Creative Interactive Use of Technology in the Classroom

Nursing educators are challenged to provide high quality education for their students. They must reflect on their teaching methods and continue to improve the educational environment in order to achieve the best teaching outcome. One approach is to incorporate creative teaching strategies such as using technology to engage students and encourage them to participate to improve their learning experience. Technology has transformed nursing education and that required nursing educators to consider incorporating technology into traditional nursing classrooms as a mechanism to enhance students’ learning. When technology is used in teaching-learning strategies that would stimulate students’ critical thinking, facilitate students’ interaction, and promote student participation in the classroom, which allow students to be active learners. Technology enables nursing educators to create an environment of active, authentic, applied, experiential learning.

To be an effective nurse educator in the age of technology, I have to take advantage of the available technological resources to transform traditional teaching-learning strategies to be technological enhanced teaching-learning strategies. This will create the appropriate environment that encourage nursing students to actively participate in authentic assignments and be fully engaged in deep learning. In addition, most of technology-enhanced learning strategies and activities make nursing students use all their senses as well as their critical thinking skills. Also technology help nursing educators to connect the knowledge learned in classroom with the practicum and clinical, which I believe is essential to bridge the theory-practice gap and stimulate the students’ applied learning.

One of the method that could change the students’ learning experience in the classroom is serious games. This tool help the nursing educator to use simulation in classroom with no need to move to the a simulation lab. The technology of serious games promotes students’ learning using all their senses and stimulates students’ critical thinking. Also, since students can play these serious games using any web browser anywhere, that will motivate students to spend more time on tasks in order to mastering the skills. This tool will let nursing students practice in fear-free, harm-free environment to be prepared to work as professional nurses. The Serious Games Association website includes online resources that make using serious games in teaching more accessible for educators.   

Technology has changed many things in education. For sure things changed to be better. Technology facilitates teaching and learning which improved educators' and students' experiences. Technology enable educators to provide feedback to their students easier and faster. In the age of technology, the educator does not need to wait until her/his class time to meet with the students to provide them feedback on a submitted assignment. The educator can use different tools such as e-mail, Skype, or Voki to share their written and audio- visual comments.

An example of the successful use of technology in higher education is The University of Toledo which applied the technology of Echo360 Active Learning to improve the learning experience and lead students to success. Echo360 Active Learning is a technology that aims to change the education through blended learning solutions which designed to strengthen teaching-learning methods, promote student-teacher interaction, and improve student learning outcomes.