An educator’s job is getting harder and harder. The fact is that students can find out practically anything within seconds, so providing them with a new piece of information can be quite challenging. This situation also affected their attitude about learning – somehow traditional schooling seems excessive if you can already learn everything there is to know about a subject online. No matter what subject you’re teaching, you need to come up with innovative ways to grab their attention. Trying to be like their parent or acting like an unreachable authority figure (Respect my authority!) will probably only drive them away.
The Secret Is in Being Prepared
You need to target your classes carefully in order to prepare for them. The fact is, you’re way more knowledgeable than they are about the subject, but that doesn’t mean they won’t provide you with a piece of information you haven’t heard before. Try to create a safe atmosphere, where everyone feels comfortable expressing their opinion, and where all of you can learn new things together using visual stimulation.
Our experience here, in Easelly shows that preparation is the key. Each of your classes should have a focus point, and everything built around it should help when it comes to clarifying that point.
Intriguing Questions & Provocative Statements
Try not to overwhelm your class with tons and tons of new material most of which your students won’t even understand, try to adopt a new way of teaching instead. Those bright young minds around you need to be challenged, and is there a better method than provoking them into finding the right answers. The best way to cause this kind of reaction is by surprising them with bold statements and intriguing questions – our curious nature forces us to react to controversial subjects. Have no doubt that Easelly infographics will be a great medium when it comes to provoking their minds.
Enable Your Students to Explore & Discover
If your goal truly is to create a mark on your students’ long term memory, you need to allow them to do their homework, literary. Sure, research isn’t what it used to be; none of your students will spend hours and hours in a corner of a library searching for a term you have mentioned in class, but still – if they do look it up using any kind of medium, you have done your job properly.
Become a Part of Their Age
It’s not like we used to live in The Stone Age, but I’m sure you’ll agree with me that it sometimes feels like it when we take a look at the lifestyle our students lead today. In order to understand them, you should try to get closer. You should get through to them creating infographics, not blackboards because it simply doesn’t match. The use of visualized information has increased 400% in literature since 1990.
On the other hand, using characters or events that occurred ten years ago that you find close will only make them doze off. Besides, using conventional means of teaching won’t get you nowhere – create your own newsletter and provide them with weekly e-mails, use visual assistance like helpful infographics to help them learn faster, and try to become one of those teachers that are always ready to put in some additional effort when it comes to their students.
With Proper Motivation, They’ll Pick up Anything
You should know which buttons to push. Sure, acing the semester is the obvious end goal, but that’s not highly inspiring now, is it? Using the knowledge you have at your disposal and just the right infographic, try to paint the picture for them, so they can understand how to apply your classes onto real life. Infographics help because we suffer from information overload. It only takes us 150ms for a symbol to be processed + 100ms to attach a meaning to it.
Each new generations differs from the last one, and each of them comes with new flaws and virtues. Try to keep up to date with the latest events, research and information in order to pass on applicable knowledge to your students. After all, you have a great responsibility here – molding young minds. Let us help you engage with them!