Blog 1: Enhanced School Experience: Classroom Observations of ICT Use

ENHANCED SCHOOL EXPERIENCE:

PREPARATORY TASK FOR ICT FOR MEANINGFUL LEARNING

Enhanced School Experience: Classroom Observations of ICT Use

Specific Observations:

School Name: Hillgrove Secondary School

Class: 1E2

Profile of the class:

There are 22 pupils in class, majority is male students.  Pupils are not interested in Chinese Language but most of them can pass the exam. Besides, they are able to bring forward their opinions in the lesson. Some boys are naughty and couldn’t concentrate in study, thus this is the most difficult thing to handle while the lesson study is carry out. 

Subject:

What ICT tools are used in the lesson?

The ICT tools are used in the lesson include Power point slide, movie clip, AskNLearn Portal (which I have explained in the next question) and blog.

Describe how ICT is used for teaching and learning in the lesson.

    Our school has a system called “AskNLearn Portal”; it is set up by a vendor, who also helps to maintain this system. The HOD of ICT also plays her part to encourage teachers use this portal to teach and prepare online assignment for pupils.

    Basically, this lesson study spends 6 periods to conduct. For first 2 periods, the teacher plays a movie clip (which is related to the topic of kinship) in class. Before the movie start, she asks the pupils sit in groups and assign the question to every group; pupils need to discuss the question assigned after watching the movie clip.

    For next 2 periods, every group has to present their result of discussion by using either Power point slides or mahjong paper. After that, all pupils have to log on to their account and leave comments on the blog which set up by teacher in the AskNLearn Portal. This lesson is conducted in Computer Lab.

    For last 2 periods, pupils have to write an email to her/his friend, share their feeling or opinion after watching this movie clip to her/his friend. Email topic and the guideline are given by teacher. They are allowed to write this email based on what they have discussed before. This lesson is conducted in classroom.

Remarks: The pupils have been separate in 5 groups.

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.)

    Most of the teachers feel that ICT tools are able to get pupils’ attention while the lesson is conducting. But there are still some constraints for it. For example, normally there is only 2 periods of lesson for a class in one day, that means teacher only have 1 hour to conduct the lesson. If there are some technical problems or power failure happen, the lesson will be affected.

    Furthermore, some pupils may not have a computer at home. If the teacher prepares an online assignment for them during school vacation, they will not able to submit the assignment on time.

    Lastly, the HOD/ICT has engage vendor to conduct an ICT lesson for our teacher, to encourage all teachers using ICT as a teaching tools. HOD/ICT feels that the pupils and teachers need some time to familiar with the ICT tools, but ICT tools really engage the pupils in the lesson. In a word, ICT tools is useful for teaching and learning.