This week we had Brad Fuller take our class. He discussed the importance of having a fully functioning LMS (Learning Management System) - a technology platform used to educate students, as well as the pros and cons of using technology in a classroom.
Websites like Google Classroom and Canvas are fantastic learning management systems where both teachers and students can organise tasks, assessments and submit work in the same place.
Brad taught us about the "Three Screen Approach" - the best way to explain a task for students in a LMS. It goes as follows:
1) Read (give the students something to read to provide some background information on the topic)
2) Watch (embed a video demonstrating the task to students)
3) Do (the task itself for students to do).
Organisation is extremely vital in a LMS system. Organising content in folders, is so much more convenient for students, than making them scroll through a list 100 documents attempting to find the right one. Canvas is fantastic - you have titles/folders organising your content, you can set quizzes, hyperlink an image, embed files such as Musescore (that you can even hear!!), and can even hand out custom badges (e.g Kahoot winner badge, or even winning a piece of Pez!)
For the rest of the lesson we spend it creating a Canvas teachers account and learning how to post a page and simply navigating around it. It was very interesting and I truely think I will use Canvas with my students... it has so many features and is the perfect way to organise all my lesson content.