Technology has changed the way education is imparted. Traditional classroom teaching methodologies have undergone an immense transformation as modern-day pays more emphasis to hands-on learning and practical approaches, rather than text bookish knowledge. Stimulating experiences within the boundaries of the classroom and interaction with the outside world, open-up new horizons for students to explore and form meaningful connections.

Thanks to digitally integrated schools, every possible information on any subject is at one’s fingertips. Gone are those days when students had to visit the computer lab and wait for their turn to browse through the net or practice their techie skills. As of today, every classroom is enabled by WiFi powering tabs, laptops, and smartboards. Amongst the most technologically advanced nations in the world, UAE makes its way to the top 20 list. Many K-12 schools in Dubai utilized advanced tools to support teaching aids. Let us understand what are the must-haves in every class today.

Smartboards

The teaching-learning experience is enriched with the use of smartboards that project audio-visual elements which create a lasting impression on the students. Learners can even interact with the smartboard by using a stylus or their finger to zoom into an image, express themselves by drawing shapes, and highlighting texts on a presentation. Even group projects are made easy using smartboards, as teams collaborate and present their ideas in a creative way before the class.

Smart Tables

Just as a Smartboard is mounted on the wall, usually maneuvered by the teacher, a smart table is individualized for every student. These digital display tables present the same information on the Smartboards, to the learner’s table, thereby allowing them to have a personalized learning experience. The Smart Tables also present various activities based on the school’s curriculum to test the child’s knowledge, in a fun and interactive way. Classmates can even collaborate with each other to work out their projects and brainstorm the way forward.

Digital Textbooks

Aside from being handy, digital textbooks are considered eco-friendly, and prevent cutting down of trees, thereby securing a greener tomorrow. The digitalization of paperback study books have many advantages such as; it saves on money for printing 100s of books each year and then dealing with discarding them at the end of the academic cycle. Digital material is available for access at anytime and anywhere on handheld devices such as tablets and mobile phones. Even children are relieved as they no more need to carry heavy loaded bags with books. Also, the 3D images, diagrams, and interesting animations with characters from the digital textbooks, make learning more fun.

Collaborative Platform

Many educational institutes adopt ERP and LMS system to create a connected platform with all stakeholders; such as parents, teachers, students, and admin staff. Next Learning Platform is one such integrated tool that allows teachers to assign homework to students digitally and track their performance over the course of the year. It also streamlines the admission process by making it paperless. To add to this, it even offers award-winning digital content covering CBSE, ICSE, IGCSE, and other board curriculum, in accordance with Bloom’s Taxonomy. In short, from administration, to academics, everything is taken care of thanks to the Next Learning Platform’s smart solutions. If you are an educator from GCC or Middle East, and wish to learn more about NLP’s offerings, visit out website https://knowledge-hub.com/

3D Printers

Learning about the Earth’s core? Studying about how the human heart functions? How about letting students design and print their own models? Instead of being told where the lower chamber of the heart is positioned, let children figure it out by practicing it on a 3D model. A boring subject like Math, can be made interesting by printing 3D shapes and learning about fractions through pieces of pizza printed live in class.

To conclude, setting up a classroom in the 21st century does not merely end at arranging desks, chairs, and a chalkboard, it means investing in creativity and digitalization that enables young minds to place their best foot forward.

Contact us

When children step into a Toddler environment at age 1.5 years their minds are like blank slates, with only limited information picked-up from conversations at home with parents. Stepping into a pre-school introduces children to a whole new world of learning. They observe, communicate, and learn to behave well in a social setting.

Tiny tots often replicate the adult’s actions and are very observant. Therefore, in a kindergarten setting, the teacher must be a role-model and adopt a disciplined way of action to inculcate the same values in the classroom.

Children’s brains are like sponges, they absorb information that is thrown at them with ease. Science has proven that maximum brain development that is 90% happens by 6 years of age. Therefore, to make them well-rounded individuals in the future, children need to get an exposure to numerous activities.

Parents encourage their children to participate in music, art, physical fitness, and dance, even before they start to master their ABC’s. Computer literacy is another skill that a kindergarten child is rapidly being exposed to. The world is becoming increasingly dependent on technology and people are coming even closer, thanks to the use of the web.

The question is that, can you teach a 3-year-old child to connect with the fascinating world of technology and discover colors, numbers, vocabulary and shapes, from a tab?

Well, the answer is definitely an assertive. Parents are amazed at how quick their pre-schoolers learn to ‘click’ and ‘navigate’ on their path of self-discovery. Learning-by-doing themselves is a way of instilling confidence in youngsters and they get a sense of pride when they accomplish a task.

Technokids has a deep understanding of the learning capabilities of children and thereafter designed different training modules to teach them the basics in an interesting manner. To support the learning of numbers, colors, shapes, and letters, taught by the teacher in class, children are given the freedom to experiment and use their imagination to create meaningful projects on the TechnoKids app. Have a look at what each of the module focuses on.

Techno Colors

Dive into the world of color with Techno Colors and transform your kid into a budding artist. Techno Color teaches kids the following:

• Color challenge: Using the drawing tool, children themselves draw patterns, sceneries and add their choice of color to it.
• Shades of color: Matching shades of color needs children to identify and pair the appropriate color shades together.
• Feeling color: Different colors are associated with emotions and when children choose a color it demonstrates what mood they are in.
• A colorful day: Children add color to the bright morning skyline.
• Colorful music: This is a unique activity where children listen to music and paint a picture on the melody of the sound.

Learning objective to kids by using Techno Color

• Identifying different colors
• Lean about the various shades
• Use the mouse to click, drag, hold, and double click
• Learn to draw with tools like pencil, marker tool, crayon, and chalk
• Choose stickers, add sounds, and paste animations
• Add text to the picture
• Create artwork to express mood

Techno Numbers

Develop the knack of number recognition amongst your kids with Techno Numbers. Techno Numbers teaches kids the following:

• Number challenge: Engaging number challenges that intrigue an interest in the child for learning math passionately.
• Numerous numbers: Counting, tracing, and painting numbers helps the child practice, while having fun.
• Big book of numbers: Avail the student number counting workbook along with the kit.
• Stylish numbers: Children sort, count, and draw numbers in an artistic way, from one to ten.

Learning objective to kids by using Techno Number

• Develops recognition of numbers from 1 to 10
• Counting skills enhance
• Children learn to locate number keys on keyboard
• Creativity increases with drawing tool
• Easily print the artwork to flaunt your child’s work

Techno Shapes

Children visit the computer lab and work on the Kid Pix tool by Techno Shapes to learn about the basic shapes and geometric patterns. Techno Shapes teaches kids the following:

• Connecting Dots: Children join the dots in a sequential manner to make shapes.
• Shape Design: Children experience a shape Art Show and display their creativity to replicate Geometric shapes.
• Shape Detective: Put up the child’s thinking caps on as they are on a mission to detect various shapes.
• Lovely Lines: Draw and paint lines with different curvatures to form artistic patterns.

Learning objective to kids by using Techno Shapes

• Identify basic shapes
• Select appropriate drawing and painting tool
• Create a dot to dot design
• Use patterns or stamp to draw geometric shapes

Contact us

When children begin to learn essential skills at school whether they are curriculum-based skills or extra-curricular ones, it shapes them into bright individuals. Reading, writing, conversing, public speaking, debates, art and craft, sport, performing arts are some of the vital activities that nurture them so that they can have well-rounded personalities. Of course, this is just the beginning and there are infinite possibilities ahead of them to be achieved. One such important skill to attain in early education is to know how to use a dictionary.

The basic function, why a person would use a dictionary, is to look up the meaning of a word. Words in a dictionary are arranged alphabetically, so as for them to be found easily by the user scavenging for the meaning of a word. The moment someone finds any word in a dictionary, it will show its meaning, they can check the spelling, see its pronunciation, and the dictionary mentions the part of speech for the word. Moreover, it will show another part of speech related to the searched word. E.g., Resolve – is a verb, which means to make up one’s mind. The noun for the same word would be resolution and the adjective for it would be resolved.

Dictionaries are available in many languages. There are several dictionaries that help translate a word into another language. They also explain the origin of certain words. A dictionary helps to understand synonyms and antonyms of words, which have similar and opposite meanings respectively. There are picture dictionaries as well for little children and those are very illustrative with attractive pictures to help children understand the meaning of several things. In a game of Scrabble, which is an excellent word game to build up one’s vocabulary, a dictionary comes in handy when there is a common argument related to the spelling of a word which people would get confused with and the dictionary solves all the queries and the players can enjoy and play an error free game.

So, as we have seen, there are tremendous benefits a dictionary can offer and when a child understands the alphabetical order and the pattern of how to use a dictionary and find a word, they will gradually become a pro at it and it will become the best tool for them to improve their language, grammar, pronunciation, strengthen their vocabulary, enhance their writing skills and they will be able to speak confidently and carry themselves in great spirit with positive and smart body language, as it boosts their morale as well as their mental health. Having a strong command over any language, will not only help them in school but outside as well and will empower them in future competitive exams.

These are great assets for a child to have and they need to constantly keep working on themselves with amazing parents and teachers by their side for them to prosper in life. English is used worldwide and is the most spoken language and they must definitely master it but on the other hand it is also crucial to sharpen one’s regional or second languages. If you are one to be staying in Dubai or in another Emirate of the UAE, or in any Middle East or a GCC country, then we would urge the parent to polish the child in the local languages like Arabic and many more, where one resides. Here these non-English dictionaries will help a lot with such languages and to get a grip over them. There are English to other language convertible dictionaries and vice versa available to help the user translate the words and help themselves.

Apart from knowing English and local languages, it is imperative and supremely helpful to learn other foreign languages as well like French, German or Spanish for example that when the child gets to study abroad, it would really help them and even on a regular holiday to a foreign location, a dictionary comes in handy at all times. Not only should the adults but the children must carry them in their pockets or backpacks. Today with the internet and online search engines like Google, our gen-next children are very intelligent and they would easily find the meaning of a word online but what a traditional dictionary can do and is capable of is beyond imagination. It is essential to learn the crux the hard way around and then you will see your child rise and shine. Prep your children to use dictionaries more often, play games with them, do fun word searches and interesting activities that will excite them and they will use them.

“Reading Eggs” makes learning to read interesting and engaging for kids, with great online reading games and activities. And it really works! Children truly love the games, songs, golden eggs, and other rewards which, along with feeling proud of their reading, really motivate children to keep exploring and learning.

Contact us

In the words of Jim Rohn, “Success is neither magical nor mysterious. Success is the natural consequence of consistently applying the basic fundamentals.” There is no shortcut to achieving anything in life. To be able to master something, whether it is, to run, swim, sing, dance or speak English proficiently, you have to learn the basics and then go on to becoming a champion and the learning must never stop. English is the most spoken language in the world. To have a natural command over it and to speak it fluently, one has to first get a strong grip over the grammar that forms its crux and an important component of which are the 8 parts of speech such as noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction, and interjection. These indicate how the word functions in meaning as well as grammatically within a sentence. In simple terms, sentences are made up of many words and each of these words fall into a category of part of speech.

The English language does get tricky and there are certain words that can belong to more than one part of speech because of their ability to have a different meaning in various circumstances. The learner has to identify them. Of course, with practice one can effortlessly become a pro at acing them and to exactly know where to use which part of speech and then forming sentences will be a breeze. There is wonderful study material available online and one such site that we recommend to visit is knowledge-hub.com to get great insights on English grammar and shop for online lessons. In the meanwhile, let us understand parts of speech in detail and how they can be used in sentences.

Noun

A noun is a word used to describe a thing or a person. There can be proper or common nouns. Nouns can also be singular or plural. Capital letters are used to denote names of proper nouns which are names of people and places. E.g., My dog Kino lives with us at our home in Dubai. Common nouns are dog and home and they are singular nouns. Proper nouns are Kino and Dubai. E.g., The residential properties at Palm Jumeirah in Dubai are beautiful. The noun in plural here is properties.

Pronoun

A pronoun is a word that is replaced by a noun in a sentence. They could be words like I, you, he, she, etc. E.g., Sheikha Manal bint Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum is a renowned politician of the United Arab Emirates and she is the President of the Dubai Women Establishment. The pronoun here is she that gets replaced by her name when it gets mentioned twice in the same sentence.

Verb

A verb is an action word that describes an activity that someone is doing or tasks people are engaging with. E.g., My parents are travelling to the Middle East for a month-long holiday and will be visiting Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, and Oman and will be meeting friends and family across these places. The verbs here are travelling, visiting, and meeting that denote action.

Adjective

An adjective is a word that further describes a proper or a common noun or a thing in a sentence. The descriptive adjective could either be in a good or a bad light that is talking about the noun. E.g., I love the Ferrari World at Abu Dhabi which always gives us an enjoyable experience and it is the most spectacular theme park in the United Arab Emirates. The adjectives here are enjoyable and spectacular which describe this place in a good way. E.g., Littering on the streets of Dubai is awful and one is penalised with a hefty fine for doing so. The adjectives here are awful and hefty that are used to describe the unpleasant activity of littering.

Adverb

An adverb is a word that describes a verb or an adjective or modifies them. Usually adverbs end in -ly. There are some adverbs that do not end with -ly such as also, never, often, very, too, again, etc. There are some interrogative adverbs that are used in a question such as why, when, where, how, etc. E.g., The Burj Khalifa in Dubai is absolutely stunning. Here the adverb is absolutely which is a word ending in -ly and the adjective is stunning which is describing the Burj Khalifa. E.g., Apart from living in the UAE, people often migrate to other GCC countries like Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, and Qatar. Here the adverb is often which is followed by the verb migrate. E.g., When are you moving to Dubai? This is a question and the adverb here is when and the verb is moving.

Preposition

A preposition is a word that links a noun to another word or it links a noun to a pronoun. Prepositions can be to, on, at, after, etc. E.g., Ayesha went to school on Wednesday. As we can see, to and on are the prepositions here linking the proper noun Ayesha to the common noun school and the proper noun Wednesday in the sentence.

Conjunction

Conjunctions are words that join other words, sentences, or clauses. Conjunctions are but, and, or, while, etc. E.g., Rubina and Farhana enjoyed themselves at Ski Dubai while skiing and playing with the snow. The conjunctions in this sentence are, and that comes twice and while.

Interjection

Interjections are very short exclamation words that are used in a sentence to express sudden emotions of surprise, joy, hurt, greeting, etc. E.g., Wow! I love this present. This is someone being surprised and happy while receiving a gift. E.g., Ouch! I mistakenly pricked my finger while stitching. This sentence describes hurt being the emotion for getting pricked by the needle. E.g., Hi! How are you doing? A simple greeting is being expressed with this exclamation in the sentence.

‘Highlights Library’ is a global media brand with major presence in Dubai and UAE, and a digital reading platform that fosters a child’s love for reading. With thousands of books at their fingertips, students can enjoy a world of imagination and exploration personalized for them. It supports children’s many interests through stories, videos, and rewards that engage and delight. Spanning 10 content areas and 30 reading levels, ‘Highlights Library’ allows children to choose what they read and thus they are excited to discover even more books. If you are a resident of the Middle East or GCC Countries, subscribe to the Highlights platform via our link https://knowledge-hub.com/highlights/ 

Contact us