Schools are increasingly leveraging electronic learning tools to boost teaching effectiveness and engage students. But how can these tools be effectively integrated into lessons to meet educational content and student needs? At the Learning & Teaching Expo 2023, Pui Ching Primary School shared its extensive experience with electronic learning, showcasing how to incorporate these tools into daily classrooms and discussing the implementation and outcomes for fellow educators.
(Vice Principal Lee Wing Wai, Teacher Law Chun Wai, and Teacher
Cherry Chim, along with four students, conducted a demonstration lesson at the Learning & Teaching Expo 2023.)
Integrating Nearpod and Padlet into Lessons
With so many electronic learning platforms available, which ones work best for teaching? Vice Principal Lee Wing Wai, along with teachers Law Chun Wai and Cherry Chim, demonstrated how they use Nearpod and Padlet to teach a space-themed lesson, focusing on fostering high-level reasoning and classification skills among students. Vice Principal Lee highlighted those features like Poll, Quiz, Draw It, and Fill in the Blanks in Nearpod can enhance sharing, assessment, summarization, and pre/post-lesson testing. For instance, in their space lesson, teachers began by importing a PowerPoint presentation that provided information about stars, planets, and satellites. They then conducted polls with questions like "Are there 8 major planets in the solar system?" to guide students in classifying space objects into 4 to 5 categories.
(The teacher taught the space topic using Nearpod.)
(The teacher asked the students to categorise space objects into 4 to 5 groups.)
(The students took a quiz to assess their learning effectiveness.)
Once students grasped the concepts, teachers used the Quiz and Fill in the Blanks features to assess their understanding. Vice Principal Lee pointed out that lesson plans can be stored in the School Library for easy sharing among teachers. Padlet allows both teachers and students to contribute ideas on a collaborative "wall," helping students develop organizational skills and enhancing their ability to categorize information effectively.
Teacher Law Chun-wai noted that since implementing electronic teaching, student participation in class has significantly increased. The learning platform covers everything from pre-study and classroom instruction to assessments and teaching videos, also allowing for feedback collection to better understand students' diverse learning needs.
（Students used Padlet for high-order classification exercises, engaging in real-time interaction to share and display their insights.）
（Students shared their opinions simultaneously on different questions.）
Collaborative Lesson Planning with Electronic Teaching Tools
Teachers who aren't tech-savvy may find it challenging to master electronic teaching skills. Vice Principal Lee acknowledged the importance of taking it 'step by step.' First, it's crucial to select appropriate electronic teaching tools, and second, collaborative lesson planning among teachers needs to be thorough. Demonstrating how to use these tools in meetings helps ensure effective classroom application. Teachers also observe each other's lessons to share insights and experiences with electronic teaching tools. Vice Principal Lee expressed confidence in his colleagues, saying, 'Every teacher has their own style; with a hundred teachers, there are a hundred methods. Their sharing of teaching strategies sparks even more ideas.'
（Vice Principal Lee shared the students' work on the screen for explanation.）
Practical Teaching Resources from EdCity Go eLearning
Nearpod platform enables teachers to import PowerPoint presentations and add various interactive activities, like quizzes, drawing, polling, and videos, to engage students. Teachers can collect answers from individual students to gauge their learning progress and share responses with the entire class in real time, enhancing assessment and addressing the limitations of traditional presentations. Teachers can also publish their presentations to students' mobile devices, requiring only a simple code to access the lesson content simultaneously.
is an easy-to-use cloud-sharing tool that provides a 'wall' for users to write comments and freely post images, links, documents, and recordings to share their views. Each "wall" gets a unique URL that enables anyone with the link to contribute their thoughts. This collaborative process allows students to observe others' opinions and build on their own, creating a more comprehensive understanding of the topic.
【Note: Video clips from the Learning & Teaching Expo 2023 will be uploaded to Go eLearning soon. Stay tuned!】