Pre-session Task 1: Enhanced School Experience, Preparatory Task For ICT For Meaningful Learning

Enhanced School Experience: Classroom Observations of ICT Use

(I)                      Specific Observations

School Name:  Innova Junior College

Class: 1111C

Profile of the class: Subject combination is H2 Mathematics, H2 Chemistry and H2 Biology. Class is composed of students with mixed abilities. There is one retained students in this class. This student has good attitude and is seen to be pro-active towards his learning, asking targeted questions. Girls and boys tend to keep to their respective gender groups when choosing their seats. The girls group may be observed to form two distinctive subgroups with one group being very attentive and participating actively in class while the other group prefers to stay reserved in their response to questions posed to them.

Subject: H2 Mathematics

What ICT tools are used in the lesson? Tablet PC with SmartView software (graphing calculator emulator) and windows journal is used. Projector is used to display prepared materials on the screen. Internet connection available at the teacher’s work desk is also used to the school’s learning management system (LMS).

Describe how ICT is used for teaching and learning in the lesson. At the start of the lesson, announcement and reminders for students were prepared beforehand, written on windows journal and displayed on the screen. Students are then instructed to take down the reminders. The teacher then started with going through some of the main points of the chapters and important things to note using the white board. Although the screen blocked up half of the white board, the remaining white board space is still large enough for the purpose of going through mains points. As the lesson begin, the teacher has prepared beforehand, blank space below each of the tutorial questions, so that she can work through the solution using the tablet PC together with the students. For certain questions, students work is selected to be shown to the class and corrected. The teacher switched between image projector and laptop display, interchangeably, depending on whether the tutorial question is hard or simple. Solution of students for simpler questions are usually selected to be flashed on the screen for students to check, while the teacher will usually go through solution of harder step by step using tablet PC. The mathematics department uses heavily on the online learning management system (LMS) as a platform for students to view online notes and do online assessments and quizzes. Towards the end of the lesson, the teacher used the internet connection, to assess LMS and reminded the students to complete the online tasks. The LMS allowed teachers to trace students’ participation on online task and monitor their performance. The connection to LMS allowed the teacher to clearly show the class who has completed the task and who has yet to attempt the online tasks. This greatly simplifies monitoring processes for teachers.

(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.) 

Teachers in Innova Junior College are very positive towards the use of ICT for teaching and learning. Teachers are well adapted and well oriented towards harnessing ICT resources in teaching and learning, owing to the successes of ICT Master plans 1 and 2. As the Centre of Excellence in new media and arts, teachers are also very proud of the school’s achievements in the area of applying ICT to every aspect of students’ development. ICT is regarded as a tool for the school to promote self-directed learning in students.

Some teachers pointed out that self-directed learning is very important for students as content knowledge is easily accessible via the internet and students do not require teachers for content knowledge. Therefore student must be self driven to acquire information he needs or is interested in. Teachers play more of a facilitating role in this aspect, guiding students in finding the answers to their questions by themselves. Teachers must be cognizant about this point, understand that students are digital natives and be aware of their learning profile. Teachers need to tap into students’ interests and this involves heavy usage of ICT tools and platforms.

In terms of applying ICT to teaching mathematics, teachers voiced their opinion that ICT allows certain topics to be presented with more visual representations. Visual representations allow students to gain a very clear image of geometrical objects. Application of ICT tools in teachings also gives students a fresh experience, outside the mundane paper and pen work. Students may also be interested in going further in their investigation on their own, experimenting with their graphing calculators etc.

On top of these remarks, some teachers are cautious towards the use of ICT in teaching. They pointed out that while ICT tools make certain tasks very simple, students may abuse the convenience for non-constructive purposes. Over-reliance on graphing calculator to carry out simple arithmetical operations is a very good example of this. It is therefore the responsibility of the teacher to inculcate in students the right attitude towards the use of ICT tools in their work.

In conclusion, teachers find that ICT tools has brought much convenience, improved teaching pedagogy, aroused students’ interests in learning and laid the foundational platform for students’ self directed learning. This however cannot be left unmonitored and the role of the teachers in this new learning environment will therefore have to be redefined to ensure that the learning outcomes are achieved.