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

(I) Specific Observations
School Name: Sembawang Primary School
Class: 5 Achievement
Profile of the class: The class consists of 39 High Ability students with all of the them taking Standard Subjects.
Subject: Integrated Project Work (IPW)
What ICT tools are used in the lesson?
Google Apps

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

In Sembawang Primary School, all students are being given an e-mail account using the sbps.sg domain. In this way, students can make use of the various tools in the google account for collaborative learning and to keep in contact with both the teachers and classmates alike even after graduation. This account also serves as a communication tool between teachers and students and vice versa.

The students in this class are using the google docs to share and store information among their peers. Prior to gathering information required for the IPW on terarriums, the students in this class have been grouped in gropus of 5. After which, they will come up with research questions related to the topic of interest and use the Internet as a tool to obtain their findings.

In order to facilitate sharing and consolidation of information, the group leaders of each group will create a google doc and share it with their group members and teachers respectively. Each student will be assigned some questions to research on and their work will be colour coded in the document. Information gathered by the students will then be input into the google doc which the leader has created.

After which, this documents will be reviewed by the teacher and the teacher will pick up specific interesting findings to share with the entire class. In order for everyone to learn from one another, all the students in the class will be granted access to each groups’ work at the end of the lesson.

(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.)
Interview with Miss Tok San San, SH/ICT
“At Sembawang Primary School, the focus of the ICT department is to equip pupils with the Baseline ICT skills and it is done through out of curriculum ICT lessons conducted by our in-house ICT trainer. Why? ICT skills are essential to the pupils as a form of life-skills, when they move up to Secondary school or more importantly, into the workforce later on in life. So much work, communications is done using ICT that to be effective, I feel that ICT competence plays a great part.

However, as with any skill set, learning the skills is not enough to build competency but practice is pertinent too. After the ICT trainer imparts the skills to the pupils, subject teachers should reinforce the skills through providing opportunities in their lessons to put what they had learnt into use.

This is where reality bites. The intent of MOE policies may be good and while teachers may understand the importance of preparing our pupils for the future, nothing beats the immediate outcomes that we have to achieve - academic results.

Teachers generally find that conducting ICT lessons is time-consuming (having to move the entire class to the computer lab and settling them down in a new environment and also battling with the perennial problem of pupils forgetting their passwords). However, with familiarity comes ease. Pupils, once familiar with what they need to do in the computer lab, will be easier to handle. Same goes with their passwords, they would not forget so easily if they are given the opportunity to use them. Like adults, they too, need password-management skills!

Also, outcomes in ICT competency-building is not tested or critical at PSLE (yet). Hence, like the other non-core subjects, take a backseat when pitched against EMS & MT. MOE is looking into building in assessment of MT using ICT though, so this may change things. =)

Years back, teachers' ICT competency may be a hindrance to them conducting ICT-based lessons but I feel that this is no longer the case. We have ICT certification courses to help teachers build up their ICT competence, say in basic Microsoft Office tools and MOE initiatives like the ICT Mentor Programme.

What is stopping teachers is more of their mindset. Being so used to using the whiteboard and textbook/ workbook, teachers generally prefer the traditional way of imparting knowledge to the pupils. It doesn't feel secure to let the pupils find out certain information on their own or let the pupils learn a topic through elearning.

However, a good sign is that more teachers are turning to the Internet as a platform for their pupils to conduct research. Teachers now recognize the abundance of info available on the Internet and the next level would be to have them to guide the pupils to discern what is relevant info and what is not.

With the provision of learning management system like Asknlearn, teachers are also beginning to make of tools such as online tests and quizzes (with autu-marking functions), elessons, blogs etc to make teaching and learning interesting for the pupils.

It takes time for a new mindset/ way of doing things to change. The use of ICT in T&L is evolving in the classroom and teachers nowadays are more receptive to introducing technology in the classroom, having seen the convenience and impact on the pupils.