Valentina Mavrič Klenovšek, Šolski center Novo mesto, Srednja elektro šola in tehniška gimnazija, Novo mesto
On the one hand, teachers constantly need to improve themselves by reading different articles or attending seminars and conferences, on the other, however, there are students, who simply enter the classroom, sit down and wait to be taught. Is it possible to alter this simple, one-sided direction, where students are mere “receivers” of information without giving it a deep thought? According to my experience, the answer is positive. In order to involve students into a lesson more actively, there are quite a few applications available, which enable the teacher to supervise the teaching-learning process, to assess the learning outcome and to provide the necessary feedback. In my lessons with students of tehniška gimnazija(technology gymnasium) I successfully applied the above-mentioned technique by introducing the application Nearpod, with which students of year 2 learned more about plants and students of year 3 did some chemical analyses of water and soil. To finish with, a quiz was conducted to asses the students’ theoretical knowledge of the subject matter. This part was followed by a more practical one, where students were supposed to determine the earlier picked plants by using the internet clues, while those who did some water/soil analyses had to carry out the experiments in practice. Afterwards the results were filled in the table provided on the application site. The data were comparatively analysed to see all the diversions. The students who dealt with the plants were given some additional tasks by using a microscope to determine the type of pollen in honey, and to graphically present it in the available application. The students who dealt with the chemical analyses were expected to write a report in which they had to discuss the outcomes and draw some conclusions. To sum up, I can point out that the above-mentioned application enables students to participate in an active way and delve into a subject matter with great enjoyment and fun. Despite the fact that there are no e-course-books available for biology classes, they can still be interactive by teachers’ own innovative and creative approaches, based on students ‘needs in class as well as the topic itself. All in all, this is what creative teaching-learning is all about.
