In a time when the world is resting its pillars on technical foundation and where technology has led to major transformations, it is a prerequisite to being successful in any profession. Today technology has formed an integral part of everyone. Technological innovations have gone a long way and are no longer limited to a personal computer resting on your desk. It has equally influenced the orb of teaching. Now, a teacher is expected to be technologically sound as most of his work is done with the help of software and computers.
Let us now look into the various technical skills that an educator needs to inculcate to carve his niche in the teaching industry:
- Efficiently exploring the web: Internet has now become the information skeleton on which the world rests. Conducting effective searches are necessary for the teacher. Effective searches encircle finding the pertinent information online with the help of right keywords using right browsers.
Every teacher should be trained in this skill as it will boost their knowledge along with enhancing their skills that can be passed on to the students.
- Becoming proficient in Microsoft Office and Word basics: Apart from teaching, a professor has to handle and process large volumes of the data. The experts in this profession need to design materials, lesson planners, syllabus, and session calendars as well. Therefore, mastering the productive and class management tools like Excel, Word, Outlook and PowerPoint is essential. It will make your work easy and free of hassles. With the help of PowerPoint, you can also create quaint presentations to make the classes more interesting for the students.
Also, these tools help you to enhance your typing skills. Hence, with the potent use of the spreadsheets, presentations, and word processing, you can communicate well to the class resort to the effective mode of education.
- Flexible to pursue new technical understanding: To keep up with the changing times, you need to learn and evolve continuously updating yourself with the new skills and knowledge. Willing to learn is a major quality that is needed to gain new insight. You need to be humble enough and at times depend on your student to learn the nuances of technology. As an educator, you need to persevere and try out new things to grow in your career.
- Social Media savvy: It is an efficacious medium to network and connect with students and teachers. It has taken the whole world under its purview and has its impact on every industry. Being on social media leads to a better student-teacher relationship strengthening their bond. Major platforms like Twitter, FaceBook, Instagram, Tumbler and Pinterest to name aids to better communication. It also facilitates easy sharing of problems and exercises.
- Merging via Youtube and Blogs: Effective sharing tools like YouTube and blogs can be a reliable source to impart knowledge. Video generation and creating awareness through personal blogging will help you to make a digital portfolio easy to document your skills.
- Making optimal use of the mobile device: With the smart devices ruling the techno world, more and more people even students are resorting to smartphones and tablets to access information from online anytime, anywhere. These devices should be used not for just playing games or watching movies but also to gain additional knowledge.
- Basic E-mailing: Teachers should be well versed with the basics of e-mailing that include attachment of files, downloading them, e-mail formats to communicate and exchange materials easily with the students and colleagues. Organizing and neatly categorizing the emails in specific folders is also important to increase productivity.
- Well-versed with major presentation software exclusively: Apart from PowerPoint there is a variety of presentation software that creates some interesting animation. These generate a technologically advanced classroom environment making the boring lessons attractive for the students.
- Just Google: Google is the first word that comes to the mind when we think the internet. This search engine giant has produced certain applications which ease the mode of working and sharing as not everybody can access the Microsoft Office products.
- Getting accustomed to the cloud services: Cloud services facilitated easy storage of documents providing ample space for the same. You can store heavy files in the cloud storage software which allows collaborative sharing.
Teachers can make the best use of these cloud storage services to share files and materials with a restricted community. This can ease up the process of learning through a great extent.
Computer education is vital and hence it is made mandatory subject since primary education. This has created profound opportunities for computer teachers. If you are aspiring to be a prolific educator then acquiring the aforementioned skills is necessary.