Online vs. Traditional: Using Technology in the Classroom Educators are taking advantage of the advancements and tools available online and using technology in the online and traditional classroom to heighten the learning experience.
by Priya KumarGlance into many traditional classrooms and you’ll notice professors clicking through PowerPoint slides instead of scrawling on a chalkboard and students using electronic notebooks instead of the spiral-bound paper kind. This now-normal scene underscores how much technology has advanced and how educators routinely use technology in the classroom.
In a May 2008 survey of public school instructors, 95 percent believed students benefit from technology when it’s used properly, and 89 percent viewed technology as “essential to teaching and learning.” The National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers conducted the survey.
Widespread high-speed Internet access and a surge in the popularity of social media have transformed the virtual online classroom. Here are some ways in which instructors and students in traditional and online classrooms use technology to enhance the educational experience:
| Traditional Learning | Online Learning | |
| Communicating with Students | E-mails and listservs keep students up to date outside of class. Clickers, or small devices on which students answer multiple-choice questions, help gauge student opinions and promote discussion in class. | Chat rooms, video chats, discussion boards and web conferencing help professors and students interact in real time regardless of physical location. |
| Course Management | Content management systems such as Blackboard and WebCT offer an online space to post syllabi, readings, or lecture notes. | As the dashboard for the class, the online course space integrates materials with online tools. Social bookmarking sites like Digg and Delicious help track course resources. |
| Information Delivery | Online repositories such as iTunesU, YouTube EDU, Academic Earth and MIT’s OpenCourseWare contain lectures and other course materials. These resources are more informational than instructional. | Video lectures, podcasts, screen capture sites such as Screenr allow professors to verbally and visually describe key concepts. Photo cubes in PowerPoint help organize information in lecture notes. |
| Collaboration | Students may use online groups and document-sharing tools like Google Docs to complement in-class group work. | Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, wikis, and blogs link students and teachers and facilitate conversation. |
