Do you remember being in middle or high school on the night before a big exam? The sweat dripping off your forehead as you forced yourself to go through another round of index flashcards, another round of repetition and rote memorization? Those stressful days marked much of my school career, and honestly they aren’t very pleasant memories.
Today, with so many technological advances, our students can develop healthy study habits with much less stress and anxiety. Test prep becomes simpler when the materials are all at your fingertips on a computer or tablet. Flashcards on apps like Quizlet allow students to manipulate the material they’ve been given and use information in a way that makes sense to them.
For example, if I am more of an auditory learner and hearing information makes it stick in my brain better, I can make flashcards that say the words and responses out loud so that I can hear them instead of just reading. If visuals are more effective for my brain, I can attach images to the cards or study guide to trigger memories in my head of material learned previously. Even kinesthetic learners can use study tools online to drag matching images to vocabulary words or group ideas that belong together.
Learning new languages can become easier with Duolingo and online messaging services where students can communicate with native speakers in a chat format. The chat concept also applies to students studying before a test – if they have a specific question and cannot immediately access their teacher, there are countless educators and experts who can share answers online. Simply searching their question in Google will bring up results that will really help them with their difficulty.
Typing in general allows students who struggle with reading their own handwriting or slowness in writing to flourish as they study and take notes. I look forward to a time when no student is discriminated against because of a difficulty they have in a classroom. Technology provides ways for information input and memory that have been unavailable in the past. Interactive study guides online and memory game apps will help students rehearse and remember information for when they need it most.
Homework is something that all children find to be a miserable chore. All of us have hated homework at some time or the other. The most important reason being we could not get the required help to do the same. In class we have friends who can help us if we need some assistance but while doing homework we need to do it on our own. But technology has made homework simpler as we can interact with friends and do it. For example if a student needs economics homework help he can get that easily.
Studying does not have to be excruciating and miserable, for students or for teachers. Technology can bring us closer to understanding the human memory and making it work for us in our journey toward education.
