Teachers are still necessary!

Throughout this blog we have constantly mentioned the need for teachers to incorporate technology in their teaching experience. But which is the best way to do so?

You may know that studying online is one very chosen option nowadays. “Distance learning” appeared some years ago and, as the name suggests, new contents are explained through uploaded materials (books, activities and so on) and through videos attached by teachers delivering a lesson themselves.

As you can see, the only contact students and teachers have is by having students looking at the teacher on a screen; but on the teacher’s side, she/he is not able to see students. She only reads their posts and emails, among others, but she never sees their faces. So, is it good to make use of technology and virtual classrooms exclusively?

Sophie Partarrieu explains why there is still a need to incorporate face-to-face teaching in the digital age, and why it “has an essential place in today’s education”. The idea we would like to give more emphasis to is the fact that it is the best ‘path’ when having to “form emotional relationships, empathize and respond to the needs of individual students”.

On the other hand, there are some benefits of applying online/ digital teaching. According to Sebastián - a person we interviewed who is experiencing this kind of education -  one of the advantages is that you can organize your timetables, to the extent that you can read or study at your own pace, and watch teacher’s videos as many times as you want. Also, you can study at home in a comfortable environment and take breaks at any moment you want.  

So far, we have shown the strong points of both kinds of teaching/learning. The idea is to get some profit from them. But how do we do that? A concept that has been recently introduced is BLENDED LEARNING. What is blended learning? Basically, a way of tutoring “where a portion of the traditional face-to-face instruction is replaced by web-based online learning”.

We think that this type of education still places teachers in an important role as regards education and, at the same time, challenges many people’s idea that technology will eventually replace humans - teachers included. What can we recommend?  We suggest you have students watch your videos explaining the theoretical part of the topic being dealt with, and then clear up doubts and practice during face-to-face teaching in class so as to optimize time and foster interpersonal relationships. This model we've just mentioned is called "flipped classroom".

Why don’t you give it a try and then tell us about your experience?