INSTRUCTIONS WITH TECHNOLOGIES FOR MIDDLE SCHOOL CLASSROOMS

In middle school classroom, the use of technology can be as a replacement of the whiteboards, so it will be an interactive whiteboards. It will allow the students to interact with material on the computer. For example, it shows the 3D virtual explanation given by the teachers, audio and also tactile. By serving the instruction in multimedia, digital art, music, and online discourse, it can increase the students’ enthusiasm for learning with technology and can stimulate student’s strategic thinking process because they can use a variety of communication media to express their ideas more clearly and powerfully.
There are several fun ways to use technology in the middle school classroom:

1.VIDEO STREAMING

Students in middle school are likely to watch the motion picture. Through the video streaming, the students can help them to create a clearer explanation. YouTube is one of the video streaming tools that can serve any lesson there.

2.Play Games

Give instruction by playing game using technology can keep students involved with all sorts of educational games for any subject. Students can keep track of their progress and work to complete with others to advance the next level.

3.Social Media

Students are already interested with social media outside of class, so as a teacher we can bring it into the classroom to grab the attention. We can use Facebook or Twitter to post a topic for discussion and get all students involved and interacting with one another.

4.Blogging

Prepare the middle to have their own blogs is the fun ways to give instruction in the class. Students can showcase all their hard work and help each other out by posting comments and suggestions.

5. Video Conferencing

In the age middle school’s students, they are still having no shy to speak with others. By using video conferencing, it allows students to interact their friends from overseas or even their classmate to increase their speaking abilities or communication skill.

Introducing the technology for middle school classroom is the effective way to prepare the students in the global competition. The 21st century workplace requires more skills for finding, selecting, analyzing, manipulating, modifying, and distributing information. Also create the new ways of leaning and thinking. So that, both student and teacher need more training and experience to face the global competition by learning through the technology.

Online Social Media Applications for Language Teaching & Learning

Social media is a mean of communication that allows us to participate, share, and socialize with the world, including blogs, wiki, etc. Social media can be used for business, entertainment even education. There are social media that can be used as education apps with many functions, for instance:

A.      For teaching students how to present, create and code.

This function can encourage students to improve students’ presentation skills, ability to perform the language. Those can also help them for example making videos from the website and make those into presentation. The apps are in the following:

·         TED-Ed

·         Haikudeck

·         Duolingo

·         Draw and Tell

·         Animoto

·         iMovie

·         Instructables

·         Hopscotch

·         Tinkercad

B.      For everyday classroom needs.

Classroom needs that are provided for students help them translate the target language, make it easier to make notes about the lesson without using handout, and so on. The apps are in the following:

·         Evernote

·         Explain Everything

·         Educreations

·         Oxford Dictionaries

C.       For collaborating on school projects.

These apps can help the student to communicate easily, sharing ideas, and discussing  the lesson between two or more English classes. The apps are in the following:

·         Slack
Google Apps for Education

·         Schoology

·         Mindmeister

·         Wikispaces

D.      For communicating with students (and their families).

This function will provide the opportunity to engage not only the students but also the parents. Moreover, when the parents know the improvement of their children, it will make them evaluate their children ability. Therefore, the teaching learning activity will be done as they expect. The apps are in the following

·         Remind

·         Edublogs

·         ClassDojo

E.        For giving (and receiving) student feedback.

This function makes the lesson and exercises that have been done easily scored or graded. Besides, the teacher can give advice to the student directly.

·         Edmodo
Socrative

·         Moodle

·         Google Forms

Those, the apps that has mentioned have a lot of advantages for teaching, especially English. Afterwards, it makes the teaching-learning more efficient, effective and fun.