One of my students with reading and writing difficulties hated the glossary tests, and his results were not very good either. He thought it was too much work to study hard in order to get all the words correct. And even though he tried hard, it didn’t pay him back with good results.
He started to use Quizlet, an easy way to practice glossary. Quizlet has flashcards, games, pictures, auditory tasks and writing tasks. You load it down as an app or use it on a website. It can be used everywhere.
After a little while, my glossary-hating student started to get very good results on the tests, and he also started to look forward to them! He even told me that he used the app while he was brushing his teeth…What had happened?
Quizlet was a method that had influenced his inner motivation. His self-confidence and the enjoyment of learning the glossary in a enjoyable way made study fun! The instant feedback on all the words he now got correct and this feeling of achievement affected his learning. Using games encouraged his growth!
His external motivation had been trigged by the comments and the points that he got when he played.
Examples like this above shows us one of the advantage using modern technology in the classroom. Working with iPad, Chromebook or mobiles is motivating and makes the learning situation more fun. It gives the teacher possibility to facilitate for each student using different apps or websites with tasks related to the subject. It also provides for all the student to achieve an inner motivation to learn. The students get immediate feedback working on different task. They do not have to wait for the teacher to correct them or wait until the class is done so they can correct their work together. “Quizlet “and similar programs are ideal for carrying out repeated drills and also registrate results for the students and teacher to use in their review or feedback.
The challenge using tools like “Quizlet “is that the motivation is dependent on feedback using points, diamonds, cartoons that gives you a smile and so on. Will the students be dependent to always get feedback immediately and not feel any motivation working with tasks that only gives them their own feedback? Studying for a glossary test requires a working method that increase your memory and I believe this working method is important training for the brain.
Study for glossary tests or multiplication is also a training in concentration and will give the students individually systems for how to remember. My generation still remember all our friends phone numbers, do the children of today lack the ability to remember the irregular verbs or passwords and pin-codes because they don’t know how to? Or maybe because they don’t have to? The information is there all the time, on their phones…