Preparing students for the 21st-century workforce challenges isn’t easy. That is because technology has changed the way the world works, and must be integrated into every aspect of education if the future is to be secured. Writing is among the skills that are now in high demand, thanks to the advancement in technology. Writers, like the ones at MyEssayGeek, have admitted that technology has played a significant role in teaching them how to write, thus, making them more employable in today’s digital world. Teachers who want to improve the quality of their teaching and help children learn useful skills can use technology to teach these young ones writing.
10 Excellent Ways To Use Technology To Teach Writing
- Teach Collaborative Writing With Google Drive
Teachers can encourage students to work together with Google Drive or any other app that allows shared editing and writing. You can give them joint essays and ask them to work on the files together. By combining efforts, students will be able to improve their writing without any direct lessons from the teacher. All you’ll have to do is to watch them perform edits and score them after the assignment is completed. When necessary, you can make corrections via the comments option.
- Teach Them To Use Grammar Checking Tools
Indeed, technology is yet to displace teachers. However, many automated tools can provide valuable feedback for students, even when the teacher isn’t around. For example, Grammarly provides suggestions to hundreds of possible writing mistakes from grammatical to typographical errors. One of the reasons why Grammarly is so popular among writers is that it doesn’t just show you the error; it also tells you why it is wrong. An app like Grammarly reduces the workload for teachers and helps students improve their writing over time.
- Teach Them To Use Plagiarism Checking Tools
Students need to know that plagiarism is unacceptable whether their content is to be published online or submitted to the school. Teachers can teach them how to use plagiarism checking tools to ensure that there are no duplicates of their work online. Also, teach them to promote their ideas rather than rewrite the ideas of others. Tools like Copyscape, SmallSEO tools, and Grammarly premium can be used to check for duplicate content. Other tools can spot duplicate ideas even when the content is free of plagiarism.
- Encourage Blogging
Students who naturally love writing can be encouraged to improve their skills if they can publish it. As a teacher, you can create a blog where students are free to share their work with other students or parents. The more they write, the better they will get as long as they are willing to learn.
- Host Online Writing Contests
If you can, host online writing contests for students in your class. The contests can be between classmates within or across schools. That is something you may need approval from the school to do. Students who participate can win small useful prizes or extra credit as an incentive.
- Encourage Social Media Content Sharing
While students often visit social media to catch up with friends, you can encourage them to create compelling content and share them on their social media profiles. For example, if a topic is trending online, students should be encouraged to write short essays about their opinion on the topic and share it online. That move will increase their social media presence as it does their writing.
- Track Student Progress With Visual Data
There are many apps for tracking student progress in real-time. Since the teacher most likely has to attend to the needs of several students, keeping track of the individual progress of the students might be difficult. Using these tools, teachers can keep accurate records and commend or correct the student accordingly.
- Inspire Students With Multimedia
One good way to teach students how to write is to encourage the combination of several multimedia applications and writing. For example, rather than assigning boring essays all the time, you can ask students to create content that can be made into a video game or animated film. You can also ask them to write an essay about the content in an animated movie or video game.
- Foster Personalized Teaching With Adaptive Technology
There is a lot of emphasis on personalized learning and adaptive technology that makes it easy to introduce. When you’re trying to teach students writing, keep in mind that not everyone has the same shortcomings or strengths. That is why you should use tools that can evaluate the needs of each student.
- Help Your Student Self-Publish Books
You can guide creative writers from the beginning to the last stage of self-publishing a book. They don’t need to pay a dime to make their books available online, and they can earn a token from the product. If the book becomes a success, students will be happy to improve their writing and create more books.
Bottom Line
These are ten ways to use technology to teach your students how to write. Irrespective of the tool you use, make sure you are patient with them, and always encourage them.
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