Teaching Resources: Tools And Equipment For Effective Instruction

The Purpose of Teaching Resources

Teaching resources refers to the tools and equipment that are used in the teaching process as a supplement in the class room instructions for enhancing the interest of the learners. The teaching materials are very vital catalysts of effective instructions. Along with the former methods of teaching, there are many variety of teaching resources that are available to the teachers in the modern days. All these resources help the learners to improve their reading and learning skills. In modern days, with the development of science and technology, the teaching and the learning process depends on the latest technologies. The process of teaching has become increasingly interesting as because of the fact that the teachers now-a-days uses different new and innovative teaching materials which directly involve the learners in the learning and teaching process. All these resources contribute in making the lessons enjoyable for them. Teaching resources are the primary factors that assist in creating effective learning and teaching environments. They directly address the five senses on an individual and therefore, the chances of forgetting becomes less as well as the learning process becomes more effective.

These resources include:

Artificial materials that are developed for the education purposes like games

Concrete materials such as the real life tools that are used in the external school settings

The materials that are used by the teachers and the students to help them in their teaching and learning process like maps, models, tape recorders, films, prints etc.

The purpose of the resources in learning and teaching process

When the teaching and the learning process are done with the things that are visible in nature and are touched and heard, the lessons then become more effective and useful to the students. Any lesson delivered without any teaching aid could be boring to them. The primary purpose of these resources are mentioned below:

Making the lessons more interesting and easier to the students

Enabling the facilitators to express their intended concepts of learning effectively

Assist the learners in keeping the lessons learnt in their mind for longer period of time

Helping the educators to deliver their lessons easily and successfully

Effectiveness of each of the resources in the meeting of the learning needs of the individual in learning and teaching contexts

Learning method- Embedded learning by making use of computers- This allows the learners to carry out their own research and create posters or hand out and this in turn helps them to develop and demonstrate their functional skill in the field of ICT. The students in this way are self-directed to their learning process. It supports the kinaesthetic learners and also help in supporting the students who complete their courses by means of online distance learning process. This electronic learning material could be provided to the learners who are unable to attend the courses because of having any other commitments, like that in the dependent student.

Types of Teaching Resources

Learning method- Delphi technique- the large quantity of the similar coloured post that it notes needed. This allows the students to get up and move around. It supports both the kinaesthetic learners and the visual learners. With the same, it offers assistance to the ones who are with low self-esteem or low ability. This technique itself takes away the fear of getting the things in wrong way.

Televisions/video/film- They support the auditory learners in absorbing the information and helps the visual learners through providing them something to watch. The teachers could make use of the chapters in YouTube clips, films, general video or news reading in order to help in explaining and demonstrating the thing that they are teaching.

Hand outs- They help in supporting the reading and the visual learners through giving them reference points and allowing them to take the information away, read them and digest them in their free time. This method is very effective in assisting the learners suffering from dyslexia. If they are provided prior to the courses, the dyslexic students get the chance of reading through so that they do not fall back during the classes because of not having sufficient time for reading and learning the chapters. They must be made in such a manner that they are easy to read. A more detailed hand outs should be provided to the learners with higher learning ability without putting much pressure on the other learners to keep up. It can also be in the format of a PowerPoint presentation in class if required.

Newspapers/books/articles- These resources allow the read and write learners through providing them the necessary information so that they could make a note of it if they wish to. It can either be provided in the class or might also be posted to the students who undergo distant learning correspondence courses.

The principles of resource design- Theresa

The main principle of the resource design is to answer the instructional design questions of what the skills, attitudes, knowledge, materials and technology the teacher would want from the learners to develop and enhance and then to design the learning and teaching resources for accomplishing those goals in order to determine the evidences that would illustrate the accomplishments of the student.

The deeper the cognitive involvement of a student is in his process of learning, the more knowledge and learning he gets. The earlier time-on-task principle that states that the more the learners spend more time in interacting with the IT and practicing the skills, the more confident, accomplished and proficient they would become. This principle has not only proved to be old and out dated but it is also not efficient enough in getting effective learning.

Learning Methods Using Teacing Resources

When it comes to the question of learning, the individuals have their own unique way to absorb and grasp the things around them. Most of the people fall into the below mentioned four categories of learners or even a combination of two or more of them, depending on their orientation and style. They are VARK.

V stands for Visual

A stands for Auditory or Aural

R stands for Read and,

K stands for Kinaesthetic

As the name itself suggest, the visual learners learn best through seeing or witnessing. The Aural learners learn best through their sense of listening. The read and write learners learn the best by reading texts and by practising writing. Furthermore, the Kinaesthetic learners learn best when they could feel and touch or if they do the things that are been taught to them. These four categories of the learners have different characteristics specifically.

The teachers could also learn by means of combing the two, three or the entire four styles of learning. There are also many number of studies that determine the percentage of the students in each of the mentioned category.  

Base of the theory of different learning styles in the process of resource design

Interest varies- When an individual is inherently interested in the designing and layout of the houses, he might then excel in the process of designing and architecture and might also master the very subject better than anyone else.

Everyone is Unique in their own ways- There is no single size fits all when it comes to the people. Each and every one is different and all these differences form the basis or foundation of learning.

Disabilities- The individuals who suffer from mental disorder might have several styles of learning and it is very commonly seen in the case of dyslexic children. The other learning resources might be best suited for the learners who are incapable of coping up with the conventional methods of teaching.

Different backgrounds and experiences- Different people belong from different backgrounds and they have different past experiences as well. The mentioned two factors impact their style of learning and they have a great impact on the interests that an individual develop.

The cognitive theories have shown that the time that is spent on the task is not the most important in the process of memorizing and learning the content but the level of cognitive involvement of the learners in the process of understanding. In simpler words, although, the one-time task might help the learners to perceive the results as enjoyable and rewarding, the most efficient factor in this process if the level of information processing. Especially, development of the more complex, stimulating the content at right zone of proximal development and the networked structures of knowledge are the ones that might bring the result of recalling and memorizing the learning materials.

Principles of Resource Design

As the learners develop more metacognitive awareness among themselves, they also naturally seek for and identify the types of experiences and resources which work for them. According to the cognitive psychology, the process of learning could be more effective if we organise the information into different chunks. This is particularly true if we think that the chinking is just a reason. Role playing and games are much popular and valuable. The current researches about how the learners learn is constantly illuminating the process that is involved in learning and teaching.

While it is very important to scrutinise the whole curriculum for knowledge which might be of privilege to some and might exclude others, one must also explore the ways of making the curriculum more inclusive.

The Biggs model of constructive alignment is a very popular framework of curriculum design. Through defining the goals of the curriculum in a clear manner at the outset as well as setting the degree of understanding expected for each, Biggs have argued that the teaching methods and the assessment tasks could then be selected and designed for bringing about the intended outcome. It is also to note that this model overlook the key components in this process and they are the student and the diversity along with the differences that they bring.  The enquiry based, work based, the problem based and the situated learning approaches could facilitate this. (See https://www.wlv.ac.uk/eppsme for an example of e-portfolio work-based curriculum that is designed for those who would not normally enter the HE.

In this context, Warren (2002) has proposed a 3 dimensional approach which states that the skills are embedded as the process knowledge in the subject based teaching and this makes a space within the curriculum for the students who are less prepared in order to develop the fundamental skills and where the individuals could further help with discipline specific needs. This approach eliminated the stigma of the special arrangement for the disabled or the less prepared learners.

The other inclusive approach design is based on the main principles of the universal design. Through anticipating the requirements and needs of the students up front and through designing in the flexibility, the learners could customise the curriculum by their own. The reasonable adjustments of the last minute could be minimised and a wider range of the students could participate equally.

Gardener’s Eight Intelligences

Howard Gardner, the developmental psychologist, first categorised into many different domains. In one of his books- ‘Frames of Mind: The theory of Multiple Intelligence’, he had theorised the multiple intelligence theory.

The Biggs Model of Constructive Alignment

The cognitive writing of the brain of human beings differs from person to person that equips him with a wide variety of cognitive abilities. As per Gardner, there are no proper way of measuring the human intelligence. He has suggested that a person could be very bad at mathematics but could be great in another subject such as learning various languages.

His framing of the intelligence has debunk the former concept of the subject of intelligence that had only categorised the term intelligence as a single cognitive ability. As stated by Gardner, the term intelligence even at present days, by the less studied and educated people is regarded as true as well as a logical mathematical intelligence.

This theory of him has broadened the understanding of the concept of intelligence. There are nine different types of intelligence according to him and they are:

Musical- There are some students who are mathematically smart and there are others who are very good at music. The musical smart students are regarded as the god gifted by the society as well as they could be frequently seen doing murmuring or drumming sort of things. They get continuously involved in different activities which demonstrate a melodic inclination as well as can generate, reproduce and could detect the sounds better than the normal folks. The best example to consider is Jimi Hendrix, a musically intelligent person.

Logical mathematical

Such intelligence allow the person for recognising the patterns, demonstrating the reasoning skills and generating abstract thought. It also allows an individual to be good in strategy games, puzzles, and all the related things. The sort of careers that are chosen by these people are basically the ones of detectives, mathematicians and scientists. Furthermore, General intelligence and fluid intelligence are frequently very closely interrelated to the logical mathematical intelligence.

Interpersonal

The other term that could be used for interpersonal intelligence can be “People Smart”. These individuals could go a long way and could interact well with everyone. Such intelligence enables an individual to comprehend both the verbal as well as the non-verbal communications properly. With the same, they could also comprehend various moods of the people and could regard the view point of the other people. In simpler terms, the interpersonally intelligent could walk in the shoes of another person. Such kind of intelligence is basically observed among the teachers, politicians, social workers as well as the ones who are in the role of leadership.

Bodily Kinaesthetic

The individuals who have such type of intelligence have an extra ordinary coordination of mind and body. Such individual could do exactly what they desire to do with their body. The sense of timing of theirs is excellent and that allows them to stay coordinated and graceful. The body smart people tend to do in their careers where they need to use the coordination of mind and body effortlessly. Some of the examples include dancer, athletes, surgeons etc.

Linguistic

The linguistic intelligence comprise of the capacity of the human beings for thinking and using the words. It acknowledge all the areas which allow an individual to express the complex expressions or emotions by using different languages. If anybody enjoy the work of reading, writing, crosswords or story-telling, it depicts linguistic intelligence. The learner of class 10 would probably be the individual who is with higher linguistic intelligence.

The careers that these individuals follow are usually that of the journalists, poets, novelists or something where they could make use of their language skills more thoroughly. One of the best example of this would be JK Rowling who is an extraordinary novelist along with high level of linguistic intelligence.

Intra personal skill

In contrast to the inter-personal intelligence that enables an individual to comprehend their peers, the intra-personal intelligence means the potential of knowing and understanding self. All of them are often observed to be lost in their own thoughts, and they are continuously contemplating and analysing self. Self-Smart is one of the most common terms that could be used for this. One of the most common term is the Self-smart that tend to be aware about their emotions, little sigh and self-motivated while dealing with the people.

The careers that most of the self-smart people follows are basically of philosophers or writers or of spiritual leaders.

The Spatial intelligence assist an individual in becoming significantly creative. The basic definition of this such kind of intelligence is considered as being able to see the things in a group of three dimensions. The primary abilities covers the concept of artistic, graphic skills, spatial reasoning and dynamic imagination among the similar other feats.

The persons with are with spatial intelligence are often seen as daydreaming or solving some sort of puzzles, or drawing at their young ages. Such condition could result in creative careers like becoming a sculptors, architects, pilots and painters

Secondly, the Naturalistic intelligence means the sensitivity for the various features of nature like plants, animals, rock configurations, creation of clouds, mountains and the other things as such. There are many among us who could understand all forms for flora and fauna as well as get along significantly well with the animals. I think it can be said that the folks are well-equipped with the Naturalistic intelligence.

Such kind of intelligence is of a high value, especially in the earlier days. In those days, when the human beings were depending on the skills such as hunting and farming and the individuals with high Naturalistic Intelligence used to have high chances of surving. For example, Tarzan is a best example of a Nature-Smart.

Existential

Existential Intelligence enables an individual to contemplate regarding serious questions on life or death, whereas, the rest of the people just carry on their day to day activities without thinking much about it. Such people not only explore new questions. They are also capable of tackling these questions with various different approaches and appreciable thoughts. Such intelligence is also known as Spiritual or Moral intelligence. The philosophers are the best examples of individual who are equipped with Existential intelligence.

Conclusion

All these nine domains cover each and every aspects of intelligence. The person who are with high intelligence in a domain can be entirely dumb in the other areas. However, it is also to note that it is uncommon for a person to have higher intelligence in more than only 1 domain. However, it is very rare as well.

Nearpod gives a host of a pre-made, a fully-interactive lesson cooking resource that are formed by the subject matter experts in all the schools and subject levels. With the same, the Nearpod helps the educators in importing the lessons from any type of file and begin with adding more interactive elements, video snippets or web-links to it. The teachers could then synchronise their made lessons to the devices of each and every students, casting the lessons simultaneously to every learner and able to look towards and monitor the progress of theirs all through the lesson. The users of Nearpod could also access the Nearpod 3D that provides them full rotatable 3D images that they could use in teaching. With the same, the Nearpod VR, allows them in integrating with the Smartphone VR headsets such as Google Cardboard for creating virtual field trips for the use of the learners.

Kahoot! Helps the educators to create many fun learning games for the learners that are based around many MCQ questions. After the creation of the game, the learners could make use of any device for signing-in to those game ‘room’ by use of unique code for completing the lessons and for competing against their friends. Displaying questions as well as games for primary display motivates the learners to make use of their personal device to choose their answers. It means that the group engagement as well as discussion is been promoted all through the sessions, hence creating what the group of Kahoot! call the ‘campfire moments’.

Kahoot! Also enables the learners to pursue all their goals of learning, proactively through forming their own Kahoots and attempt to beat the earlier scores as well as encouraging the class discussions all around the topic of learning.

Whether it is used as an attention grabber during the beginning of any lesson or re-energising the tactic part way by an immense revision class, it is surely a very good tool for the teachers.

Buncee – Create, Present and Share Engaging Multimedia Lessons

Buncee is a creation and presentation tool that supports the teachers as they foster the four Cs of learning among the students and they are- communication, critical thinking, creativity and collaboration. Some of the many features of Buncee comprise of over ten thousand student friendly graphics that are designed by their group to assist in making the process of learning fun, the potential to record the audios and videos directly into a Buncee, integration with the YouTube as well as Pixabay images and many more.

AdmitHub:

AdmitHub’ give all the learners with free of cost, expert guidance with SMS text as well as the integration with Messenger, Facebook. The AdmitHub’s chatbot Oli, piles the artificial intelligence along with the human guidance coaches from the individual schools. When the goals of the learners are been assessed, they have twenty four hours of access to the personal ‘virtual campus guide’ for helping them with the process of enrolment and application as well as embodying the ‘unique spirit’ of every schools.

Book Creator

With book Creator, teachers now can foster interactive as well as evolving teaching resources which could easily be shared by the students. As one of the e-resources, it is very easy to keep resources updated for each year team and make the edits on fly at the time of the lessons.

It is one of the best tools for the students to explore their creative side and produce a tangible piece of content during their learning. After the creation, the resources could be shared online with everyone worldwide. With the same, the learners could support the learning of the other learners belonging from other side of the world, or maybe even collaborate with them on a new cooking project.

In order to satisfy the learning requirement of the visually impaired, kinaesthetic and auditoria students, the resources that are personalised are designed and prepared. The slides are provided to the learners to help them in being capable of effectively follow the lessons and to attain the learning targets of theirs by the end of the entire session. The learners who undergo difficulties in hearing and are visually impaired could be benefited well by the PowerPoint presentation. The lessons could be delivered to the ones who are visually impaired effectively through bigger fonts and clear scenes in the slides to a clear perspectives of the lessons could be supplied to them. The objectives of learning sessions could be explained and elaborated effectively through presenting them in the PowerPoint slides that would be advantageous to the audio learners as well as the hearing impaired.

In order to encourage the skills of team working, I shall provide the learners with different group or team activities that could encourage them in sharing their skills and knowledge along with each other. The group activities also motivate as well as encourage the learners to be progressed in their targets of learning. The different and the personalised worksheets are supplied to the learners who are with different needs of learning so that I could examine their skills and knowledge as well as test the effectiveness of the teaching methods of mine. I shall also keep the learners occupied by supplying them different tasks and activities. The level of knowledge and the knowledge of the students could be tested and are examined by adapted worksheets that are provided during the class that would also assist the students in applying practically the things that they have learned.

The learning resources that are available in various forms in various formats and sources. There are different methods like photocopying and scanning that are available for reproducing the learning resources. As per the different learning needs of the every learner resources would be amended. Aster the amendment of the resources, the teachers could save and reproduce those in the PDF format or in audio files in MP3 format in order to store the resources carefully in hard drive with proper password could be used so that others would not be able to access it.

Reflection.

Consider how the use of technology has become such an important part of learning cooking in the class room. Technology provides finer and more individualised level of interactivity for customising the learning experience depending on the requirements of the users. It provides many new resources for the purpose of learning which overcomes both the distance as well as time.

The addition of this valuable tool, technology, into our cooking educational system is a slow process. It begins as one single idea of how to use technology in education. That one idea soon becomes noted as a meaningful addition and so more uses of technology are developed across more curriculums. Today, technology has become integrated in various ways for the instructional purposes. As more new technology is developed, the educators reflect and think on how that too must be incorporated into the classrooms.

One of the areas of cooking education that has been influenced by technology is of the “special needs” students.  There are many useful cooking technologies as well as the advanced software programs that are continued to develop assisting the learners to overcome the emotional and physical disability. These learners might be able to use computers quite easily where making use of paper, pencil and classroom participation is one of the greatest struggle for them. Technology adds sensory depth to topics. It may be as simple as playing music at the beginning of a class to set the mood for learning.  It may be as powerful as hearing a noted author read his own poetry.

Or viewing videos of historic moments in our society. Technology adds great value to the learning experience for some types of learners allowing them to see or hear what in the past was only to be discussed or imagined.

Another important use of technology is the creation of opportunities for practice and repetition. The individual students might use the simulations or the specialised software for assisting their learning of the facts and the practise of the skills that are frequently necessary until the concepts are mastered. These types of programs are tireless tutors.

Now-a-days, technology is rapidly changing the way teachers instructs and is deepening the experience of learning for the learners in different ways. The students today no longer depend on the information which the instructors present. The educators should be regarded the sole source of information for the learners. The learners should learn the ways of doing research, evaluate their findings and the process of assimilation of their learning. Internet is one of the powerful tools for springboard and for research for such type of active learning. It provides many chances and opportunities for appropriate and authentic learning experiences.

It is today being used to assist the learners to collaborate with other learners. They no longer need to learn in isolation. Through making use of discussion threads, chat and the even held computing devices, the learners now could share what knowledge they gain from the others. They could also share with other learners anywhere and everywhere across the countries.

Online Learning:

Technology is adding a sense of fluidity to education.  It is having a great impact on online instruction.  Most of the people opt for online courses for starting or for continuing their education in the face of personal obstacles or schedule conflicts. The learners are no longer bounded by time or by geographic constraints while seeking for educational opportunities.  

With proper motivation, most of the students can work full-time, and tend to the needs of their family while working for their degrees.