ESE ICT Blog Post 1

ENHANCED SCHOOL EXPERIENCE:

PREPARATORY TASK FOR ICT FOR MEANINGFUL LEARNING

Enhanced School Experience: Classroom Observations of ICT Use

(I)                           Specific Observations

School Name:  Mayflower Secondary School

Class: 1G

Profile of the class: This class from the normal academic stream and consists of 30 girls and 8 boys. Most of them are mandarin-speaking and are unable to comprehend difficult words used in class. They are generally very responsive in class, because they love to share their thoughts and opinions. They enjoy group work, because it gives them an opportunity to collaboratively work together with their friends though some of the students are a little shy and reluctant to stand up to speak in class.

Subject: Literature

What ICT tools are used in the lesson? The tools used were powerpoint slides and youtube videos.

Describe how ICT is used for teaching and learning in the lesson: Being a normal academic class, my mentor mentioned that these students prefer to be engaged through less convention means like pure verbal explanations from the teacher. The students from this class enjoy watching videos and hands-on work like project discussions and work. Such methods are better ways to keeping them engaged in the learning process. In the words of my mentor, she says she would “trigger” their thinking process and interest in the lesson objective/theme/poem by playing a few videos from youtube for them to observe. The videos are selectively chosen to ensure that the students are able to relate to the content of the video with their own lives as well as the lesson objective/theme/poem of the day. These two to three videos which my mentor has selected would be played at the start of every lesson. Thereafter, she would guide the students with some leading questions so that they are able to perceive the relevance between the video, their own lives and the lesson objective/theme/poem. The lesson would be followed by the teacher reading the poem and explaining the instructions of the group work task from the powerpoint slides. Thereafter, she would get the students to form into groups, and the students will discuss and share their opinions. This process would encourage the students to think critically, because they are required to come up with their own answers and questions in response to the task given. Thereafter, the students would have to present their findings to the class.

(II)                        General Observation:

How do teachers in the school feel about the use of ICT for teaching and learning? (For this question, you may want to speak to the HOD/ICT and other teachers you know in the school.)

The HOD of ICT felt that ICT is an integral part of teaching and learning in the cotemporary education landscape. He feels that the trend towards global computer literacy meant that the teachers educating the students from this current generation, the digital natives, had to be IT-savvy in order to engage them. He cites the examples of e-learning, online lectures and tutorials as ways in which the students are able to engage in self-directed learning. He also mentioned how the school uses facebook as a platform for the students to come together and share the additional knowledge they discover with their peers, thus fulfilling the goal of developing collaborative learning.  In this way, the students will be able to be ‘teachers’ themselves and facilitate their own learning process. However, one of my mentors shared that she mildly disagreed with what the HOD of ICT felt because she believes that the self-directed and collaborative learning processes can only happen when the students are self-motivated. She cites the example of the students from the normal academic stream, and she thinks that these students are less likely to want to look for information and share with their friends because they would perceive it as “work”. However, she conceded that using ICT as an approach to facilitate both teaching and learning would be more interesting for the students and they would be more engaged as well because of all the visual and audio elements involved in an ICT lesson.