For your third post, describe which achievement(s) of the three Masterplans for ICT in education are evident in the school or classes that you are attached to for your ESE.
I think based on my experience, BGS has incorporated the two Masterplans for ICT in education, and is still in the process of moving into the third Masterplan. The school is now training the teachers to create their lessons online, and to prepare for E-Learning.
The Taiga project that was adopted by the Humanities and English department definitely portrayed the attempts by the school to adopt the third Masterplan into their teaching activities. Not only the teachers have incorporated IT into the lessons, they have also made the concepts relevant in real world contexts. For example, the missions required students to get involved in doing research on water quality, and these research methods include interviewing the characters from the Taiga unit.
However, I think the activities can be improvised in such a way that learning does not end once the missions are over. If possible, it will be good if it can be continuous. Or students themselves can adopt avatars to carry their own research. I think this will be helpful as they are now required to do fieldwork in Geography, and by being able to do so, will aid them in understanding the concept behind doing fieldwork. Furthermore, it is difficult to carry out actual fieldwork due to lack of resources, manpower, financial aid, thus by creating a second world where students can carry out fieldwork in the comforts of their home, serves as a reasonable alternative. Learning Geography is not complete without doing fieldwork, and with this approach, it will hopefully get the students to be interested in them because it is actually very fun.
The Secondary 1 students in the school are also required to take ICT workshops to equip themselves with basic skills that will be useful for them. Teachers are also taught to use Hot Potatoes, for the E Learning.
The Taiga project that was adopted by the Humanities and English department definitely portrayed the attempts by the school to adopt the third Masterplan into their teaching activities. Not only the teachers have incorporated IT into the lessons, they have also made the concepts relevant in real world contexts. For example, the missions required students to get involved in doing research on water quality, and these research methods include interviewing the characters from the Taiga unit.
However, I think the activities can be improvised in such a way that learning does not end once the missions are over. If possible, it will be good if it can be continuous. Or students themselves can adopt avatars to carry their own research. I think this will be helpful as they are now required to do fieldwork in Geography, and by being able to do so, will aid them in understanding the concept behind doing fieldwork. Furthermore, it is difficult to carry out actual fieldwork due to lack of resources, manpower, financial aid, thus by creating a second world where students can carry out fieldwork in the comforts of their home, serves as a reasonable alternative. Learning Geography is not complete without doing fieldwork, and with this approach, it will hopefully get the students to be interested in them because it is actually very fun.
The Secondary 1 students in the school are also required to take ICT workshops to equip themselves with basic skills that will be useful for them. Teachers are also taught to use Hot Potatoes, for the E Learning.
I guess there a number of schools that are still on the back end of the Masterplan implementation. On the one hand, i think it hinders the way the students can perform and learn, but on the other, i guess there are many reasons as to why some schools are slower than others. (Funding, etc)
ReplyDeleteIt sucks that you did not get to experience the more ICT involved classroom but i hope you managed to sit in for those trainings that the school held for its teachers. I sat in for a training session once in my school (Whitley Secondary) as they were changing the software used for the online portal. It was a good experience and i hope you got to experience something along those lines.
I still miss the good old days where the only form of technology used was the Over head projector with transparencies!
Yes I did, and I learn a thing or two about Hot Potatoes!
ReplyDeleteI do miss the transparencies as well, though I have to admit, they make students doze off, because of the dim lights. Those were the days!
I agree that there needs to be some continuity... There seems to be a lot of new tools being developed for learning but not many stick around and disappear after a while. Hopefully that will change.
ReplyDeleteI certainly do not miss transparencies! It may make things simple but seriously, I can imagine all the sleepy faces of my students. The fact is its getting harder and harder to engage students due to all the distractions out there (facebook, video games, YouTube)...and teachers have to constantly find new ways to keep their attention.