BLOG 1: ENHANCED SCHOOL EXPERIENCE: PREPARATORY TASK FOR ICT FOR MEANINGFUL LEARNING

Enhanced School Experience: Classroom Observations of ICT Use

(I)     Specific Observations

School Name:  Ai Tong School

Class: 1K

Profile of the class: (For e.g., the students’ academic abilities,  stream and other characteristics) Primary 1, mixed ability, not streamed.

Subject: Mathematics – P1 Graphical Representation (Picture Graphs)

What ICT tools are used in the lesson? Interactive White Board (IWB). Student Response/Voting System

Describe how ICT is used for teaching and learning in the lesson. First, coloured ribbons are randomly arranged and projected on the screen. The students are then told to guess which colour of ribbons is in the most abundance. This is to get students to experience for themselves the difficulties of retrieving data when there is no visual aid of tables or pictorial graphs. The students are then given a table to fill in the no of ribbons of each colour on the IWB. After the data is filled up, students will then see data presented in a tabular form which they are familiar with. Next, the students are referred back to the randomly placed ribbons again and given another big table on the IWB. This time, student volunteers are then called up to help arrange the coloured ribbons into the table, however when the ribbons are first placed messily into the table, the teacher then asks the class if the current table helps in determining which coloured ribbon is in the most abundance. They are then asked to brain-storm for ideas to solve the problem with immediate feedback readily given by the teacher. Students then came up with the idea to line up the ribbons in the table into a pictorial graph form. The aim of the lesson of introducing picture graphs to the students with the students taking part to craft the picture graph. This activity with the class engages both visual and kinaesthetic learners. With the IWB, students are able to experience real life problems first-hand and reinforces practices with collaborative efforts in class. The students help each other to identify and correct mistakes on the interactive whiteboard. When the students are accustomed to reading the picture graph, the teacher then uses the classroom response system to get the students to answer some simple questions based on the picture graphs to re-enforce their learning.

(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 teachers in school feel that there is a lot of support given by the school to help in the implementation of IT in lessons.

Many technological gadgets like the classroom response system and ipod touch are available for teachers to engage students meaningfully. The mobile laptops are available if teachers want to engage students in online activity outside of a computer laboratory setting. The entire school is wirelessly connected to facilitate this usage.

There are many teachers who are the ICT mentors who conduct courses to guide teachers who are less inclined in IT skills.

Of course with such an IT-infused environment, there are still teachers who have a strong resistance to the usage of IT in class. These are usually the older teachers who had very little knowledge and usage of IT in their earlier years, the reasons given range from the unfamiliarity to the long hours needed to prepare a single ICT-infused lesson. However there are also older teachers who spend a lot of effort in the usage in fear of being stranded in the IT void and instead emerge as one of the top IT users in the school but are still very humble.