Enhanced School Experience: Classroom Observations of ICT Use
(I) Specific Observations
School Name: Chua Chu Kang Secondary School
Class: 3/5
Profile of the class:
(For e.g., the students’ academic abilities, stream and other characteristics)
According to their Physics Teacher Mr David Lau, class 3/5 is an EXPRESS stream class of moderate ability. It is made up of students that can follow lessons diligently but may have trouble in understanding some concepts and definitions if it is not clarified properly and repeated again for recalling. Therefore, lessons would have to be structured such that recalling and defining becomes the essence in their learning.
The class is made up of 25 well-mannered students. There are some students who diligently follow the lessons and ask good and important questions required for sound understanding of physics concepts.
Subject: Physics
What ICT tools are used in the lesson?
The ICT used in one Physics lesson I observed is their online portal called ‘asknlearn’ which is developed by an external vendor for the school as a teaching aid. Uploaded on this online portal are teacher resources and teaching aids such as illustrations and video animations complete with a voice that explain what is happening in the animations.
Describe how ICT is used for teaching and learning in the lesson.
In the lesson in which the teacher introduces the concept of ‘Work, Energy and Power’, audio-visual-video aids uploaded on the online portal were used to illustrate the concept of potential energy and kinetic energy. Since concepts such as energy are concepts that are very abstract in nature, with the video animations uploaded, students were able to ‘see’ energy and hence properly understand what is meant by potential energy and its conversion to kinetic energy. The explanations are scaffolded such that a step-by-step explanation by the voice in the animation is inherent.
For instance, the animation of a falling boulder implored the students to calculate the kinetic energy and potential energy at different heights from the ground. As such, students are able to see for themselves the conversion of potential energy to kinetic energy as the boulder falls, and that the total sum of these energies are always constant in accordance to the Principle of Energy Conservation of closed systems.
The teaching aids were complemented by further explanations and clarifications by the teacher using an ideal pendulum example where the teacher, in a similar fashion to the animation, implored the students to calculate the potential and kinetic energy of the pendulum bob at different positions of the pendulum. This reinforces the concept of the Principle of Energy Conservation. At the same time the teacher also introduced additional concepts using a non-ideal pendulum example where he clarifies why a real pendulum does not swing to eternity and would eventually come to a stop.
(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.)
In general, the usage of ICT is limited to a few teachers of certain teaching subjects. This is because some subjects, such as Mathematics, are perceived to be better taught using traditional methods (whiteboard and marker).
Most teachers are hesitant to use ICT because they find such lessons counter-productive to the class progress, especially when classroom management is difficult for some classes. Additionally, the usage of ICT is perceived as ‘more work’ for them since they have to come up with their own resources to conduct them. This is perhaps due to the lack of available resources for them to tap on, and because of them, using ICT would require them to ‘start from scratch’.
The school also is poorly equipped to carry out ICT lessons. Basic ICT infrastructure such as computers in individual classes and visualizers are absent.
Although the school does set aside an e-learning day to ensure that students learn through ICT, this practice does not involve the upper secondary students. It is observed that there is still a sizable number of students who instead of doing work from home computers, returned to school to do their work in the computer labs. This means that there are some students who do not own personal computers, making the implementation of the ICT Masterplan a challenging task.
It is depressing to see that some students are still being left out or disadvantaged in the circle of e-learning. I believe there should be strategies to overcome this.
ReplyDeleteSome possible suggestions:
1) Students with internet access could be paired up with those who don't have access and these students can be accountable to each others' learning at home.
2) Schools can encourage students to purchase laptops or communication devices such as iPad at subsidised rates. Loaning of such devices can be made for financially needy students, or sponsorship can be even granted to them.
I think that until all schools encourage the use of communication devices such as smartphones or laptops in schools, it is difficult for Masterplan 3 to be fully achieved.
With regards to using ICT in teaching, it takes a lot of time and effort to plan and integrate ICT into lessons. A suggestion is that teachers and subject departments could work as teams to develop common ICT teaching materials to share and use during lesson time. It is difficult if each teacher has to plan for every lesson on their own, but if every teacher shares their ideas and work together, we can develop creative lessons crafted with ICT and at the same time share the workload.
Dear Hasan,
ReplyDeleteI feel the same way too. Some of my students also came back to school to do the e-learning task at the beginning. However, that is the minority.
What my school did is that these students are to notify the school in advance and they are paired with students that have access to internet. Different set of tasks will be given to these groups as to ensure they do not free ride on others.
I am sure these are the little loopholes that school fail to see at the beginning. However, I feel that it is quite common at the beginning and we should improve on them subsequently.
Guo Xiong.