FACULTY OF EDUCATION AND SOCIAL SCIENCE

CES 3238

TEACHING PRACTICUM

MR.LIM SEONG PEK

JOURNAL

TEACHING AIDS:

ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES

Name Matric Number

Thivany A/P Manogaran 4183007251

 Teaching Aids: Advantages And Disadvantages

These teaching aids are effective in graphically explaining a subject & also encourage a student
to do a lot of research for presenting a project. Audio-visual equipment which involves
projectors is effectively used to present diagrams, animated images, and graphs. Teaching &
learning are both made more enjoyable through modern teaching aids of the technological kind.
Students do tend to be more attentive as the audio or visual or audio-visual aids makes them
engrossed in what is being taught.

Devices like touch-screen gadgets make learning more accessible and help students to
understand a subject as complex and easy to understand summaries of such subjects provided by
the device's apps. Teaching aids like animated slide shows saves time for subjects. For example,
instead of the teacher constantly drawing a diagram of a flower to explain the parts of the flower
or of the brain to explain its various features, time is saved by showing a slide show and simply
explaining in online teaching and it is very useful especially in this covi-19 pandemic time.

From my experience through these 16 weeks, teaching aids are very helpful for me for each of
the lessons I have taught. I will always make sure that the lessons teaching aids are always
creative and useful for my students. Both classes of my students always like my teaching aids
which I created with powerpoint by using animation, trigger, and effects. In my opinion I felt
that most of the students show interest when learning new lessons because of creative and
interesting teaching aids, which attract their intention through learning. Sometimes, I will be
prepared with extra teaching aid. If the students feel any of the teaching aid is easy or I have
more time on teaching, I will use the backup teaching aid which I have already prepared before
the lessons.

However, are such technological devices really necessary? Some of the schools are
implementing all the handmade teaching aids to technological devices which is a bit tough when
you are teaching the students in physical classes, because technological devices will be very
helpful when we do online classes and we might be having issues midway when we use it in
physical classes. For instance, the lesson time will be disturbing when the device faces any
problems and the teacher needs more time to adjust it and so on. From my experience, I have
taught both classes in physical classes for almost two weeks and I felt that technological teaching
aids are a bit hard to use in physical classes where worksheets,textbooks and exercises which are
handmade by the teacher will be very useful for the time given for each lesson.

The biggest disadvantages to the use of modern teaching aids such as technological devices
investment costs are expensive, even though the schools prepare the devices it can be a huge cost
for setting it up and it is also a barrier to student-teacher interactions. Then there is the factor of
learning how to use the teaching aids properly & effectively. Not all teachers can grasp
technology very quickly so this involves a need to train them first. Software can become
redundant as a new one takes over or some hardware's features can become more sophisticated.
Hence the need to also constantly train teachers to understand new developments of teaching
aids.

One also tends to forget that teaching aids used generally may be ineffective for children with
special learning needs. It is important to have unique teaching aids for those who are slow
learners, those with visual disabilities. Such children often get left out of the enjoyable process of
learning because they may not be able to quickly grasp what is being taught through fancy
gadgets & devices. In my experience,the modern teaching aids are easy for me to handle but
most of the students don’t have a stable internet connection to even excess the classes online
during this pandemic time. Most of the students are still using their parents smartphones and the
students are still struggling to catch up with the lessons being taught on an everyday basis. There
are also students who are not able to engage during the classes when I am asking questions
because of not stable internet connections, the microphone is under repair and their house
environment surrounding noises.

From my experience, I felt that teaching aids which are unique and creative and handmade by

their own teachers, will be most useful and also the teachers will handle it if the teaching aids
have any errors or mistakes. But, the modern technology teaching aids can be used only in online

classes and also the teachers need to be prepared for the adjustments of the problems and also

should have stable internet connection when using modern technology teaching aids for the

students. I do prefer both teaching aids as useful but there are some barriers which are suitable to

use based on environments.