by Andreea Dumitru » Tue Feb 19, 2013 8:45 pm
Ah, the eternal battle between old and new... Well, the best way is probably a combination of both approaches. It's not productive to qualify one approach as being better than another. It is, however, apt to say that some ways of teaching are better suited for some topics, while others work more efficiently on other types. In other words, the "traditional approach", with the standard materials of notebooks, textbooks, boards, works for most topics, and has the added advantage of being time-saving and not pretentious. Innovative approaches, such as using short films, documentaries, educational software, still have the drawback of being time-consuming and needing some preparation beforehand, mostly for the technical aspects, as well as carrying the risk of having various bits of vital equipment breaking down at the most inappropriate moments. In an ideal future, when all classrooms have the necessary gadgets, and teachers only work with groups of students of about 15, and each subject is allocated more than 2 classes per week, it would make perfect sense to focus more on using the innovative methods, which definitely capture the attention of the students more, and are the more attractive learning experience. In the meantime, we must content ourselves to use a combination of traditional and innovative approaches, in an attempt to make learning easy, fun, and generating durable results.