E-learning was conducted in week 5, with 2 scenarios on classroom management and cyberwellness. Both are about a Mrs Xing's experience conducting E-learning lessons in her school.
Her experience reveals what could possibly happen in real-life situation. E-learning week in school. Check. Students cannot download something. Check. Copy wholesale from resources. Check. Students caught surfing pornographic website. Er, not yet but have heard of such incident in other context.
Students are assumed to have the necessary skills to perform tasks required on the computer. That, I believe should not pose any problems. The teacher's part, then, should be ensure that whatever she has to uploard into the system works. And she also has to consider and discuss together with her department, the best platform to use for e-learning. It is supposed to be a whole school programme, thus everyone is involved. Traffic usage is heavy, especially towards the end of deadline. Each department should foresee and pre-empt whatever problems could arise, and not fire-fight in the end. They should consider topics, lesson plans, assessment, etc carefully.
Prior to e-learning week, the school should also inform parents about the event and conduct a series of cyberwellness for both parents and students. Topics to be covered could include safety, property rights, cyberbullying, pornography and addiction. A simple checklist of good behaviour could be given to each student for them to self-check. Parents could also be advised to exercise parental control and block certain unknown/dubious websites so that their children can only access some safe websites.
Although we may have the best intentions and give all the advice and training, ultimately, the students and parents still have to exercise their choices. Teachers and school cannot be held totally accountable if the students should surf porno websites or be addicted to on-line games. We could advise and guide, but there is a limit to how much we could do. As for plagiarism, the students would have to pay the heavy price and be penalised for copying.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Lesson Planning
We had an interesting lesson today. 2 HODs came to share their experience and expertise in using ICT to conduct lessons in their respective schools. The sharing was genuine, sincere and meaningful. I can see the pride and joy they exhibit in the outcome of their experimentation. Most of all, they are so magnanimous to offer their advice and expertise to us should we need help. You rock, Darryl and Ms Wang!
Planning for Effective Lessons. That is something I look forward to in coming to NIE. And it is also the bane of trainee teachers on practicum. They complained how they had to submit well-written, typed out lesson plans to their CT for every lesson. Don't they practise doing this during their training? I always wondered.
I was given a brief format to prepare my lessons during the TPP by the trainer, dear old Ms Dorothy Tay. There was no elaboration, explanation or enlightenment on what goals, objectives are. Chapter 6 gave a clear, concise definition of each. Instructional Goal is like the one-liner that summarises the lesson focus. Objectives, on the other hand, are specific, with regard to materials, teaching and learning activities,content, etc. And action verbs are used, for evaluation purposes.
So how did I fare in writing my Lesson Plans the past 7 months?
Well, I have an objective for each lesson but no goal. And the objectives are conveniently copied from the teacher's guide book. (How else am I supposed to know?) I have an Introduction where I try to pique the students' interest, like an appetiser. The Development section would be the detailed flow of the lesson, such as worked examples, solving some questions from textbook, etc. Very simple and ... passable?
The book also provided some templates. However, I notice that there is no mention of time allocation. Do we guessitmate how much time to allocate? Or is this not important?
Planning for Effective Lessons. That is something I look forward to in coming to NIE. And it is also the bane of trainee teachers on practicum. They complained how they had to submit well-written, typed out lesson plans to their CT for every lesson. Don't they practise doing this during their training? I always wondered.
I was given a brief format to prepare my lessons during the TPP by the trainer, dear old Ms Dorothy Tay. There was no elaboration, explanation or enlightenment on what goals, objectives are. Chapter 6 gave a clear, concise definition of each. Instructional Goal is like the one-liner that summarises the lesson focus. Objectives, on the other hand, are specific, with regard to materials, teaching and learning activities,content, etc. And action verbs are used, for evaluation purposes.
So how did I fare in writing my Lesson Plans the past 7 months?
Well, I have an objective for each lesson but no goal. And the objectives are conveniently copied from the teacher's guide book. (How else am I supposed to know?) I have an Introduction where I try to pique the students' interest, like an appetiser. The Development section would be the detailed flow of the lesson, such as worked examples, solving some questions from textbook, etc. Very simple and ... passable?
The book also provided some templates. However, I notice that there is no mention of time allocation. Do we guessitmate how much time to allocate? Or is this not important?
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Realism vs Idealism
The different types of approaches to learning in session 3 reminds me of my days in the enrichment education industry. Well, I don't have a hand in the lesson plans but lots of say in the delivery of lessons. The facilitator must have a clear idea of lesson objective, desired outcome, the kinks in the execution, time factor and the calibre of the students. More often than not, the students usually enjoy the lessons and have made wishes like they want to attend such sessions daily.
I understand that schools have to follow a syllabus, to prepare students for the National exams. And there is time, space and resource constraints. The mantra TLLM doesn't seem applicable in schools. Rather, they are all farmed out to the private companies to conduct enrichment activities, to help meet the TLLM objective and to supplement/complement classroom teaching. And what kind of facilitators are we getting from these organisations? Are parents and students wasting their edusave money on people/programme that is not up to mark? I don't wish to wash dirty linen in public but that is one of the main reasons I left the industry and decide to join the dark side, the empire.
I remember with fondness a Maths trail lesson for Sec 1s in my contract teaching. It was an after exam activities. The school uses the same template year after year. This May, the Maths Dept asked the 2 contract teachers (Ms L and moi) to fine-tune the whole thing. We came up with a storyline and a competition. (Hey, now we know it is called Games based Learning) There is an imaginery kingdom which is in dire shortage of ninja warriors. The Queen (we were short of male teachers) set tasks to recruit new ninjas. The Sec 1Maths teacher dressed up like ninjas and went back to their tribes (sec 1 maths class) to prepare them for the "dangerous" tasks at the various Maths stations. For every completion of tasks, they receive ninja dollars. At the end of all the tasks, they get to auction for prizes with their ninja dollars. It was hilarious and extremely fun, for both the teachers and students.
The Sec 2 Maths trail, on the other hand, was a complete letdown. The coordinator still held on to the 'tried-and-tested' previous years' template, with hardly any discussion/ input from the other teachers. It was boring, unenthusiastic and in the end, we had to do quite a bit of moderation of the results.
All that we have learned so far are not mutually exclusive but are correlated. They are not just meant for students but also for us as teachers, adults and live-long learners. My ex-boss once said that a happy learner will make a good teacher, and that's how she started her enrichment schools and recruit her facilitators. Some food for thought, ya?
Are you a happy learner?
I understand that schools have to follow a syllabus, to prepare students for the National exams. And there is time, space and resource constraints. The mantra TLLM doesn't seem applicable in schools. Rather, they are all farmed out to the private companies to conduct enrichment activities, to help meet the TLLM objective and to supplement/complement classroom teaching. And what kind of facilitators are we getting from these organisations? Are parents and students wasting their edusave money on people/programme that is not up to mark? I don't wish to wash dirty linen in public but that is one of the main reasons I left the industry and decide to join the dark side, the empire.
I remember with fondness a Maths trail lesson for Sec 1s in my contract teaching. It was an after exam activities. The school uses the same template year after year. This May, the Maths Dept asked the 2 contract teachers (Ms L and moi) to fine-tune the whole thing. We came up with a storyline and a competition. (Hey, now we know it is called Games based Learning) There is an imaginery kingdom which is in dire shortage of ninja warriors. The Queen (we were short of male teachers) set tasks to recruit new ninjas. The Sec 1Maths teacher dressed up like ninjas and went back to their tribes (sec 1 maths class) to prepare them for the "dangerous" tasks at the various Maths stations. For every completion of tasks, they receive ninja dollars. At the end of all the tasks, they get to auction for prizes with their ninja dollars. It was hilarious and extremely fun, for both the teachers and students.
The Sec 2 Maths trail, on the other hand, was a complete letdown. The coordinator still held on to the 'tried-and-tested' previous years' template, with hardly any discussion/ input from the other teachers. It was boring, unenthusiastic and in the end, we had to do quite a bit of moderation of the results.
All that we have learned so far are not mutually exclusive but are correlated. They are not just meant for students but also for us as teachers, adults and live-long learners. My ex-boss once said that a happy learner will make a good teacher, and that's how she started her enrichment schools and recruit her facilitators. Some food for thought, ya?
Are you a happy learner?
Friday, August 21, 2009
U need someone breathing near u
our class could not finish our work during the stiputlated 2 hours. so the various groups gotta meet and complete homework. this is the first collaboration work i have since stepping into nie. my group actually met twice. once was immediately after ict lesson, basically to specify what to do and to arrange next meeting. some of them had lessons after ict. we met again on thu to share our input and to upload into wiki. we had a good time of sharing and fellowship. no matter how advance technology is, we still need that human touch. yeah, i find it thrilling at first when i had msn and could talk to so many people at the same time. but nothing beats the personal contact: the look in the eye, the intonation of the words, the body language, the accent and lingo ... you can tell so much about a person just looking at these. how do you do that with technology?
i see my daughter cyber talking to her contacts every night, contacts ranging from her cca friends, classmates, ex-classmates, church friends and fanfic followers. she can yak for hours and laughs out loud at their antics. yet, in school, she is quiet and similarly in church. she doesn't behave like she talks with them every day. or like she is close to them.
during my time, the telephone was the only means of communication with friends after school. and we talk only to one at a time. and we would continue our conversation when we meet in school and the rapport and camaderie is obvious.
i am no amish who resist new technology. i adore the visualier, and would love to use the interactive white board. and i am also dying to use the junglebyte software in school next time. and the ict module has given me more confidence and opened my eyes to try new things, albeit with trepidation. i am not there yet but i am willing and will try. i just don't wanna see my students or anyone treat human contact as superfluous. we still need social skills to interact with one another. and the art of talking with someone. why then do world leaders make the effort to visit one another? that handshake, the smile, the pat on the back, even the outfit, can make or break the politician. they could easily just tele-conference, ain't it?
no one is an island.
i see my daughter cyber talking to her contacts every night, contacts ranging from her cca friends, classmates, ex-classmates, church friends and fanfic followers. she can yak for hours and laughs out loud at their antics. yet, in school, she is quiet and similarly in church. she doesn't behave like she talks with them every day. or like she is close to them.
during my time, the telephone was the only means of communication with friends after school. and we talk only to one at a time. and we would continue our conversation when we meet in school and the rapport and camaderie is obvious.
i am no amish who resist new technology. i adore the visualier, and would love to use the interactive white board. and i am also dying to use the junglebyte software in school next time. and the ict module has given me more confidence and opened my eyes to try new things, albeit with trepidation. i am not there yet but i am willing and will try. i just don't wanna see my students or anyone treat human contact as superfluous. we still need social skills to interact with one another. and the art of talking with someone. why then do world leaders make the effort to visit one another? that handshake, the smile, the pat on the back, even the outfit, can make or break the politician. they could easily just tele-conference, ain't it?
no one is an island.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
oops!
oops, Dr Quek singled out my blog as one of those dormant ones.
it's not that i don't wanna post my reflection. i assumed that we write our reflections in the wiki discussion board. and this blog will just be one of the asynchronous communicative tools, where i can go to as and when i have more time to think before responding/reacting. i stand to be corrected.
well, i just got my laptop from NIE today. it is good news. i can access the internet and work easily and anywhere. i don't have to compete with that family member for the use of the desktop. the only other laptop at home is ... temperamental.
stay tuned. will be blogging more often now, regarding lessons 2 and 3.
cheers!
it's not that i don't wanna post my reflection. i assumed that we write our reflections in the wiki discussion board. and this blog will just be one of the asynchronous communicative tools, where i can go to as and when i have more time to think before responding/reacting. i stand to be corrected.
well, i just got my laptop from NIE today. it is good news. i can access the internet and work easily and anywhere. i don't have to compete with that family member for the use of the desktop. the only other laptop at home is ... temperamental.
stay tuned. will be blogging more often now, regarding lessons 2 and 3.
cheers!
Friday, August 7, 2009
i did it
i made a blog. finally. after years of nagging, persuasion, coercion, etc from loved ones. and i did it cos it is REQUIRED.
seriously, i am not one of the generation y-ers who must go online everyday after dinner. i'd rather read a book/comics/magazine or scour the entire newspaper from page 1 to last page, including the obituary page. or watch cable tv. somehow, the computer and the internet hold no power over me. not even when the new monitor is like, soooo big, and draws my husband to it every night to play games, despite having wii, x-box and an ultra wide LCD HD TV.
seriously, i am not one of the generation y-ers who must go online everyday after dinner. i'd rather read a book/comics/magazine or scour the entire newspaper from page 1 to last page, including the obituary page. or watch cable tv. somehow, the computer and the internet hold no power over me. not even when the new monitor is like, soooo big, and draws my husband to it every night to play games, despite having wii, x-box and an ultra wide LCD HD TV.
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