One of the goals of the DREAM project is to help teachers face some challenges posed by the shift in the teaching and learning settings that took place during the COVID-19 pandemic with face to face classes becoming online classes. Now that the pandemic is over, there is no turning back on the use of digital tools in the classroom. Students are being raised in a technological age and teachers must speak their “language” through the use of IT technologies in order to engage them in the learning process and these tools can be a great way to motivate students and foster their autonomy. But students get tired of using the same games or platforms after a while, variety is, therefore, imperative, and this can be an immense challenge for teachers who struggle to find the right tools for their students.
Teachers need to do online research, they need to understand how the tools work and become proficient in using them and they need to prepare content, which is very time-consuming specially because of the immense variety of resources and the speed at which they are created by developers.
A good strategy could be to create several categories for the tools according to the type of work to be developed, for example: videos, presentations, assessments, and how to organise learning and every time teachers discover a new tool, they can add them to the list and thus keep track of what they have at their disposal.
If we think about the assessment, which is always a sensitive topic for students, parents and teachers alike, there is a number of tools that can be used for assessment purposes and that will turn the process funnier and less stressful for students. They can be used in the classroom or at home, with the teacher or parents or autonomously by the students, for formal assessment moments or just for progress check, or as assessment disguised as competitions with the participation of the whole class.
As mentioned, the massive number of digital tools for education purposes available nowadays can be a problem for teachers due to the fact that the process of identifying the resources, learning how they work and prepare content to be used is a very time consuming one and that is why our project developed a set of video tutorials dedicated to Animaker, Book Creator, Canva, Ed Puzzle, Genially, and Kahoot that intends to help teachers overcome the initial obstacles.
These are just a few examples of the many resources that are available nowadays and that can be very useful to make classes more dynamic, to have students more engaged in the activities and that can contribute to well-balanced teaching and learning settings.
