90% expressing interest in their children learning computer science. Compared to the 40% of schools that teach it, this will create a future divide in class and job performance that will be felt for decades. The majority of new STEM-based jobs being made today are in computing, and yet there is a massive lack of competent graduates out there to fill those roles.

Ignoring software in the classroom is also a huge mistake. Jobs outside of coding will become increasingly digital, and the savvier students will be the ones to secure higher ranking and higher paying positions in the future. That’s why all teachers should encourage their students to create presentations in a variety of media. Instead of having them stand up in front of the class to teach, have them instead create a video to showcase their facts and arguments. They will then be judged on what they have learned, how well they presented it, and how competent they were with the editing tools. Being able to combine these skills seamlessly is what will help them in the future.

 

The Possibility of Teaching Through Video Games

Video games are great teaching tools because it offers more “real life” applications for the concepts and facts you want to teach your students. Then, of course, there is also the added benefit of games allowing children to have fun while they learn. It can make them more willing to absorb the teachings and remember them through repetition.

In other scenarios, teachers can use games to provide more engaging examples of real-world concepts. Simulators, for example, can be incredibly complicated and realistic, allowing students to see things like a pilot’s cockpit first hand and even learn the basics of an engine all in the package of a game.

Teachers don’t even have to wait for these to be made to take advantage of them. Instead, they can create their own digital lessons using easy-to-use authoring systems. In most cases, this will be programs like digital flash cards to improve recollection and memory retention. It could also be fun, new ways to present problems that allow students to understand the concepts behind the theories that you teach. Even teachers need to become more digitally savvy and coding literate in order to provide a better teaching environment.

The Death of Plagiarism

Reports, essays, and any other written submission can easily be checked nowadays for plagiarism. Start pressing the importance of original work and the dangers of cheating. Before, resubmitting an older sibling’s work could have done the trick, but with today’s plagiarism checkers you can keep track of old entries and finally eliminate cheating once and for all. Teachers don’t even need to pay out of pocket, either, and can instead discover plagiarism checker free online whenever they have a round of submissions to go through.

For this to work, it is best to set up a professional email account so that your students can submit their essays digitally alongside any paper copies. This way, you can easily copy-paste the text or upload the digital document into the plagiarism checker to get a comprehensive scope of your student’s work and if and how much of it was plagiarized. Just remember to review the document first, as English essays with substantial block quotations pulled from the text will automatically have a higher plagiarism percentage.

These plagiarism systems (which are currently widely used in tertiary education systems) will need to be introduced from the start. Teaching children how to be tech-savvy is necessary, but with it will come the attempts to cheat the system. In the future, we will need to find ways to mark the authenticity of a coding system, to ensure students truly understand all the concepts they are being taught.

Technology is how we will help children of all walks of life learn at their own pace. Whether they learn by seeing, hearing, or doing, there is a software program out there that can help them understand what they are learning. Though programs will never be able to completely take away the benefits of having a teacher in the room to explain, they can do a lot to help improve retention and engagement amongst students. As our society becomes increasingly entangled with technology, so too do we need to ensure our students understand the languages of coding and how they are used in a variety of formats. We need to invest in computer science from the start so that our children can survive and thrive in a digital world.

 

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