Pre-session Task 3: Making Connection Between ESE And The Masterplans For ICT In Education

Achievements in the area of the first masterplan is clearly seen from the equipment and the completeness in ICT tools available every part in the school. In each classroom, there is internet connection, top-edge projector, visualizer. Every teacher is provided with a tablet pc to work and prepare their lesson, with relevant software all pre-installed. Around the school, there are LCD TV replaying recent school events. ICT tools are completely installed in the infrastructure system of the school and teachers are all familiar with the usage of these tools, switching to interchangeably and skilfully between whiteboard teaching and ICT mode. The evidence of ICT infrastructures present in the school is numerous; teachers and students are well accustomed to its usage in their teaching and learning respectively.


In view of ICT masterplan two, lessons designed intelligently by teachers with the use of ICT tools are observed. Graphical presentation of lesson content is employed to give students visual understanding of the content. Facebook is employed to engage students and allow students to comment easily within their comfort zone on discussion topics. Intelligent and creative use of the graphing calculators also sparkle interest among students to innovate new ideas and arouse interest in the subjects. The list of examples goes on, in general, teachers are well acquainted to planning their lessons with incorporation of ICT tools to design an engaging and meaningful lesson for the students.


In relation to ICT masterplan three, the employment of online learning management system greatly facilitates the monitoring of students progress and allows for much more flexibility for teachers to plan their lesson according to the students' abilities and needs. The use of pedagogical video clips already available online suggests to student the possibility for them to explore further on their own and promotes self-directed learning. Pre-recorded lesson videos are also created for students to practise self learning and self exploration. Quizzes are then given online to assess students' understanding. All these observations are evidence of implementation of ICT masterplan three in the college.


On the whole, the observations noted during the school experience has broaden my view of how the masterplans are being carried out on the ground and how the entire masterplan gets manifested from the level of objectives and goal setting to concrete application of ICT tools and actual lesson put into action. Each aspect of the masterplans has seen its effect on the various operations of the school and the school will certainly attain more achievements in time to come.

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.

Pre-session Task 2: Masterplans for ICT in Education

In 1997, the Ministry of Education launched the ICT Masterplan 1 to build up the basic ICT infrastructure in all schools and trained teachers in using ICT to improve their teaching pedagogy. In 2002, the ICT Masterplan 2 is launched to bring ICT usage beyond the mere use of powerpoint slide, encouraging innovative usage of ICT in teaching. The ongoing ICT Masterplan 3 has the goal of strengthening competencies for self-directed learning, tailoring learning experience according to different students, encouraging students to go deeper and advance their learning, and also allowing learning everywhere.

In my opinion, the ICT masterplans are important as they keep Singapore abreast in education at the international level. Countries all over the world have taken steps to infuse ICT in their education system. In Korea, plans have already been put in place to digitize all textbooks by 2015. Education ministries in different parts of the world have drawn up masterplans of their own, but with the same principle of infusing and promoting use of ICT tools in education. It is important therefore for Singapore to keep up with this global trend, so as to develop students with the necessary competencies, desirable not only within our home country, but also on the international stage.

In Singapore’s context, we have already reached a stage where the new generation is constantly and spontaneously updating themselves with technological advancement, equipping themselves with skills needed for the usage of newly developed ICT tools and exploring the wide range of services available online on their own. With learners themselves being curiously feeding themselves with information, it is therefore important that learners be educated in how to selectively sieve out useful information and harness the power of ICT tools for good purposes.

For learners, ICT tools facilitate customization of teaching to cater to students with different learning ability. This ensures that no students are left behind. Teachers are constantly trained to design their lessons based on the students’ needs, and this requires detailed analysis of the students’ work. This is facilitated by the use of ICT tools and online management systems. In this respect, the ICT masterplans sets the tone and calls for the initiation for student specific teaching which was previously a daunting task in education.

As an ex-Andersonian, I recall that Anderson Secondary School was one of the first few schools whereby ICT tools were first introduced. Many computer rooms were set up with the advance computers installed with the most updated software. This was at the beginning stage of ICT masterplan 1. I recall that science lessons were all conducted in the student-teacher workbench computer studio where we get to learn science by watching video clips of science experiments. The learning package also allowed immediate assessment via quizzes. After going through the lesson, the teacher will assess our understanding by posing questions and testing our concepts. It was a completely different learning experience compared to times when I was in primary school, where lessons are still mostly classroom-based. The message that was implicitly conveyed behind all these IT based lessons was that the use of ICT is and will continue to set the trend and play a crucial part in development of the world in the future. It is therefore important for individuals to equip ourselves with skills and knowledge to harness the power of these tools to remain competent in the future.

As a beginning teacher, I think it is important for me to familiarize with the available ICT tools and reflect about how these ICT tools can help students in becoming more independent and self-directed in their own learning, going beyond content taught in class.  I believe that it will also be important for me to build up teaching resources with the available ICT tools, and think about how I can encourage students to be more creative with the ICT tools that are available to them in their own learning.