Technology and Classroom Management

Technology can be both a blessing and a curse in a classroom. It can be distracting or be a tool to support students. However, for a teacher, it can be hard to get everyone to focus on a task when the world wide web sits in a student's pocket. I found two resources to help students focus and work within the class.

For the noisy class: Using a noise monitoring site like https://bouncyballs.org/. This website uses your computer's microphone and tracks how loud the class is. As the teacher, you can set the amount of balls on the screen, the sensitivity of the microphone (if you want to allow whispering, for example), the ball design, and the noisiness alert. Kids can monitor their own noise levels by watching how much the balls bounce. If the class gets too noisy, they can be shushed - saving the teacher's voice. My favourite part is when you first introduce the website, and you do not mention what is does for your class, so they start to figure it out themselves. My students even will alert others if they believe the noise is approaching alter territory because they want to avoid being shushed. Highly recommend turning off the microphone when you are teaching though!

For the distracted class: Using lofi or video game music in the background. These two music genres work in a way that keeps your brain focused and interested in what is happening. For lofi music, the beats are not consistent and change when they come. This makes the brain interested and trying to anticipate what is happening next. This stimulates the brain and helps students who need said extra stimulation to focus. For video game music, it is also designed for people to focus for a long time because video game designers want the game to be played for a long time. It is great to ask your students what games they play so they can choose which soundtracks (OST) you listen to. Additionally, you can combine the two such as Zelda and Chill.