12-Dec-17 ICT in Education

Learning methods for Generation Z

Joseph T. Krishan
HI CYBER CAMPUS
 ICT in Education

Contents
Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. ii
Arrangement of the booklet ........................................................................................................................ iii
Synonyms ...................................................................................................................................................... 1
Finding synonyms...................................................................................................................................... 1
Finding synonym using a software........................................................................................................ 1
Finding synonyms using internet .......................................................................................................... 4
Using translators ........................................................................................................................................... 5
Online translators & Translator apps ........................................................................................................ 5
Plagiarism ...................................................................................................................................................... 8
Grammar check ........................................................................................................................................... 10
Assessing free educational resources ......................................................................................................... 11
Free essay samples ................................................................................................................................. 11
Free online books.................................................................................................................................... 11
Video Resources...................................................................................................................................... 12
Using a search engine ................................................................................................................................. 14
Google search methods .......................................................................................................................... 14
Having fun with google search engine ................................................................................................ 15
Finding credible information on internet ................................................................................................... 16
Looking for credible information ........................................................................................................ 16
Games & Lab simulations............................................................................................................................ 18

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Introduction
With the introduction of information technology, method of teaching and learning has changed
drastically. The old teaching and learning methods are no longer effective for millennials. Old
teaching methods involved a teacher centric method where teacher talks and student listens and
write in their books to study where no questions are asked by the students. But nowadays the
Gen Zers like you do not like this method, they want to check what their teacher told is correct or
wrong, they want to explore some more details about it, they want to experiment and get hands
on experience on those things they learnt in the school. They always want to stay connected with
the world and with their peers to update their knowledge. Thanks to the advancement of the
technology. Now you can find any information using your mobile phone, laptops, tabs and even
get hands on experience as well.
Through this booklet you will get use to many technological resources available for you to learn
anything you want.

Quick Tips:

Who or what is Generation Z?

People who are born in or after 1996 they are

called Generation Z people (Gen Z as short).
These people have access to technology since
their early age and knows about the internet.

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Arrangement of the booklet

Topics mentioned in this booklet do not follow a sequence. So if required you can skip any topic
mentioned in the booklet and read from any topic you feel like reading.

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Synonyms
What is a synonym being the first question which will come to your mind when reading the topic?
Synonym can be any word or sentence which gives the exact meaning to another word or a
sentence. In simple word, synonym is a similar word or a sentence that can be used as a
replacement for another word or a sentence.

As a student it is very important for you to know synonyms for a word as you have lot of things to
write. For example, your teacher gave you an essay to write and you searched information on the
internet regarding this topic but you are unable to understand some words on the information
you found, so you have to find the meaning of these words to clearly understand the content.
Another example is, your English teacher asks you to re-phrase a sentence using your own words
to make a given sentence short or to write in a way you understand but you dont know similar
words to re-phrase the sentence so you can get the help of synonym finder to search for similar
words.

Finding synonyms
Mainly there are two ways of finding synonyms of a word,

Using a software(app) in your computer, smartphone or tab.

Using internet

Lets look in to each method in detail now.

Finding synonym using a software

Microsoft Word 2016

Microsoft Word is a widely used word processing software in computers that helps to
Write letters and to create any document with images and texts. Its built-in tool called
Thesaurus helps you to find synonym for a selected word or words.

Highlight the word you need to find synonym, then right click on that word to display the
special menu and select Synonyms. Once you move the mouse pointer to Synonyms
section it will list down words that can be used to replace the selected word (Figure 1).

Quick Tips:

If you need some more synonyms apart from

what is displayed on the list. Click on
Thesaurus at the bottom of the list to view
full list of synonyms.

Figure 1

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Using an app on your smartphone or tab.

Most of the you have access to a smartphone or a tab with internet connection so you
can use some apps specially designed for you to find synonyms. Since there are different
types of smartphones and tabs available (Android and iOS) I will list two apps for each
mobile device.

For Android:

1. Synonym by Duatech
This app is helps you to find synonyms from few websites. You need to have
internet access in order to use this app. This app can also be used to find
antonyms and definitions for words in selected language.

Figure 2: Searching for the synonym Figure 3: Choosing Language Figure 4: Showing the pronunciation
and usage of the word.

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2. Synonyms Dictionary OFFLINE by movin'App

Unlike the app introduced earlier this app does not require internet connection
to find synonyms. Once you install it a database of words are created in your
mobile device where it finds synonyms using this database. Since it works offline
the number of words you can find synonyms are limited to 167,000 (but that is a
lot for your work isnt it?)

Figure 5: Display synonyms as a noun

and verbs.

For iOS devices:

Dictionary.com by Dictionary.com LLC

The famous online dictionary, dictionary.com has made an easy
to use iOS app for its users. Users can find synonym for any word
by switching the option from Dictionary
to Thesaurus.

Figure 6: Switching from Dictionary mode

to Thesaurus mode. Figure 7: Definitions and sysnonyms

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Finding synonyms using internet

Although there are lot of website who provide facility in searching for synonyms following
are the best websites that I have come across which gives good list of synonyms.

1. www.thesaurus.com
This is the most viewed website to search for synonyms among internet users.
2. www.synonym.com
This simple website lists number of synonyms for a particular word.

Figure 8: Searching on Thesaurus.com

Figure 9: Searching words using synonym.com

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Using translators
When looking for information sometimes it is hard to find resources what you are looking in your native
language, you might find some information in foreign language or you want to read content written in
English using language you can understand properly so you have better understanding of what it says.
Translators will also very helpful for you to update your Facebook or twitter account status in a foreign
language just for fun, to learn new words in another language or to chat with a new Facebook friend you
connected with who lives in another country and he or she cant understand English or your native
language (sounds fun isnt it?)

Online translators & Translator apps

There are thousands free online translators available if you search on the internet, here I list down
only two most widely used online translators.

Google Translate

Google translate is the widely used online translator in the world now. Since almost all users are
using Android phones nowadays, Google Translate is the widely used translator app in mobile
phones as well. Comparing to other translation services Google can translate 103 languages. You
can visit Google online translator app by visiting, translate.google.com website. Using this
website, you can translate a word, sentence, a website or even a document. Only disadvantage
of google translate is, sometimes translations are grammatically incorrect. So I recommend to use
this carefully if you are writing an academic paper or an official letter.

Figure 10: Google translate interface. Click the dropdown arrow on either side to select the language you need.

Figure 11: Translating words from English to Spanish

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You are able to translate an entire website using Google translate. Simply paste the web link on
the left side text box and select the language you want to convert it in to from the right side and
click the Translate button.

Figure 12: Translating an Italian website in to English

Google Translate app:

Google translate app has much more facilities available comparing to its online service. Using
Google translate app you can translate,

Translate text in an image taken from the camera Point your camera phone to a notice,
board or an image which has a text where you want to translate to another language.
Voice translation with the help of conversation mode now you can translate 32
languages instantly as you can have a conversation with another person.
Translate handwriting This feature supports to convert handwriting of 93 languages.
Offline translator there are 59 languages available for you to download to your mobile
phone and use it without access to internet.

Figure 13: Point your camera Figure 14: Instant voice translation Figure 15: Draw a character on the
inside Google Translate to while you are talking to someone. screen to convert.
translate a board for you.

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Bing Translate(Microsot Translator)

Bing translator(also known as Microsoft translator) considered to be the most accurate translator
comparing to Google translate when it comes to translating phrases. Which means it has less
number of grametical errors when translating an entire phrase. Go to www.bing.com/translator
to visit Bing translator. Comparing to Google translate bing only has few number of languages you
can translate and you only can translate text, phrase or a website using Bing translate.

Figure 16: Bing translator

Figure 17: Translating words

Same as Google you can use Bing translator to translate an entire website in to a lanauge you select
by pasing the web site address on the left side text box and clicking Translate button.

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Bing Translate app (Microsoft Translator):

Microsoft translator is the name given to mobile version of Bing translator. It provides all features
available on Google translate app and as an additional feature a user is able to join a conversation
with multiple people with people who are using multiple languages to speak. This is far most
important feature in Microsoft Translator since such a facility is not available in Google.

Plagiarism
Plagiarism is the act of stealing someone else work and produce it as original work of you. If you copy a
paragraph of someones work in to your work and do not give credits to its author (the person who wrote
the paragraph) it is considered as a crime. As a student you might have done plagiarism when writing an
essay or an answer to a question by reading thins on the internet or books without you knowing it. In
school teachers use a special software called Plagiarism software so they can find who fraud during their
work and deduct marks.

As a student you should also know how to check for plagiarism before giving your work to your teacher
as you might have copied things without knowing. Most of the school teachers use plagiarism software
provided by the school. Since we are not able to purchase a software, I will list down few websites which
will do plagiarism check for free. It can be good practice to check your documents for plagiarism in multiple
sites that I have list down below as there might be slightly different results coming from each site that
could help you to increase the quality of your work.

1. https://smallseotools.com/plagiarism-checker/

This website allows you to paste your content inside the text box to check for
plagiarism. The word limit for checking plagiarism is restricted 1000 words. they
also provide facility to upload a document, choose file from drop box or Google
drive. If you get register
yourself for the free
account, you can have
some more features. One
more important thing is
on the same place you
are able to check
grammar of your writing
as well.

Figure 18: Click Check Plagiarism for plagiarism check and Check grammar button for grammar checking

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2. https://searchenginereports.net/plagiarism-checker
A totally free web site to check for plagiarism and grammar. You do not even have
to create a free account in this site to check your document. Although you are
able to upload a text file or a word document to check for plagiarism the word
count is limited to 1000 words per search. So if you have a document with more
than 1000 words you have to split the single document in to multiple portions
and search. Once you paste the text in the text box scroll down the page and click
on the blue button which says Check Plagiarism.

Figure 19: After pasting the text scroll down and click the blue button.

3. https://www.paperrater.com/plagiarism_checker
Go to the link mentioned above and paste your content in the text box. Tick the
check box which says I have read and agree to the terms of service below: and
then click on Get Report button to check your content for plagiarism.

Figure 20: Paste your document, accept the terms

of services and click Get Report.

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4. http://plagiarisma.net/
This free website will search for any duplicate contents using Google and Yahoo
search engines. The best part of this is that it has a mobile app for Android
smartphones and a software for Windows computers.

Grammar check
It is very important to use proper grammar when writing an essay or a paper for your academic purposes.
So before you submit your document to your teacher it is always wise move to let someone who is good
at English to proof read your document for any grammatical errors or typographical errors (typing
mistakes). But it is hard to find a person to do our job always we need. The same way we check for
plagiarism we have websites and software available to check grammar on your work. I already list down
website who are capable of checking grammar on your document in plagiarism section. Apart from those
links mentioned www.grammarly.com is a very good website. Once you visit the website there is a text
box where you can paste and check grammar on your work or upload a file for grammar check. Grammaly
provide free add-ons for internet browsers to check grammar. You can easily manage your work with
Grammarly if you get a free account from Grammarly.com

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Assessing free educational resources

Apart from what you learn at school, you must have some additional resources to support your studies
and learn more about a subject to gain more knowledge on that. With the help of technology and internet
nowadays there are plenty of free educational resources (open source resources) available for you to
refer. These resources come in different formats; some resources are available as books or articles where
are some resources are available as Videos. This section will list down each of these type so you can use
those resources to help you learn and be that smart kid in your class.

Free essay samples

Writing and essay can be hard sometime even if you have necessary information required to write
the essay. You may have trouble in starting the essay, ending the essay or structuring the
information you found in the essay. Now you dont have to worry about it. Because there are
websites available for you to surf and read sample essays. Go through with the following web site
to read a sample essay so you can get an idea on how to write an essay. No keep in mind I
mentioned in early section of this booklet that plagiarism is illegal so do not have copy the same
content when you are writing an essay. These essays are available only for reference purposes.

1. Free Essays
This a place where you can find free term papers and essays for you to refer. Essay
topics are categorized in to various group so it is easy for you to locate what you
are looking for, if you feel lazy or difficult to search under a category you can use
the search box to search.

https://freeessay.com

2. 123 help me
Another famous website that offers free essays and term paper resources. Same
as free essays, essays are categorized for those of you know the category they are
looking or search option to directly search the topic they want.

http://www.123helpme.com/

Free online books

You can read some books on following website for educational and entertainment purposes.

1. OpenStax cnx
This is a website that share free educational material in small units. It has only
limited number of books to read only, but books are good enough to gain basic
knowledge on a specific topic like chemistry or sociology.

https://cnx.org/

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2. Open Textbook Library

This is a project run by universities and colleges who publishes textbook to ready
free of charge for students are not able to find or buy books. The link below
provide links to books who are published by different universities or colleges. All
book available are suitable for students who are in college or planning to enter
college. But there is no restriction for you also to read books on those web sites.

http://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks

Video Resources
Video learning has become a widely used source of education with Gen zers now. Rather than
reading a book or listening to their teacher they prefer to watch a video a learn. Video learning
has enabled students to learn from anywhere they are using a smartphone, tab or a laptop.
Among the loads of video learning sources available I found that following video resources are
more accurate and credible than others.

1. Khan Academy
Khan academy is a nonprofit organization who are famous for providing online
education for students around the world for free. Their team ensures the quality
of the information they provide on their website. They have plenty of practice
exercise and exam along with video tutorials for you to follow. You will also get
opportunity on interacting with students around the world by signing in to their
accounts or you just can enjoy their video tutorials without having to signup.

https://www.khanacademy.org

2. Science Education
If you want to learn specifically about science, then is the perfect website for
you. The American Association for the Advancement of Science has setup a web
site called Science NetLinks to provide quality resources for you to study about
science.

http://sciencenetlinks.com/lessons/

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3. TEDEd
TEDEd is a branch of TED where they help students like you to get more innovative
by providing short term educational videos. This is an ideal place if you want to
expand your knowledge in what you learnt in school and how to apply it in real
life. They have apps for mobile devices for easy access and Youtube channel as
well! Thats not all they have clubs where you can meet people around the world
to share your knowledge and ideas.

Website: https://ed.ted.com/
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/TEDEducation

4. how stuff works

Are you that kid who always wonders how things are working like that and why is
it happening like that? Then this site is for you. Search their entire website to find
good stuff like how a cloud computer work, why cockroaches are flying towards
your head. All these contents come as video, audio or as an article. Dont like to
read or feel lazy to surf the website? Then go to their YouTube channel

Website: https://www.howstuffworks.com/

YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/HowStuffWorks

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Using a search engine

Internet is a place where you can find any information you need. But without knowing a web address or
URL of a website you cannot access that information. We need someone to direct use to the information
we are looking for. Search engine is a system where we can type the thing we need to search and it will
show which websites contains that information we are looking. Following are few examples for search
engines

Google www.google.com
Bing www.bing.com
Yahoo www.yahoo.com

If you search the internet there are lot more than 3 search engines available but above mentioned search
engines are the most popular once from all. Among those 3 search engines also, Google is the widely used
search engine. Due to this fact people started using the term Googling or Google to say to search on
the internet (specifically on the internet).

Google search methods

Anyone can search on the internet but to find the exact information you are looking for; you must
know how to search properly. This section will teach few tricks on how to Google like a professional
person.

1. Finding the exact same thing

If you want to find a website that contains the exact same sentence you type,
type the phrase inside double quotation.
Ex: - Asian people are cute

2. Finding a meaning of a word

When you dont know the meaning of a word you are using or the real meaning
of an abbreviation you can use the word Define: (without quotes) with the word
you want to find the meaning
Ex: - Define RAM

3. Exclude words when searching

When you want to search some information which does not have a particular
word, you must use dash (-) symbol. For instance, you want to search about
electronic cars but do not want to have the word sale in it,
Ex: - cars -sale

4. Search with a number range

Since the dash is used to exclude word or numbers you are not able to use the
dash to define a range of numbers. You can use two dots (..) to search with two
number range
Ex: - city of Rome 1980..1990

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5. Searching information within a particular website

When you want to get some information from a specific website write the
keyword you are looking for and add the site: operator and type the website
address.
Ex: - city of Rome site:Wikipedia.org
Above example will search information on Rome in Wikipedia website only.

6. Looking for information in a specific file format

Searching and downloading specific file format has become easy with the
filetype: operator.
Ex: - city of Rome filetype:pdf

7. Filling the blanks using wild cards

Now you want to find a proverb that you used know but only remember parts of
it you can fill the blanks using asterisk (*) symbol
Ex: - Penny * and Pound *

8. Searching one of few words

You want to find information on from any word you include you use the OR.
Make sure you use the capital letter to type this operator otherwise google will
think you are looking a sentence that has the word or in it
Ex: - rent a car OR rent a van

Having fun with google search engine

Apart from using Google search engine to search for information. Here are some
operators/keywords which is used to have some fun. Search each of the following
word in Google and see what happens

do a barrel roll
askew
calculator
set timer

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Finding credible information on internet

As a student it very important for you to find information from reliable sources as the information you
found will be useful when writing answers for an assessment or a school project. Without a reliable source
to confirm your findings your answers are not considered valid answer. For example, some universities
and schools still does not take information on Wikipedia as credible information as it is written by
community members. But since that information is taken from another sources and that sources are
mentioned under reference section and external links some universities and colleges accept Wikipedia as
a credible source.

There 5 factors you have to consider to decide any particular information on a website or a book you
downloaded is credible or not.

Objectivity purpose of the writing should be clearly defined when writing an article. For
example, intended audience should be defined.
Currency Date of the article was written, published or updated must be available as some of the
information can be outdated.
Authority Without an author or credible publisher information is not considered as reliable
information. Usually this party can be an individual, organization or an institute.
Availability Information you found should be available in a way so anyone can trace back to its
source.
Coverage - A credible information or article has a section to display reference to show supporting
materials used for writing the article.

Looking for credible information

Now I mentioned what you have to consider to determine a source you found is credible or not,
now lets see how do you find that information.

Use information form website you already know:

Even though you are a beginner in finding credible source of information it is not a difficult
task to identify well known website which may you already know or have heard. For
example, lets say you are looking or information on Microsoft Office packages and you
found two sources that talks about the product. One website is from Microsoft and the
other website is tech review site where individuals tell what they know about the product.
So which one do you think credible? Definitely you will pick Microsoft web site for two
reasons. One, since Office package is created by Microsoft they know about their products
more than anyone, second everyone knows Microsoft is a world famous company related
to computer and software so they are considered a reliable source.

Check the date of publication

Normally when an article is published on a website at the beginning or at the end of the
article it states when was this article was published on the internet. If you are unable to
find a published date, scroll down to the end of the web site and check the footer section
of that page to see copy right reserved statement. As a standard all website displays the

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year they revised the website content on the footer of the web
page. Hence we take this year as the published date since the content is revised.

Checking authority of a publication

Unlike authoring books, with the free availability of internet anyone can publish anything,
so you have to make sure the author of the article you searched has good credential. For
instance, to know about computer science article has to be written by a professional
person who is an expert on that field. If it is difficult to find credentials for the author, you
have to rely on the owner of the website. If it is published on a well reputed organizations
website the information you found is credible.

Read more
I personally recommend you to refer couple of more websites, articles, books to confirm
what you found is correct. In this way you will get more accurate information as well as
to analyze the work of a particular author.

Check the domain name

Domain names is the name given to a web site and mostly it is known as the web address
or URL. If a website address ends with something similar to one of these; .org, .gov, .edu,
you can totally rely on the information they published because only reputed
organizations, institutions are able to obtain a web address that ends with above
mentioned extensions.

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Games & Lab simulations

When you hear the word Games you must be thinking about ordinary games you play using smartphones
or computers. This game is slightly different than an ordinary game. Playing these games will help you
understand what understand and memorize all the things you learnt from your school.

Visit following listed sites to get access to numerous games that could educate yourself in various areas
such as Math, physic, chemistry and management.

1. PhET Interactive Simulations

PhET provide number of simulator programs in Math and science areas where
you could try and do some experiments without having to access a lab physically.
Since this is a free service anyone with internet access can visit their website to
play and study.

https://phet.colorado.edu/en/simulations/category/new

2. Learn 4 Good
This site offers you various type of educational games that is designed to improve
your skills in certain areas. Following link list down some games you might like to
play.

https://www.learn4good.com/games/for-high-school-students.htm

3. More educational games

Author of this article has list down some educational sites and games that can be
played by high school students.

http://edtechreview.in/news/834-best-educational-websites-and-games-for-
high-school-students

4. Center for online education

This page list down some educational games which you can play to learn about a
specific subject you like. Some of the links mentioned by author is no longer
available but still its a good idea to have look on this page.

http://www.onlinecolleges.net/50-great-sites-for-serious-educational-games/

Did you know?

The famous Facebook game Farmville. Is

considered and educational game where it
teaches its players about time management,
organizing and planning as well as to teach
standards such as historical standards, English
standards.

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