Week 5

Utilizing technology-based teaching aids in classroom instruction

Teaching aid, as its name suggests, is a kind of aids which support the teaching and learning activities of teachers and students.
To put it more specific, a teaching aid is a tool used by teachers, facilitators, or tutors to:

- help learners improve reading and other skills
- illustrate or reinforce a skill, fact, or idea
- relieve anxiety, fears, or boredom, since many teaching aids are like games


In short, teaching aids are the useful materials and equipment which help create motivation for teaching and learning environment.
Utilizing modern teaching aids successfully will create the best platform for learning and teaching. Teachers are using multimedia content with audio and video into their lessons. The teacher has to be sure to identify the main points of the contents so that children can absorb the knowledge. In doing so teacher might probably wanted to bring a chart or draw a neat diagram on the board, but effective learning still misses out.

One thing we need to bear in mind is the fact that a multimedia content gives the student a better learning experience as they can watch the actual phenomena and processes. With Interactive Whiteboards for instance teachers can annotate on their content and save it in computer files that can’t be done through traditional boards.
Time has come to integrate modern teaching aids into the classroom for effective learning and teaching. So yeah... be creative!!