Enhanced School Experience Blog Entry 3

Making Connections between your ESE and the Masterplans for ICT in Education

Woodlands Primary School (WDP) has been equipped with the infrastructure for successful ICT integration. All classrooms are equipped with PCs, projectors, visualisers and Promethean Activeboards. There are three computer labs with PCs, laptops and Macs for each student and internet access. There are computer terminals in common areas for students to use during their breaks, and before and after school.

WDP also places alot of emphasis on training its staff to keep abreast of technological advancements and to equip them with the skills required to conduct effective ICT lessons. Teachers undergo routine training on creating flipcharts and using the how to use the Activeboards in their classroom. Contact time is sometimes scheduled for ICT training and teachers come back during their holiday breaks for intensive training and refresher courses as well. There are ICT specialist teachers who provide assistance when asked and they also invite teachers into their classes to observe ICT lessons.

There have been numerous attempts to embed ICT into the curriculum and pedagogy, without just making it a superficial inclusion in the lesson plan. This embedding is done across many subject and all levels. Each year, students spend one term each on digital art lessons (using software such as Publisher Plus) and digital music (using Garage Band). The LEAD portal is used extensively for lessons, especially Science. Social Studies and Health Education are other subjects where lessons are largely conducted using videos, presentations and websites as teaching aides. One of the most impressive uses of ICT in WDP is the AudioBlog @ Woods project, an initiative to equip pupils with oracy skills and develop motivated and confident speakers. Teachers scaffolded the lessons for their classes at the beginning of the project, explaining desired lesson outcomes and what was expected of the students (students referred to oral rubrics to understand how they would grade their work). Students were given an mp3 player each and were tasked to record their readings of texts, picture conversations and oral conversations. They would then upload their audio recordings onto their blogs and their fellow classmates would provide constructive criticisms and suggestions on their work (through the LEAD portal discussion forum). Many students took ownership of their own learning and found this an effective way to understand better what was expected of them in the oral examination and were able to self-correct and improve their oracy skills. Oral practices, which usually took days to complete when the teacher had to individually meet with each student, could now be completed much faster as each child took ownership of his/her learning. Classes could go through more oral practices as there was more time. And most importantly, preliminary feedback from teachers suggests that students were indeed doing better, having been exposed to their own work and critiques.       

It is my opinion that WDP is well in its way into entering Phase 3 of the ICT Masterplan. Assessment in WDP however, is still largely traditional i.e. written. Teachers are looking to see how to incorporate ICT holistically into their lessons but there is a concern that as long as national assessments i.e. PSLE are written, the schools will be unable to move too far away from training its students for written modes of assessment as well. The staff at WDP realise that there needs to be a fundamental overhaul in the way ICT is viewed, and this change must take place at all levels of education to be truly effective.   

Enhanced School Experience Blog Entry 2

Masterplans for ICT in Education

The three Masterplans for ICT were implemented to bring about the effective incorporation of ICT in education. MOE realises the need to keep the future generations abreast of technological advances and build up their capabilities to function in an increasingly tech-savvy world. In resource-scarce Singapore, our people are our greatest asset and education must work to create a workforce equipped with 21^st century skills to succeed in a knowledge economy.  

The usage of ICT may seem like second nature to the students of today and teachers and parents often jokingly point out that the roles are reversed in the classroom when it comes to ICT i.e. pupils stunning teachers and parents by their superior technological abilities and know-how. However, it still stands that it is the teacher’s responsibility and duty to impart knowledge and skills to his students. The teacher, as a More Knowledgeable Other (to borrow from Vygotsky) should have in his repertoire, a wide variety of ICT competencies that he can impart to his charges. However, most teachers do not compare with their students when it comes to being tech-savvy. Children of the 21^st century have been exposed to ICTs from a very young age, as compared to adult teachers to whom ICT-based lessons have been a recent development in the world of education. And then there are adults who view technological advances with scepticism and wariness, reluctant to jump on the ICT bandwagon because they continue to believe that older teaching practices are superior.   

The three Masterplans for ICT can then be seen as a systematic plan by MOE to take on the massive task of incorporating ICT into our education system and prepping its teachers and students for the widespread and in-depth integration of ICT in curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. By setting up the infrastructure for ICT usage in schools and training teachers in basic ICT skills (in Masterplan 1), MOE tried to create acceptance in the teaching fraternity about the use of ICT skills in education. This paved the way for Masterplan 2, which ‘strengthened the integration of ICT into the curriculum, established baseline ICT standards for students, and seeded innovative use of ICT among schools’ (MOE press release: http://www.moe.gov.sg/media/press/2008/08/moe-launches-third-masterplan.php). Masterplan 3 builds on the initiatives of the previous two phases by strengthening the holistic integration of ICT into the education system and allowing for skills upgrading for teachers and sharing of best practices. This recursive training will allow teachers to always be the More Knowledgeable Other who are able to train and push their students to their fullest potential.

I was in Secondary School from 1996-1999, when Masterplan 1 was being rolled out. I recall being one of the first batches to have computer lessons in the brand new laboratories equipped with MACs and PCs. As a class, we were taught to set up email accounts, surf the internet for information and even create homepages. We were encouraged to use Powerpoint and Director 5 for our project presentations and individual assignments. It was an exciting time in school as teachers and students were introduced to the possibilities of ICT tools. As the teachers themselves were being trained on the usage of ICT tools, they weren’t many lessons conducted using ICT. Instead, it was a time when teachers are students alike were exploring how ICT could be used in school and to enhance our communication skills e.g. email, homepages.

As I embark on my career as a beginning teacher next year, I will find myself squarely in the throes of ICT Masterplan 3. The lessons I plan and conduct must utilise ICT in meaningful ways to enhance my students’ learning experience. It is not enough to superficially introduce ICT aspects to a lesson. The use of these technologies must add value to my lesson and the challenge will be to see how ICT can be embedded in all my lesson plans as a continual learning tool. I will also have to opportunity to tap on the expertise of ICT specialist teachers and educational labs where teachers come to share their best practices. I will have to constantly upgrade my skills and knowledge to stay ahead of the students and be able to offer them the means to push themselves and explore new territories. The challenge will also be to deliver ICT-based lessons that promote actual learning which translates to positive assessment.

Enhanced School Experience Blog Entry 1

Classroom Observation of ICT Use

School Name:
Woodlands Primary School

Class:
6 Innovation 7

Class Profile:
This was a Primary 6 middle-readiness class of 40 students. The gender ratio of the class was evenly divided. The pupils were familiar with the use of ICT for lessons as their teacher frequently used the Active Board for her lessons. In this lesson, the teacher was going through Science revision topics (Food Chains and Food Webs) in preparation for the upcoming PSLE. Students had already learnt these two topics previously and were expected to take down revision notes during the lesson.

What ICT tools are used in the lesson?:
The teacher utilised the Interactive Whiteboard (Promethean Active Board), LEAD portal, the PC and projector.

Describe how ICT is used for teaching and learning in the lesson:
The teacher used prepared slides from BBC on the interactive whiteboard to revise concepts of food webs and food chains. The slides had many activities for the students to complete, including "drag and drop" quizzes, organisational charts and graphic representations of food chains. As the teacher went through the chapter, she called on various students to come up to the computer and complete the activities, quizzes and charts. Students were told to take down relevant points of discussion as notes on foolscap.
While students were given time to take down notes at the end of the lesson, the teacher played videos from the LEAD portal to reinforce concepts for the students.
After this, the teacher led the class in an online quiz (from the same BBC source) on food chains and food webs. Students were asked to show which they thought was the correct answer by raising their hands for each option. At the end of the quiz, students had to complete a worksheet that was linked to the BBC presentation slides as homework.
It was evident that ICT tools were being used quite extensively in the lesson. The teacher managed to successfully carry out the lesson by capturing the students' interest. The class was very enthusiastic about carrying out the interactive tasks and many pupils volunteered to be the ones who went up to the computer and completed the task. The teacher later pointed out to me that the pupils enjoyed lessons that incorporated ICT tool and were more involved during such lessons. The “drag and drop” and categorisation activities seemed especially effective because these organisational charts could be manipulated using the software. Students could easily visualise which groups the various plants/ animals belonged to and how they were related in a food chain or food web. Traditionally, teachers would draw out these diagrams on the black/whiteboard and this would not show “movement” or relationships between objects as effectively.     

How do teachers in the school feel about the use of ICT for teaching and learning?

I had the opportunity to speak to the ICT HOD at Woodlands Primary School. She pointed out that although most of the staff has embraced the use of ICT for their lessons, there were still a portion of them who do not actively use such tools as they did not believe them to add value to their lessons. Most teachers agreed that ICT lessons were very popular with students and the graphics, colours, animations and interactive nature of the activities drew children into the lesson and sustained their interest. However, some of these were older teachers who were not comfortable with the use of ICT themselves while others were of the mindset that traditional modes of lesson delivery could be better. Some teachers had expressed concern that while ICT-based lessons captured the interest of the pupils with its graphics and interactive nature, they may not translate to actual internalisation of concepts and therefore, learning. Teachers thought that the challenge of such lessons was to sustain the pupils’ interest after the ICT tools were used and the students went back to undertake “pen and paper” activities. Some teachers felt that as long as assessment was by written examinations, there would be this disparity. Other teachers also pointed out the drawbacks of depending too much on technology. They related incidents where they had to quickly come up with alternative ways of carrying out lessons due to computers crashing and equipment malfunctioning.
In conclusion, it can be said that although most teachers acknowledged that ICT was very effective in grabbing the pupils’ interest and motivating them to participate in class, there was quite a large concern about how this could translate to real learning and success in formal assessment.