What are your strengths as a teacher? Your students and colleagues could probably name a few, but sometimes, naming our own strengths and embracing our teaching style can be a struggle. Because after all, when you understand your unique teaching style, you can choose how to best integrate technology into your classroom.
As a classroom teacher, I tried my best to be adaptable and make sure students had access to resources that provided a deeper learning experience. Although I don’t know that I would have labeled this as a strength at the time, when looking back at my teaching career, this was clearly my teaching superpower. I was always searching for ways to help students find authentic connections to the world around them so that our learning materials were relevant to their everyday lives while opening them up to a world of possibilities. To help accomplish this goal, I loved finding new ways to use technology in my classroom to reach every student.
Harnessing Your Teaching Style
ViewSonic Education developed a Teaching Superpower Quiz that helps educators discover and embrace their unique strengths as teachers. I’ve shared this quiz with oodles of educators because it is a fantastic way to spark a conversation about meaningful technology integration that aligns with your values as an educator. If you want to integrate technology authentically, you can connect your choice of digital strategies and supporting tools directly to your superpower.
You might not shout out your superpower at the start of every lesson, but you can use it behind the scenes in your instructional planning. Perhaps you can leverage your superpower as you set professional goals this year. You might also share your teaching superpower with a teacher on your planning team or a mentor you work with. By harnessing your teaching superpower, you can narrow down the sometimes overwhelming amount of technology choices in schools and pick the digital tools and strategies that align with your unique strengths.
Identifying Your Primary Teaching Style
When I talk to teachers about integrating technology into their classrooms, I share a handful of general recommendations. It’s important to pick resources that align with your student’s needs, such as having voice-to-text features for students who need dictation support. You’ll also want to have tools that are easy for students to log into. This often means choosing tools that are compatible with an existing learning management system.
One thing I also suggest to teachers when sorting through lists of potential technology tools is to choose resources that complement your teaching style. But what does this look like in action? If you don’t already know your primary teaching style, the first step is to discover it. You can explore this in fun and engaging ways, like taking a quiz, such as this one from ViewSonic. Let’s look at four teaching styles so you can determine which one best describes you or a colleague you support.
Problem-Solving
Educators with the problem-solving superpower have a remarkable ability to break down complex concepts into simpler, more digestible pieces. They understand that not every student learns in the same way, so they identify the core elements of a problem. Then, they design hands-on, memorable learning experiences that foster critical thinking and problem-solving skills. In other words, these teaching superheroes take on the role of a demonstrator to model different concepts for students.
Inspiration
If inspiration is your superpower, you have a unique ability to ignite curiosity in your students. Oftentimes, these teachers can spark interest by connecting learning to real-world situations, making lessons engaging and relevant. Their classrooms become a space where ideas are exchanged, challenged, and expanded upon, as collaboration is at the core of their teaching style. Teachers with this superpower are great facilitators, adept at creating spaces where where students learn that knowledge is not just something to be acquired, but something to be constructed together.
Adaptability
Educators with the superpower of adaptability blend different teaching methods to meet the diverse needs of their students. They transition between direct instruction and student-led exploration to make sure every learner is engaged and supported. These teachers have a flexible approach that allows them to tailor lessons to the evolving needs of their students. Taking a hybrid approach, teachers with the adaptability superpower are proactive and anticipate the needs of their students, and adapt their teaching accordingly.
Empowerment
Teachers with the empowerment superpower cultivate a sense of autonomy in their students. They create a learning environment where students are encouraged to take initiative and explore their interests. By setting clear expectations and providing the right tools, these educators guide students toward becoming independent thinkers who take ownership of their learning. They often adopt a delegator teaching style and understand the power of collective learning and encourage students to work together, share ideas, and support one another.
Adapting Technology to Your Teaching Style
Now that we have explored these four teaching styles, let’s discuss how you can adapt technology to fit your approach. There are many authentic ways to leverage the power of technology while honoring your teaching style.
For the Problem Solver
For problem solvers, you’re going to want to demonstrate and break down big ideas in ways that resonate with students. A fantastic way to do so is to create and display visuals like diagrams on your screen and make them easy for students to access. As a classroom teacher, I loved using an interactive whiteboard to make sure I could create visuals for students that were color-coded and easy for them to see from all corners of the classroom. I would often take a screenshot or export these visuals and add them to a shared folder so students could access them later.
Tools like Seesaw are great for doing this, allowing you to upload these visuals so students can revisit them on their own devices. Or, you might want to try myViewBoard’s Magic Box, which is perfect for creating flowcharts and demonstrating complex ideas.
For the Inspirer
If you thrive on inspiring your students, consider sharing virtual field trips with students to help them better understand the world outside of their classroom. I’ve spent time working with teachers in classrooms across the United States helping them facilitate virtual experiences like this for their students. There is something special about giving students the ability to connect virtually with an expert who can take them through a museum space they might not be able to visit otherwise.
One of my favorite tools for virtual field trips is Google Arts & Culture, thanks to their interactive panoramas or walkable street views. During the Olympics this summer, I was able to travel to the top of the Eiffel Tower even though I hadn’t stepped foot in Paris. But virtual tours are just one of the many ways you can use technology to enhance classroom interactivity. With a tool like ClassSwift, you can seamlessly create interactive learning content that blends engaging lesson materials with the subjects you’re exploring in a new unit of study.
For the Adaptable Educator
Finding the “just right” resources for students can be challenging, but as an adaptable educator, technology offers the ultimate solution. With the right tech tools, you can delve into vast online repositories of lesson materials and explore innovative ways to create differentiated learning experiences for your students. When I first had access to iPads in my classroom as a fifth-grade teacher, we didn’t have an LMS to quickly get links to students. Instead, I set up differentiated digital resources for specific groups of students, accessible via a QR code. This meant they could find the content that was perfect for them with a quick scan.
You can go above and beyond this simple (but powerful) use of technology to adapt learning experiences to the needs of your students. For example, you might use an AI-powered tool like Diffit or Brisk Teaching to create supplemental resources for your students. Or you might use ClassSwift‘s AI features to receive real-time, personalized instructional suggestions as you use technology to adapt to your students’ changing needs.
For the Empowering Educator
If empowering students is your superpower, digital tools will surely come in handy. Educators with this teaching style can bring learning to life by using technology to give students access to templates, enable collaboration, or block out time for peer feedback. Giving students access to collaborative spaces is just one step in empowering them. You’ll want to carve out time to help them understand best practices when working together, like leaving comments that are helpful, kind, and specific enough for their peers to take action on.
As a big fan of activity templates, I’m always looking for tools that set students up for success. You might create your own graphic organizers for students using Canva for Education and share them as PDFs or as paper printouts. You might also love the templates in Book Creator and use them for projects throughout the school year. ViewSonic Originals provides templates for student projects, too, and you might turn on the myViewBoard Participate Mode that facilitates collaborative learning.
Navigating EdTech This School Year
Understanding your unique teaching style is more than just recognizing what you’re good at. It’s about harnessing that strength to create meaningful, impactful learning experiences for your students. Whether your superpower lies in adaptability, problem-solving, inspiration, or empowerment, knowing what you bring to the classroom allows you to incorporate technology strategically.
As you embrace your teaching strengths, you can make decisions that are authentic to your teaching philosophy and help students connect with content at the same time.