What is the secret to a flourishing garden?
Giving each plant the care it needs.
Since plants respond differently to different types of attention, some might thrive
with standard care while others need more support.
In this regard, flowers are not so different from children.
And just as gardeners nurture plants that
have different requirements, teachers around the world
teach classes with students who vary widely in interests,
ability levels and prior knowledge.
Personalising teaching is a way to ensure that all children are able to acquire certain
basic competences and knowledge – which they will need to succeed later on in life
– and to explore their full potential.
This flexible approach is called adaptive teaching, a concept we discussed in another video.
Adaptive teaching, however, is often difficult to put into practice.
Digital tools are a helpful resource to free up time for individual attention.
Let’s take a look at how they can be used in the classroom.
Often, fractions are taught as an abstract concept.
Whereas for some students the solution to a fraction problem may be quite obvious,
others may find such concepts harder to understand.
A digital learning environment could help those in need of additional support.
For example, students can use tablets to explore
the concept of fractions with the help of a virtual pizza.
They might divide it into 8 pieces, then have
one student give another student three digital pieces
and see what fraction of the whole remains.
The children could then repeat that exercise, dividing the pizza into 2 or 3 or 5 pieces.
Animations can help them connect what they
have learned through exercises with virtual pizza slices
to fractions on a number line.
In another class, students might be learning the concept of vapourisation.
They are told that when a liquid is heated, its particles start to move faster and faster
until the liquid turns into a gas.
An animation can help students visualise this process, which is invisible to the naked eye.
In our globalised societies, some children
are not fluent in the language of instruction in their schools.
These children may struggle to learn essential concepts, like evolution,
simply because they don’t understand the language.
Digital tools such as the auto-translate feature when reading, or auto-completion when writing,
could help free up mental resources so that
these students can focus on the concepts instead of the words.
Assisted by digital tools, children and their teachers can adjust the complexity of a task
or benefit from instant feedback, both of which have been shown to increase
students’ engagement and motivation.
Teachers can also use data on their students’ progress to monitor teaching and learning,
and then adjust the level of difficulty according to the students’ needs.
While more advanced students may not need special help to acquire basic competences,
digital tools can be used to enable them to develop more sophisticated skills, such as
designing experiments, and to introduce them
to more complex concepts like the greenhouse effect.
Digital technologies have the potential to transform the classroom.
However, their use in education also entails risks that need to be taken seriously.
Data privacy, use and accessibility are all highly controversial issues.
As the school closures during the Covid-19 pandemic have shown, access to digital technology
in general is also important.
Uneven access could actually increase, rather than reduce, inequality in the classroom.
Just as schools supply textbooks for their students, providing everyone with a basic
tablet and internet access could be part of the solution.
But this may only be possible in some countries.
More open-source and non-profit educational resources could help ensure that the necessary
technology is available to all.
Might digital tools someday replace the teacher altogether?
The answer is: No.
Digital tools are just one of many ways to enable personalized learning.
Research shows that they are most effective
when used in combination with classroom instruction
and in collaborative learning environments.
Digital tools can help teachers tailor the learning experience to individual students’ needs.
The hope is that one day, the responsible use of digital tools will contribute to greater
social integration and better learning outcomes, resulting in a better,
more equitable educational environment for everyone
– a flourishing garden of education.