Tips to Engage Students Through Multi-Media

As a teacher, you’re always looking for ways to get your students’ attention and engage them in deeper thinking and learning. Today’s students demand more than information delivered via textbooks and lectures. They are quick thinkers and processors and have grown up with technology, which expands their learning options greatly. 

Teaching using multi-media can be very effective. Here are a few tips for how to do so: 

• Enhance class communication. Encourage students working together in groups to communicate using tools like Edmodo or Schoology. Social media or other communication platforms let students continue working together after the school bell rings and give them a central place to share ideas and documents. They also serve as a hub where you can post information about assignments and deadlines. 

• Amp up those presentations. Whether you use Google Slides or another tool in your classroom, there are lots of ways that you and your students can bring presentations to life with images, audio clips, iMovies or video clips, or even computer animation. 

• Make better study guides. There are many apps and tools to help students create in-class quizzes, flashcards, and other study aids. Studying on the go becomes easier, and many students especially like the ability to track their progress on their smartphones. 

• Use videos to teach. Apps like Educreations allow you to create video lessons that students can watch as homework or video tutorials they can use to study challenging concepts on their own. 

Using multi-media in the classroom has lots of advantages, but it takes effort. That effort is worthwhile, however, as multi-media can strengthen student learning and engagement, improve student-student and teacher-student collaboration, and make your lessons more exciting and interactive.