I was posted to Bedok Green Secondary School for my ESE, where I taught Geography and Literature. The school has incorporated ICT into their lessons in a rather impressive approach. The students here, have quite a good command in English, which is beneficial in understanding the instructions given. In addition, students are now more technologically advanced and are more interested in ICT way of learning, which makes it easier for such ICT-based projects to be carried out successfully. Below is an example of a project that was implemented by the Humanities department, for their Secondary 3 Express students, for their Geography lessons.
The Humanities & English Design Group: Taiga Unit
The Humanities and English group embarked on a joint Quest Atlantis project implemented in secondary 3 Express classes. The Taiga unit is identified because it addresses natural vegetation and the causes and effects of deforestation. The knowledge acquired from class lessons would help students with the five missions in the Taiga unit. In the unit, students become a character in the virtual world. Through their role in the virtual environment, they acquire knowledge and discover consequences.
In the Taiga World Unit, this Pre-Mission designed to prepare students to enter Taiga National Park as experts in water quality. Students help Abby fix a number of fish tanks in her lab. In further Missions, once they reach Taiga, they will return to Abby to lean more complex water quality concepts: specifically, how eutrophication and erosion lower dissolved oxygen concentrations (and therefore impact fish populations
Following the Abby Pre-Mission, Mission 1 would require students to travel to Taiga and interview people from groups that depend on park resources. At some point, they will receive an alert calling them back to Abby to learn more about erosion and how it could be affecting the fish in Taiga. Students will assume the role of expert helpers as they interview people, collect data, and develop and test a hypothesis.
Alerts during Mission 2 will tell students to visit characters who think loggers are the problem, and some others will visit characters who think Mulu are the problem.
The 3rd Mission in the Taiga Unit will require students to collect water from three locations and bring it to fill fish tanks for Abby. She guides then through an analysis of each sample site's water quality. This information will be used by the students to produce a report for Ranger Bartle on what is causing Taiga's fish population decline.
In the 4th Mission, students will help Ranger Bartle to choose one group to blame for the fish decline in the last Mission. They will be traveling to the future to see the result of their choice.
Finally in the final Mission, students travel much further into the future to see the result of Ranger Bartle's solution to the fish kill problem, which he made with the help of their more nuanced suggestions. They will see that the group that was blamed have been severely restricted.
The Literature department, also implemented a new ICT way of learning for their Secondary 2 students. In order to encourage a more meaningful learning and understanding of the text (The Animal Farm that they are currently studying, a website portal was created with the help of Temasek Polytechnic students. In this portal, notes can be found for the students' perusal. Not only that, videos and quizzes are also provided for a more interactive learning. What is more important, is incorporating a forum discussion inside the portal, so that students can exchange their views and share ideas through this portal. This greatly encourages students who are shy in class to speak up, to share their views online through this community.
