When it comes to e learning for kids, you need to take your engagement efforts to the next level. Kids have a short attention span and they can be easily distracted – at least, this is true when they are listening in class. Although they only have a short attention span in class, they can stay glued to the screen for hours – if they are using their gadgets and browsing their social media accounts.
This is to be expected since the younger generation is born during the digital age. If you want them to be engaged in the lesson, you to find out what is interesting to them. Once you know what these are, you can integrate it into the lesson so you can hold the attention of the learners.
According to Kidsmatter.edu.au, 45% of 8 to 11-year-old kids use social networking sites. Among the sites that they use include YouTube, Club Penguin, Facebook and Moshi Monsters.
Since the kids today are interested in social media, you can use this as a part of e learning for kids. Here are some tips that will make your students show enthusiasm in class.
Create a private Facebook group.
According to the study, Facebook is one of the social networking sites that children visit. This is a great place to start if you want to use social media in your elearning initiatives. Create a page and get all the students to join. For their security, you need to make this a private group. You can give them updates, post reminders and notes. You can use images that will give them pointers that will help them in the lesson. You can create activities that they can do here like an open forum or discussion. Since this is done through Facebook, it is more likely that they will participate. Encourage them to post links to related topics in class. Any activity initiated by them will be given points. You can set a topic each week to get the discussion flowing even outside the class. This is also a great platform for you to post relevant learning materials that will boost retention.
Use Twitter to create fun activities.
You don’t have to limit yourself to using Facebook in e learning for kids. Although the 140-character messages may be limiting, you can be quite creative in your activities. Most kids use this for fun so it should not be too hard to put them in the right frame of mind for the activity. Assign a hashtag for the day and encourage students to post anything factual about it.
Watch videos on YouTube.
Who doesn’t like watching videos on YouTube? This social networking site holds a lot of possibilities for the class. You can post videos to help students catch up on lessons. You can encourage students to create a video connected to the lesson and upload it on this portal. You can share a PowerPoint presentation used in class so students can access the learning material anytime. These are only some of the things that you can do through YouTube. Admittedly, this will involve a bit more work on both your part and the students. But it should be a fun activity for everyone. Not only that, you can always reuse videos you have uploaded or use it as a reference for future e learning for kids.
Build a blog for the class.
Creating a blogsite is not that difficult. Not only that, there are platforms that you can use for free. You can create these sites for each of your class without having to spend a lot – only your time. You can use this blog site to minimize the use of paper in the classroom. You can let the students submit their reports and homeworks in this blog. You can assign projects that they can upload to this blog site so you can check their progress as it goes along. There is also the option of you creating your own blog post and encouraging the students to comment and discuss their thoughts on the topic.
With an open-mind, you can utilize social media to make e learning for kids as fun as you possibly can. This will help increase the engagement in the lesson.
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