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Increasing Student Engagement With

Technology
Laura Jonson

Engaging your students can be di cult. Students are faced with constant distractions, and the
sad truth is that attention spans are getting shorter.

As educators, a high level of engagement should be a priority. It shouldn’t be surprising that

the more students are engaged, the more they learn. It also makes it signi cantly easier to
maintain your energy throughout the day.

Today’s students grew up in the digital age. Rather than viewing technology as a distraction, we
should be taking advantage of it to increase student engagement. To make sure that students
are getting the most out of every lesson, the content should be presented in a way that the
work has a clear meaning and immediate value to your students.

Technology in the classroom allows students to gain a deeper understanding of topics that
interest them, collaborate with each other, and direct their learning. We’ve created a list of
some of the interesting ways that you can incorporate technology into your classroom to
increase student engagement.

Submit assignments as blogs

Blogs are short online articles (less than 3000 words) that are taking the world by storm. Blogs
are a great resource for both the author and the reader: the author can constructively express
their thoughts, and the reader learns something new.
Best for students in grades 7–12

Engage your students: Posting written assignments as blogs allow your students to showcase
their work and also help each other out by posting comments. Posting the blogs publicly also
means that you’ll probably receive higher quality work.

Add this to your classroom: Many free blogging services exist. Some of the more popular and
user-friendly sites include Medium, WordPress, Blogger, and Weebly.

Submit assignments as podcasts or videos

Podcasts are digital audio les available for download to a computer or portable media player.
Both podcasts and videos allow students to showcase their creativity and gain new skills.

Best for students in grades 7–12

Engage your students: Podcasts and videos are engaging ways to submit assignments that
remove a lot of the presentation stress felt by students. They can create several versions and
will not see the people who will be evaluating the assignment. You can also create podcasts
and videos of your classes for your students to review after class or when preparing for a test.
This also helps students who missed a class.

Add this to your classroom: Students can record videos by simply using the camera of a
smartphone. Most smartphones will have a voice recording app, which can be used for
creating podcasts. Have your students share videos through Youtube and podcasts through
Soundcloud.

Work with a classroom on the other side of the

world
The internet allows instant communication between anyone, at any time. Take advantage of
your ability to teach your students about geography or history by talking to students from that
country.

Great for students in any grade

Engage your students: Nothing is more engaging than a room full of students from another
continent! Take pen pals to the next level by having your students chat and learn from
someone from a completely di erent culture and background.

Add this to your classroom: Skype provides various methods of virtually adding people to your
classroom, from interacting with other classrooms, to hosting a guest lecture, to virtual eld
trips.

Gamify Problem Solving

Gamifying your classroom occurs anytime you bring competition or levels of achievement to a
classroom exercise. Grades can be seen as a form of gami cation. However, these don’t
necessarily fully re ect how much the student has learned or their work habits. Adding
rewards to other aspects of the classroom allows you to focus on fundamental skills.
Great for students in any grade

Engage your students: Leveraging gaming mechanics can make learning more fun. Using your
students’ competitiveness also encourages them to work harder than they normally would.

Add this to your classroom: Work with your students to create badges or awards that they can
receive for completing certain tasks, such as homework completion. Check out Gradecraft for
some ideas. You can also introduce them to the concept of co-designing, allowing them to have
a direct impact on what their favorite companies are making. For example, My Starbucks Idea
accepts submissions of new Starbucks products and experience ideas, then allows users to
vote on the ones that they like the best.

Create infographics to explain complicated topics

Infographics are visual representations of information. They are designed to make information
easy to understand very quickly. They are typically designed to draw attention to the most
important information rst.

Great for students in any grade

Engage your students: Visuals are much more engaging than written text and convey a lot
more information. Infographics take that to a whole new level. Infographics are typically used
for displaying some sort of data; they could easily be used to compare population statistics in
geography or show the history of the Internet.

Add this to your classroom: For an easy, user-friendly design interface, try Piktochart.
Presentation software such as Powerpoint or Keynote can also be used to create simple
infographics. More advanced design software such asGIMP or Photoshop are also great.

Record and playback reading

Students don’t always realize what their voice sounds like when they read. They may be
making consistent pronunciation errors without even realizing it.

Best for students in grades 1–3 or in foreign language classes

Engage your students: Fluency and expression can be hard concepts for your students to
grasp. When you record your students reading, they will be able to hear the di erences in their
voice and learn to recognize what it means to read with expression.

Add this to your classroom: Record each student reading using voice recording software on
your computer, tablet, or smartphone. Then send this audio le to your students through
email. If you want others in the class, or the students’ parents to listen to the recordings, share
them using Soundcloud.

Interactive attendance
Taking attendance by having students raise their hands can be time-consuming. This is
important to know which students are present, but not necessarily the best use of your time in
the morning.

Best for students in grades 1–6

Engage your students: Make your students responsible for their attendance with an interactive
whiteboard. This teaches them how to be accountable and gets them used to using an
interactive whiteboard.

Add this to your classroom: Take a picture of every student during the rst week of school and
add them to a Notebook le. Each morning, have your students drag their photos into a
“present” section when they arrive.

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