Interactivity and Engagement
It is hard to believe that no more than a few years ago I was working on creating a curriculum for K-12 students and was asked how we can create a digital, interactive component to enhance learning with this material. I wanted to give a response but was concerned with how I could get students to interact with what I was teaching without losing them in technology. Now as an administrator of a virtual K-12 academy, I use digital ‘components’ throughout every aspect of our students' learning experience. Technology is a tool (just like the textbooks we have been using for years) to teach and present information to students (Richardson, 2023).
The advantages of this interactive
technology range within the abilities and interest levels of the student.
Students are often more motivated to learn with tools that they are connecting
with the information. When a student is learning through gaming, they are more
often motivated which leads to greater educational success. “Educational
technologies have the advantage that they can provide immediate feedback on
students’ visuals” (Rau, 2020). When a student can immediately see what their
interaction with the material is doing for them their motivation grows.
This author runs a virtual academy that has found many of our students struggling with reading. Our educators wanted to give students virtual tools that would encourage better reading habits. Teachers started thinking about how to do read-a-louds within our virtual classrooms. Many teachers were creating videos with them reading to the students. For our lower elementary grades, this was much easier than with our middle school and high school students until we found bookpagez.com many of the lower elementary books had already had a video attached to the books plus they had reading assessments and classroom activities within the Bookpagez site. For students with additional reading support needs, in the upper grades (middle school and high school), we found audiobooks on YouTube for their assigned book readings. Education.com had interactive assignments for novel studies that our educators have been able to use for these upper grades where Bookpagez did not meet our needs. The cost for Book Pagez is very reasonable for all that we get out of it at $49 for an annual subscription.
When designing technology, specifically gamification for our elementary students, there were a number of great programs out there, one that we liked ABCYA.com. Games and lessons were linked to state standards and organized by grade. There are options to print activity sheets to get students away from their screens, but still engaging in activities that are familiar to what they are working on while in the app. I like how you can download the app on multiple devices which gives the students flexibility as to where they access the activities that have been assigned. ABCYA has a number of games that are arranged in categories: Letters, Numbers, Holidays, Strategy, and Skill. The app is user-friendly, brightly colored, and nicely animated in a way that interests our younger elementary students.
A
second program that we use is Education.com. This program is similar to ABCYA,
but offers more for our older elementary students across all subjects. I like
that this program offers a virtual classroom within the program. A teacher
could assign specific games or activities to the students within the program as
well as see how the students did on the assigned game. The program offers
interactive worksheets that allow teachers to do assessments of the student's
progress. Education.com can be integrated into LMSs’ like Google Classroom and
Canvas. As far as the cost for ABCYa! Our school pays $69.99 for an annual subscription.
Teachers have reported this app is great as a supplemental addition
specifically for our younger students.
There
is so much you can access on Education.com such as worksheets, games, lesson
plans, activities, workbooks, exercises, stories, songs, and more are the tabs
listed within the site. Students are given an access code that grants them
access to their assigned work which is essentially set up like a digital
classroom. The cost on Education.com is a little more than the other subscriptions
that we use throughout the year at $119.88/ year. As an administrator, I am
willing to spend this if it helps support what our teachers are doing in their virtual
classrooms. Our teachers have reported that this technology brings the
interactive factor that they are looking for and it saves them time.
All of the programs that we use work
well with Android devices or iOS. We have a few older parents who struggle with
all things technology, but our staff has been very successful doing screen
share tutorials that even our older parents/caregivers are able to navigate
through. Each of these programs involves a student code to access the digital
classroom. Each of our teachers keeps a doc with each student's login
information for those who lose access codes. When a teacher assigns one of
these programs it is also added to their LMS. We share student work and progress
when appropriate with the whole class in our LMS. Each of these programs can be
used in asynchronous or synchronous learning environments. Our school uses them
primarily asynchronously, but there are a few games where students play against
each other through the program itself or over google meets within our LMS.
This
educator has created an interactive sampling for you to check out Education.com.
I have set up a guest student named: Educ 730-Guest Student and your
access code is PJ7WM. Start by going to your browser and typing in education.com
and look for a prompt that asks if your student has an assigned code then when
prompted put in the assigned code from above. There have been some
assignments loaded for you to investigate as a student.
There is a great deal of benefits to
interactive digital learning for virtual classrooms. Virtual learning offers exciting
solutions for a wide range of diverse learners (deBack & Tinga, 2020).
Learning devices are being used with even our youngest learners (Kleoptra,
2021). They are learning how to use this technology in their homes and even
throughout the communities that they live in; why not use technology in their
education? One of the larger barriers is accessibility. Technology costs money
and the internet connection costs money. We are seeing great gains in improving
access and training for teachers and students alike for interactive technology
for virtual classrooms.
Reference
Abutabanjh,
F. & Samir, O., (2022). Analytical study of educational buildings to applied
interactive technology: A case
study of primary stages in Jordan, Journal of Architecture, Art, and Humanistic Science, 7(33),
https://doi.org/10.21608/mjaf.2020.49867.2071
deBack,
T. & Tinga, A.M., (2020), Benefits of immersive collaborative learning in CAVE-based
virtual reality, International
Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 17(1), https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-020-00228-9
Karagoz,
E. & Cavas, B., (2023), Design model proposal for digital learning platform
based on interactive
e-books, Ukrainian Journal of Educational Studies and information technology, 11(3), https://doi.org/10.32919/uesit.2023.03.02
Kleopatra,
N., (2021), Mobile devices in early childhood education: teachers’ views on
benefits and barriers, Education
and Information Technologies, 26(3), https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-020-10400-3
Rau,
M.A. & Keesler, W., (2020), Design tradeoffs of interactive visualization
tools for educational technologies,
IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies, 13(2), https://doi.org/10.1109/TLT.2019.2902546
Richardson,
L.D., (2023). The effects of interactive mini-lessons on students’ educational experience, Research in Learning
Technology, 31, https://doi.org/10.25304/rlt.v31.2900
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