How to save time teaching with technology (while solving common problems!)

“Technology is good when it works. This is what many teachers think! Today, discover possible solutions to problems often experienced in the classroom, in particular the slowness of the devices.

Larry Ellison, founder of the company Oracle, believes that technology will be truly functional when it becomes invisible in our lives. For now, this reality is a fiction, which can be seen in amazing videos like A Day Made of Glass from the Corning company.

Right now we are more in a reality where sometimes the network lets us down, the students forget their passwords and the computers fall apart.

On the other hand, technology also saves a lot of classroom time. Terry heick, site director TeachThought and former English teacher in the United States, published a good article on the subject on February 20. His text How to save time teaching with technology brings together 13 common problems experienced in school related to technology, and 46 possible solutions.

Here is one of the problems he identifies and different solutions he offers. Then continue reading his article to find out more!

Problem: computers that are too slow

(We agree, we have to put the pedago before the techno; but when the techno does not follow, difficult to get by!)

Possible solutions :

1) Authorize (and promote!) The use of personal devices

This takes an investment of time and letting go on the part of the teacher, but those who do benefit from it. The phenomenon Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is here to stay and is getting bigger and bigger. Few schools have the (financial!) Kidneys strong enough to lend a laptop and / or a tablet to all their teachers, let alone their students. However, many of them already have smart portable devices that they could bring to class ...

2) use a tablet

Mobile tablets are built with a different operating system compared to traditional computers. This system seems less demanding and, as a result, tablets seem to keep a good level of performance longer than fixed devices.

3) Add memory

Often a desktop computer in the lab becomes slow because it lacks RAM. The RAM is like your work surface while the hard drive could be associated with your document cabinet. To work efficiently on several files at the same time, you need space! If all you have is a small coffee table, it's going to be tough. Working on a large table (or adding more RAM to an old computer) increases its efficiency. In addition, adding RAM is relatively inexpensive.

4) Use a Chromebook

The Google company put forward the creation of a device called Chromebook. This device operates under Chrome OS, which is Google's operating system. The advantage of this system is that it works with web applications and is limited to the Chrome browser. Basically, it's a simple and very fast machine.

Do you have other solutions that work to share? Do not hesitate to do so using the comments form below.