5 Ways Digital Learning Platforms Can Help You Start the School Year Strong
In this age of digital transformation, education is one of the frontrunners. And as the year turns, the K-12 segment is a burgeoning market for EdTech solutions, projected to grow at a 25% CAGR from 2023 to 2028 to reach $71.8 billion. Education delivery is increasingly leveraging digital tools, and teachers are becoming adept at using audio, video, and other formats to drive learning outcomes. But there’s still a lot to be done on other fronts. The time now is to educate teachers to use the rapidly advancing education technology across teaching and non-teaching processes. Here’s how that can be accomplished.
Introduce Teachers to Planning and Organizational Tools
Digital solutions equip teachers and school admins with tools to plan and manage activities. These tools help automate rostering while also helping teachers manage their time for activities beyond teaching. For example, they can link their rosters to their calendars and schedule lesson preparation, assessment planning, scoring, and other activities.
Leverage Educator Skill-Building Tools
EdTech companies provide tools for teachers to learn. Schools can leverage these tools to give teachers an edge before the session begins. A few of them are listed below:
- Use introductory videos to acclimatize teachers to the platform and introduce them to the tools to prepare assignments and assessments.
- Helping teachers learn how to gamify lessons, use quizzes, etc., can be instrumental in speeding up their regular work and improving student outcomes.
- Teacher training on creating lesson plans and modularizing the content to suit individual student needs, and automating learner journeys can save hours of work after the session begins.
Promote Collaboration Among Teachers
Online learning management solutions are equipped with social media-like features, such as message boards, discussion forums, and learner journey milestone badges. As a result, they are of great help not only to learners but also teachers.
These tools ease communication and collaboration among teachers. They also facilitate the creation and implementation of collaborative projects for students. Teachers can prepare such assignments in advance and take them live as and when required. Teachers need to practice creation, access control, sharing, and other activities on digital platforms in advance to be able to use them seamlessly during the school year.
Prepare Teaching Modules
Teachers no longer need to be the sole source of learning in the classroom, delivering education to a passive group of students. Instead, they can augment teaching with external learning resources for students. For this, they can also collaborate with other teachers, share educational materials with students, and give them something concrete to revisit.
Educators can also prepare video conferencing lessons and use messaging platforms. In addition, they can collaboratively prepare the content and question banks for students.
Teachers who love going the extra mile can go ahead and plan pre-lesson modules and give them to students to refresh previous concepts before starting the new lesson.
Provide Well-Rounded Support
Educators face a lot of pressure to provide equitable education, keeping track of individual learning needs and progress while also maintaining student records and feedback. Yet, it is the educator’s mental health that is of prime importance in furnishing a conducive learning environment for students. Providing teachers with technical, digital, and moral support while they learn to use various EdTech tools is essential. Therefore, embedding such solutions with mental health management facilities and incorporating them within their calendars can improve their well-being, teacher retention rates, and learning outcomes.
Schools can accelerate the process of lesson creation by teachers with the use of digital libraries. In addition, referencing eBooks and linking back to sources is simplified with advanced authoring tools on digital learning platforms.
Another essential aspect is familiarizing educators with the ways to balance digital and in-person teaching while managing hybrid education in increasingly disparate classrooms. AI-based tools can help teachers stay abreast of the latest changes in the curriculum, regulations, and state adoption laws and help them deliver compliant content.
For all of the above, teachers’ digital literacy is paramount. Providing them access to the bounty of education technology can be instrumental in setting the tone for the academic year for teachers, students, schools, and school districts.
The Bottom Line
On average, a teacher spends 53.3 hours a week teaching or performing other teaching-related activities. This adds up to about 1,000 teaching hours and almost 300 non-teaching hours in a single academic year! Poor preparation is one of the top reasons for teachers quitting their jobs. With the alarming rate of teacher shortages and snowballing of technological intervention in teaching methodologies, the number of unprepared resignations is bound to rise. And given the aging educator population in the US, school, and teacher preparation before the school year becomes critical.
Even a few hours of preparation before the new school year can greatly improve teacher and learner experiences.
MagicBox is a leading provider of comprehensive solutions for schools and districts, including authoring tools for lesson creation, powering assessment engines, and more. In addition, MagicBox is equipped with tools to ease roster management and promote state adoptions for EdTech and educational publishing companies. These tools can be easily integrated with existing learning environments. Get in touch with the team to prepare your institution and teachers for the new academic year.
