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.