ESE ICT Task 2

In your opinion, why do you think it is important for MOE to develop the three Masterplans for ICT in education?

What was avant garde a decade ago would be common today, and passé a decade later - such is the nature of the evolving world, and the cliché of keep up or be left behind generally holds true. Globalisation is a keyword today, and the flattening of the world can be mainly attributed to technology, and in particular, the internet. Offline transactions, such as banking and mail are increasingly shifting to the online world, and a person unfamiliar in the use of ICT would be in a disadvantage.

Thus the Masterplan for ICT is important in exposing students from all socio-economic backgrounds to ICT and familiarising them with it in prepration for a future where the internet will no longer be just a luxury, but a necessity.

Secondly, the internet is a treasure trove of knowledge where almost every question can be answered. However, not everyone can access this knowledge with the same ease; those with some knowledge of the search syntax, for example (what the online community terms "Google-fu") would fare much better in their pursuit of online knowledge. Furthermore, much of the information must be taken cum grano salis - some of the information are simply inaccurate, while some may be tained by the authors' personal prejudices. In a world where students are easily exposed to disparate, polarising world views, it is vitally important that they are equipped with the ability to discern between the mainstream and the extreme, and the factual and the inaccurate.

Thirdly, the Masterplans also incorporate the principles of Self-Directed Learning and Life Long Learning, which are in a sense life skills reaching beyond ICT and technology. They are especially pertinent for ICT though, and I believe that a focus on this area would be benefit the students for life.

Finally, ICT can be used as an effective pedagogical tool. From youtube videos to interactive white boards, the lesson can be made much more fun, interesting and engaging compared to the days of yore. Visual learners would benefit especially from this, and educational games are of a certain value. However, I feel that we must always keep in mind that ICT is a tool, and the ultimate "entertainer", motivator and adjudicator in a classroom is still the teacher.

Has any of the Masterplans impacted you as a student? Share your experience of how ICT had been used in the classes you attended as a student (if applicable).

The first Masterplan was implemented in 1997 when I was in Primary 5. I remember that at that time, there were no visualiser/projector/computers in classrooms, and we were still using blackboards instead of the whiteboard. I suppose the only piece of ICT in the classroom then was the OHP and radio set. Whenever we went to the computer labs the focus was on computer literacy - we had lessons on how to use Microsoft Word and PowerPoint - and on searching for information online via "web portals" for there was no really good search engine then.

When I moved on to secondary school, my school was one of those in the forefront of the change, and I learnt QBasic programming in Secondary 1. Swiftly afterwards, there were computers in the classroom with projectors, and technology was swiftly implemented in all the classrooms as per Masterplans 1 and 2.

Based on your enhanced school experience, how do you think the current Masterplan 3 may affect your role(s) as a beginning teacher ?

I think that Masterplan 3 will greatly affect my role as a beginning teacher. It will no longer be the "chalk and talk" type of teaching when I was a student. It will be much more interactive, and it will be another type of teaching on a different paradigm.

Teachers would be expected to be proficient in ICT, beyond the basics of the Office suites. In addition, the Masterplan's emphasis on self-directed learning and life long learning would mean changing the lesson focus to something more holistic and inclusive.

Enhanced School Experience: ICT 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: Nan Chiau High School

Class: 1B

Profile of the class: (For e.g., the students’ academic abilities, stream and other characteristics) The class is in the Express stream, and is considered one of the better classes in secondary one, academic-wise. Most of the students are active and interact readily with the teacher.

Subject: English

What ICT tools are used in the lesson? Hardware: Desktop Computers Projectors Visualisers Software: Google Documents (Group collaborative writing) Asknlearn (school learning portal)   Junglebyte (Classroom Management Software)

Describe how ICT is used for teaching and learning in the lesson. This lesson was held in a computer lab. Before the lesson proper, the teacher began her preparations by keying into Junglebyte the websites she wished to block the students from accessing, which included facebook, twitter and youtube. The lesson is in preparation for an upcoming mock debate. The students were split into groups of 4 and told to access Asknlearn and read through several articles on the issue that the teacher had collated. They were also free to do their own research on the web. By the end of the lesson, they had to submit a précis on the issue, and list their stand with supporting reasons and arguments. To facilitate their work, the students employed Google Documents to work on their points in via collaborative writing. What was impressive was that the teacher did not specifically mention Google Docs; the students just naturally utilised a tool that they felt was most appropriate for their work. This, I feel, is how ICT should end up – when use of technology is not lauded per se, but becomes a “natural” extension of 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.) It is impossible to interview every teacher in the school, but the School ICT HOD/Committee has come up with a rubric that tracks teachers’ satisfaction and utilisation level for each aspect of ICT, and from that it can be seen that generally, the teachers in the school are quite supportive of ICT. Personally, almost every lesson that I observed incorporates some aspect of ICT. The school has also done a good job in implementing ICT, from the hardware such as visualisers and projectors in every classrooms, Wireless network, upgrading to fibre broadband next year; to software such as Ask n Learn, Junglebytes and the school bortal; to “humanware” such as conducting regular training sessions for both students and teachers. The culture of of using ICT is also quite strong among the staff - some teachers are quite advanced in their ICT usage, such as controlling Powerpoint slides on their smartphones via a Bluetooth connection. The school is also trying out lessons with tablets on a select group of teachers and students. However, not all technologies are equally utilised – the lower secondary classrooms are fitted with an Interactive White Board (IWB) but it does not seem to be very much utilised. For the Social Studies and English classes, all it seems to do is take up space on the main white board and it cannot even be written on with a regular whiteboard marker. The HOD (ICT) did mention, though, that different subjects utilise the IWB at a different rate, and I can foresee that it can be useful in certain subjects such as Mathematics.