The 21st Century classroom

Change is happening rapidly. Young people are growing up in a world filled with revolutionary technological advances. The way we communicate, work, and access information has transformed. Digital tools have streamlined processes and increased efficiency in industries from healthcare and construction to finance. 

However, while our access to technology has fundamentally altered the way we live and interact with the world around us, one sector is trailing far behind. Technology has only trickled its way down to the classroom. While it has the potential to radically transform the way we teach and learn, the literature so far has shown its impact to be underwhelming (Fullan and Langworthy, 2014). 

Educators and researchers have many thoughts about why digital tools have a different impact on education than they do in other industries. Among the debates is the need for more professional learning, funding, or even new pedagogy. Regardless, there is a global push for schools to adapt to online learning. The challenge here is that not everyone knows where or how to start. This is causing a time drain and delays in schools taking advantage of what tech can offer. 

In this guide, we unpack our top 4 strategies for optimising learning through digital technologies. You will find practical tips and tricks for bringing your classroom into the 21st century. 

Maximise impact and minimise time

The engagement crisis is a global concern. The statistics are harrowing and show that around 40% of secondary students are disengaged in the classroom (Fullan and Langworthy, 2013). While educators have tried to fix the issue, many still report disengaged students and challenging classroom behaviour (Fullan and Langworthy, 2013). 

Completely changing how we teach and learn sounds daunting and unrealistic. However, when given the right flexible tools, educators can create profound learning tasks online. These tasks can motivate students and provide enough depth and rigour for content mastery and developing 21st-century skills. 

Atomi’s modular nature allows educators to use the content library as the basis for a task and lean on their own tried and true resources created, curated and collated over the years to create meaningful and thought-provoking lessons. 

Atomi tip: Select one or two 21st-century skills to focus on each topic. This helps students hone their skills more carefully and gives them the opportunity to reflect and grow from week to week. It also helps reduce the cognitive and administrative load on teachers. 

Encourage student autonomy 

Learners must develop the necessary character skills to succeed in their post-school lives (Fullan and Langworthy, 2013). Increasingly, educators are trying to encourage students to take responsibility for their learning rather than inadvertently strengthen dependent habits. This will not only help students within the classroom but also set them up to become strong contributing members of society. However, embedding another learning focus into lessons is impossible when juggling competing priorities. 

Atomi tip: Encourage students to help themselves first. When students inevitably approach with questions like, “I don’t know where to start studying,” encourage them to reflect on their learning before giving them advice and guidance. 

Using digital tools that seamlessly integrate student autonomy into the platform takes the stress away from teachers while still ensuring student benefit. Atomi encourages students to take charge of their learning by offering: 

• Revision reminders: As students complete quizzes for classwork or study, the data collected is used to calculate a strength score. This strength score is based on how well students have done and how long it has been since they visited the content. As the strength score decreases, Atomi offers students personalised revision reminders at the top of their course page and via email. This lets them know where they may need to spend extra effort. ‍
• Revision sessions: Students can create custom revision sessions by selecting what they want to revise, how long they want to study, and what times of questions they would like to face. Atomi then automatically generates a session with questions that match their requirements. ‍
• Course access: Students can see the entire course on the platform. This allows them to move at a pace that suits their learning needs, provides opportunities to practice spaced revision, and gives them the relevant context of course progression. 

While seemingly small, these features help build students’ capacity for motivation and perseverance, which will serve them well beyond the classroom. 

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Start small 

The inclusion of digital technologies can feel like a big mountain to climb. It may be cliche, but reminding yourself to start small can help create consistent and sustainable digital classroom habits. Adopting an all-or-nothing mindset is never helpful, so adjusting our teaching practices should follow a similar mindset. 

Look for areas in your classroom that already need improving and start there. By picking something already causing concern, you are more likely to feel motivated and see positive, impactful change more quickly.  Concerns vary from teacher to teacher, but we have unpacked some common issues for teachers to get you thinking. 

Digitise homework

Teachers spend hours finding meaningful work for students to complete outside of the classroom. The time it takes to find, assign and mark student work is immense and could often be better spent elsewhere. Enter Atomi. Atomi makes searching, assigning and marking homework simple, easy and effective. As if it couldn’t get any better, student data will also be collected and analysed, making recommendations to both educators and students about appropriate next steps, leading to higher engagement and lower learning gaps. 

Differentiate with ease

Meeting student needs is becoming increasingly challenging. Teachers often find their classrooms split into two or three levels, which can change immediately. This makes it difficult for educators to plan and deliver content pitched to the right depth. Implementing tech can help educators differentiate lessons to ensure students are challenged and engaged. Atomi allows educators to create different work paths for individual students in a few clicks of a button. Teachers can create custom tasks and share content from any subject or year level that their schools have subscribed to. Depending on student needs, these tasks can be assigned to individual students or whole classes. This is seamless and discrete, allowing educators to track progress and celebrate student wins.

Arm yourself with data

Traditional classroom settings, where students sit in lecture-style lessons engaging in passive learning, are becoming extinct. Not only is this type of learning unmotivating and disengaging, but it doesn’t equip students with the appropriate skills to be successful in post-school life. However, students working on different topics and tasks at different levels of depth and at different times is unsustainable for teachers using traditional tools. Teachers need to know who needs help or extension and where. Traditional classroom methods make this process difficult and tedious, often leaving a student (or more) falling through the cracks. 

Technological advances have allowed educators to revolutionise their teaching without adding to the workload. In fact, many of these tools save teachers time and effort while also significantly impacting student achievement. One of the most significant improvements has been how educators collect feedback on student learning, particularly as learning tasks diversify.

At Atomi, we provide educators with various tools to track student progress and easily implement support.

Progress reports 

Progress reports provide information on how students have performed in a lesson and allow teachers to implement meaningful differentiation in only a few clicks. The report provides essential information, including completion rate and average mark, that allows for quick feedback. Furthermore, whole class misunderstandings are drawn out as the report highlights challenging questions, which is essential for combatting misconceptions early. 

The report also provides a student mark breakdown for teachers to understand individual performance. This is not only informational but actionable as, from the report, teachers can assign supplementary or extension work to particular students. This allows students to focus on skills and content specific to their learning needs. 

Markbook

Atomi’s markbook is a continuous reporting tool that makes it easy to understand students' performance. From the mark book, teachers can see

• how each student is progressing through the content
• student's mark by topic
• who has been completing their assigned tasks

Teachers can also sort, export, and assign tasks based on these results, meaning this analytical tool is also actionable. This is also handy when discussing student performance with parents and caregivers. By arming yourself with data, you can give specific feedback and guidance to parents and caregivers on student strengths and weaknesses. 

Class insights:

Atomi insights allow teachers to view how students use Atomi. Educators can filter to see historical usage over time and break usage down by classes or individual students. These insights will help schools identify the high-usage students, how usage changes over the year, and where there may be areas for improvement. 

Atomi tip: Many schools use the insights tool to gamify their classrooms, creating healthy competition based on excellent study habits rather than academic performance. It is surprising to see how a little competition engages students. 

If you'd like to take a look around the Atomi platform, schedule a demo today.

Final thoughts 

It is important to remember that a utopian classroom environment is not achievable without the right tools. Educators can only improve student learning by breaking from traditional habits, which sometimes seem too daunting. However, Rome wasn’t built in a day. While this guide outlines 4 ways digital tools can alleviate common classroom issues quickly, there isn’t a need to adopt them all in one hit. By selecting one or two tips initially and building them into daily classroom practices, educators will develop consistent digital habits and soon wonder how they did without them in the first place. 

Download the guide to digital learning PDF.

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