Technology is becoming a huge part of education today. It is being used for attending lessons, completing assignments, communicating with teachers, keeping track of deadlines, and preparing for future careers.
But real value comes from knowing what that technology does to benefit students in their studies and how to actually use it for good rather than just adding to the digital distractions.
Here’s how you can develop good habits, help understand difficult tasks, and attain more control over your learning with the help of advanced technology.
Many students find themselves in a situation in which their study material, i.e., assignments, notes, files, etc., is scattered all over several media such as laptops, notebooks and e-mails. This can be a very stressful situation for students as they might miss a deadline, fail to understand a concept, or even lose important research for an assignment.
Technology can be used to organize learning. Students require a simple system.
The student could enter details of lessons, exams and dates of submission of work into a digital calendar (e.g. iCalendar, Google Calendar). There would be space to include details of events and add notes about individual events to the calendar, allowing students to organize their study in several different ways and use a digital method of keeping track of all study.
For larger tasks, such as completing a research paper, it is best to divide several smaller tasks. For example, instead of writing one task to complete the research paper, there could be separate tasks to choose a topic, find information, organize notes, write an outline, write the paper, and edit the draft.
Most note-taking is good. Handwritten notes allow time for processing information and so can be best for many subjects. However, note-taking on a laptop, etc has its own advantages such as: allowing instant searching; the ability to add links, images, diagrams; the ability to add definitions, audio, etc.
The ability to go through notes immediately is a huge advantage of taking notes on a computer. Students can include links, images, diagrams, audio, and definitions in notes. Notes can also be organized with headings, tags, folders, and even color-coded labels.
History and general information classes can be taken with typed notes for better retention. Math classes, chemistry classes, and more can be taken with the aid of a tablet and a stylus to draw diagrams and to write notes.
Never take on-the-spot notes during a class. What you will end up with is a word-for-word transcript of the lectures, never to be referenced again. These notes serve no purpose.
After class, summarize the main points in writing, and organize such notes. In addition to these main points, make a list of supporting details for each point, examples that support these points, and questions for future review. Organizing notes this way is a powerful way to remember what you studied.
With the web at their fingertips, students have access to an immense amount of information, some of which may have been written years ago. Much of it is inaccurate, biased, or simply not supported by the required evidence and could have been written by anyone.
Strong research skills are therefore essential.
When researching, students need to explore beyond the first search result. The best way to find reliable information about a topic is to research several sources. In addition to finding the best information about a topic, it is also important to research the author of the information. Some questions to ask yourself when researching are: Who published the information? When was the information updated? What kind of evidence does the information contain? Does the author have the right kind of expertise to write about the topic?
When researching for assignments, a student should look for articles published by academic databases, digital libraries, government websites, and by verified institutions of higher education and research, such as universities. They are often more reliable than blogs and articles published on social media by anonymous individuals. For example, Federal Student Aid is a website that students can refer to obtain the official word on issues related to federal loans, repayment of loans, and the responsibilities of students as recipients of financial aid.
However, many students passively utilize technology. Instead of watching a video or reading from a screen and then highlighting parts of it, for example, the material should be studied and then written down from memory.
Active learning produces better results.
Digital flashcards have also proven to be a valuable study aid. These are online flashcards where students can practice learning key terms, dates, formulas, etc. Many of these tools use a method of spaced repetition that ensures that difficult material is reviewed more frequently than easy material, while material that the student is already very familiar with is reviewed less frequently.
There are online quizzes, like practice tests for exams and tests, that allow students to recall and apply information in their studies in order to retrieve the information from memory as opposed to recognizing words on a page.
Online educational videos can also be used. These videos can be replayed as often as needed. The videos can be paused to take notes or complete examples. The videos can also be summarized by students after the videos have been watched with the appropriate technology. This method of studying online is a lot more effective than simply watching online educational videos for hours on end without getting involved in the learning process online.
College expenses: tuition and more. In addition to paying for a student’s tuition, students and their families are expected to pay the costs of a student’s housing, transportation, textbooks, software, food, and various fees. Many students take on debt to afford the costs of their higher education.
A budgeting platform will help students track their spending. This allows them to see exactly where their hard-earned cash is being spent. Even a simple spreadsheet will enable students to know their fixed expenses from their discretionary spending.
Students with existing education debt can explore online resources that compare the repayment terms of different loans and that allow students and their families to identify how changes in interest rates affect them. A student loan refinance calculator, for instance, can help borrowers explore possible monthly payments and total interest costs before deciding whether refinancing deserves more research.
Calculators provide estimates, not guarantees. Students should still read the terms carefully and understand that refinancing federal loans with a private lender may change access to certain federal protections or repayment programs.
Financial technology is most valuable in supporting a student’s informed financial decisions instead of encouraging impulsive financial choices.
Student-generated resources and group projects for classroom use can also help locate major problems, notably when students fail to communicate as a group. In addition to duplicated work (same file, different names), the chief issues are failing to clearly assign tasks, lack of clear tracking of work, and not meeting a deadline that everyone hopes others will meet.
Technology offers us tools that enable sharing of digital workspaces, allowing for joint writing, editing, commenting, and keeping track of changes to work, etc.
Such digital workspaces allow the student to be able to write, edit, comment, and track changes to a document all in one place. Other tools for a group project include a project board, which would list out all of the tasks for the project and assign them to the appropriate student, as well as a video call and group chat for meetings when a person is not available to meet in person.
This applies particularly to more programs or applications. Just because there are more programs or applications available to us online does not necessarily mean that we will be better organized or that we will learn and gain more insight and understanding online as well.
The goal is to use technology intentionally.
Begin with something simple, for instance, organize the deadlines for your papers and assignments. Or, perhaps, strengthen your research tools, as well as your study routine. If the new system of organization works for you, then you can continue to build upon it.
Ans: Students can utilize budgeting platforms that help them monitor or store information about all expenses of the month, allowing them to better organize or minimize total costs.
Ans: Many platforms support automatic note-taking, enabling students to stay focused on the lessons without worrying about the notes, which can be obtained later at the end of the session.
Ans: Technology offers us tools that enable the sharing of digital workspaces, allowing for joint writing, editing, commenting, and keeping track of changes to work, etc.
