E-Learning Scenario 1 Activity B

I will list down the problems Mrs Xing faced while conducting her first ICT-based lesson and add on the solutions/intervention measures that could make her lesson more successful. :)

Problem
1 - Mrs Xing was new to ICT and unsure how to integrate it into her lesson
Solution: If I was a BT and I am completely new to ICT, I will not choose to embark on a lesson which almost totally depends on ICT in order to make the lesson successful. Since I am new, I could try to infuse ICT just a little into the lesson and once I get more comfortable with using it, I can be more ambitious with the added confidence. Mrs Xing could sit in one of the more experienced teachers' ICT-based lesson and look at the way the class is managed, which is very different from a normal classroom. She could also note down some of the mistakes the teacher makes in the lessons and orientate herself to blindspots in the labs where students are hidden from the teacher's view.

2 - Mrs Xing failed to get to know her class well enough in terms of their ability in the use of computer technology
Solution: She should have given the class a survey on their ability to use the PCs. If she can figure out the stronger and weaker students, she could always insist that a stronger student be paired up with a weaker one so that they can help one another in the lab. She could also appeal to these stronger students that they would have to help her and instil in them a sense of responsibility and pride in their knowledge on PCs. With this, most students would be more than willing to help the teacher. With regards to students surfing the net, she could get the help of the IT technician in school to see if the internet connection could be disabled for this lesson since she is not using the Internet at all. If this is not possible, she could brief them on the dos and donts of the lab (rules) before she brings them there. Most of the labs in schools are equipped with a software which allows the teacher to monitor the students activites via her own monitor. She could easily track the students who are flouting her rules and thus, punish them accordingly. Once students realise they cannot play around, they will be focused on the task at hand.

3 - Mrs Xing failed to provide sufficient instructions or modelling to her students, especially in the writing up of the task
Solution: Before she gives them the freedom to work on her task, she did not give sufficient instructions as she was afraid she would run out of time. This shows me that she values the ICT aspect of the lesson more than the actual learning objectives for the students. The important thing should not be for them to use the PCs well but that they should recall how to organise and write out a composition. She should tap on this knowledge of theirs first before they start writing. Students need to be reminded, some more than others. Therefore, before she allows them to log onto the PCs, she could get them all to be seated near the front of her screen and she could take some time to brief them on the task at hand. She could also include instructions on how to log onto the PCs for the benefit of those who do not know how. She could also introduce the composition title and get students to brainstorm as a class what possible details this compo can include. This would be a good chance for her to remind the class of the way a narrative is organised and remind them that they need to show that in their compositions.

4 - Mrs Xing failed to consider that some students would finish faster than others and thus, did not anticipate that these students would be bored and create classroom management issues for her.
Solution: Some students are naturally faster than others when doing work. Mrs Xing should anticipate this and prepare some other work for them to do. For instance, she could get those who have finished to swap places and edit one another's work and give one another feedback on their writing. She could also provide some sample essays for them to read and compare to their own while waiting for the rest of the class to finish.

5 - Mrs Xing did not anticipate that there would be a bottleneck problem when she had to read and mark all 40 compositions at once.
Solution: It is quite silly for Mrs Xing to think that she would have the time to mark all 40 compositions at once and still have time to monitor the progress of the class. Instead of her marking all the compos herself, she could get the students to provide the first round of feedback. Maybe register no. 2 could be in charge of editing the compo of student with register no. 3 and so on. This way, there is accountability and students would be kept busy. If Mrs Xing is afraid of what the students would comment on, she could give them just a few things to look out for. For instance, grammar mistakes, or organisational mistakes. With specific things to look out for, students will be focused and on task. She could always take time after the class to go through the compositions. This would make the feedback from her much more effective.

6 - She faces quite a number of classroom managenemt issues esp with students who are done with the work and are bored.
Solution: In a lab, the teacher has such an important role in monitoring what the students are doing. She needs to continuously walk around to make sure her presence is felt by all students. Once the students feel that the teacher is not watching them, it's normal for them to start to misbehave. This is why it is a bad idea for her to be sitting down at her PC editing the essays as they are placed into her shared folder.


Feel free to comment people. . .

E-Learning

Alright, I have chosen Scenario 1 Activity B for this E-Learning.

Mrs. Xing is having trouble controlling all her students in the computer lab and checking all the scripts given to her. I am going to propose pre-emptive/intervention strategies that can help Mrs. Xing solve her classroom management issues. Feel free to post your comments on proposed way that I have came up with!

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Firstly, Mrs. Xing could group her students first and appoint 1 resposible leader in each group before coming to the lab. She could brief her students on their work before they enter the lab or she coud ask the students to sit at the front of the lab to give detailed instructions. Also, she could brief the group leaders beforehand on what is to be done so that group leaders are able to help the members instead of Mrs. Xing having to help. I personally feel that giving detailed insructions to students is important to ensure that they understand of what needs to be done.

Once instructions were given, students are to proceed to the computer to start on their work. Instead of having Mrs. Xing correcting the drafts, she could pair the students up for them to check on each other's work. This is to ensure that students are abel to learn from each other and that she would not have many scripts to mark.

To counter the student's work either not on- topic or lacked coherency and also badly organised composition, she could explained to the students again of what is required of a narrative at the start of the lesson.


Alright, so far this is what I have in mind.
Comments please! =)

E-Learning (Activity A)

Hey guys!
I'll be doing Activity A of Scenario 1, the same as Sa'adah. Hopefully all of you could give me comments on this post. Thanks!

Even though Mrs Xing thought that the Word software would be a useful idea, she should have tried the software beforehand and try to find out ways her students may have problems with the software. She should also find out from her colleagues who are more IT-savvy on what are the basic ‘need-to-knows’ like how to lock computers and fix simple IT problems. But she must also continuously upgrade her IT skills.
For the logging on problems, Mrs Xing should have expected that most of her students are not very familiar with the computers and she should have logged the computers and shown on each of her students’ screen on how to log onto the computer so that she need not waste a lot of time just explaining herself over and over again.
A day before the lesson, Mrs Xing should have gone to the computer room to have a dry run of her lesson and she should have talked to the school’s IT department to find out if all the computers and IT systems are working.
Mrs Xing should have anticipated that there were going to have students who are going to finish faster than the others. She could prepare a second assignment like she could have prepared an essay which have errors on it and made the students use the Word software to correct the essay. She could also use this opportunity to edit the students’ work.

E-Learning

Hey guys, I’ll be doing on Scenario 2 Activity C. I’m supposed to identify and explain possible integration problems Mrs Xing encountered. I have gathered the following from my own understanding of the scenario given. You are free to add on /evaluate my points. To see whether Im on the right track =)

1. Surfing of pornographic websites: Content –related safety issues
Mrs Xing’s students might be too familiarised with the software she used for her ICT lessons. The many ICT lessons were conducted for English and Science. In addition she had chosen a Science topic for the E-learning session. This became a problem because her students had become too accustomed to her ICT lesson. They could have felt that the E-learning session was no different from the countless ICT lessons that she conducted. This undermined the concept of meaningful learning. They already know what to do. They are able to finish the work too soon and this could have explained why one of her students even surfed inappropriate websites.

2. Students not able to open the PPT file.
Mrs Xing failed to pre-empt what could have happened or what could go wrong during the E-learning session. This is evident by how she felt when she found out about the truth.

3. Copy and Paste: Content-related safety issues
The School’s Learning Management System is a little flawed because there are no guidelines on plagiarism. Even Mrs Xing failed to address the issue prior to the E-learning session. Thus, students freely copied the content found in the websites given to them.

Peace out,
Shikin T

E-Learning

Activity A

In this activity, you are to read Scenario 1 carefully and then identify implementation issues Mrs. Xing faced in her lesson. Post your thoughts on your group blog. Invite other members to respond to your postings and reciprocate accordingly. Your postings should reflect your thoughtfulness and your responses must be critical and reflective. You are encouraged to substantiate your viewpoints by citing papers and articles you have read.

Scenario 1 Nanyang Walk School

During the staff meeting before the start of the school year, Principal Mr Singh announced that in order to encourage meaningful learning using ICT, the school had upgraded all computer laboratories with new and fast-performing PCs for students' use. In addition, the school acquired forty new tablet PCs to encourage learning beyond classrooms. Teachers were to integrate ICT into their teaching for at least one subject for one semester and the school would conduct a review to evaluate the use of ICT and its effectiveness in terms of student-learning.Mrs Xing, a beginning teacher, left the meeting feeling worried. As she had little experience with ICT, she was unsure how to integrate ICT into teaching and learning. She asked around and found out that there were lesson ideas at the Edumall (an MOE website) contributed by other teachers who tried using technologies for teaching and learning. She decided to adapt one of the lesson ideas.

1) Mrs Xing's initial attempt at using ICT in a face-to-face lesson.
Mrs Xing searched the Edumall website and found using Word track changes function for essay edits (process writing) to be a useful lesson idea for composition writing. She decided to give it a try with her class.

Mrs Xing is still a 'green horn' in this ICT matter therefore she should attend courses to enhance her knowledge before embarking in this. An example of such course is included in the link below:

http://www.ntuclearninghub.com/ess/basic-ict-operations.asp

2) She brought her students to the computer lab for the IT-based lesson but found her in a fix. About one-third of the class who were familiar with computers had logged on, launched Internet Explorer and started surfing the Internet while another group of students was desperately trying to get her attention on what to do with the computers.

She should conduct "pre-instructional activities. Some of the activities included briefing students, giving instructions, reviewing concepts, and demonstrating what the students had to do during the computer time," before bring them into the computer lab (Wong, Divaharan & Wettasinghe, 2010, p. 141). She may also want to conduct a survey of who are computer-savvy and who are not. This information may be useful for her when allocating their sitting arrangement in the lab.

3) In addition, Mrs Xing could not see the faces of some of the students as the computer monitors blocked them. Two computers were not working and students affected had to pair up with others.

Mrs Xing should go to the computer lab before bringing her students there. She could then anticipate possible management difficulties she might face within that environment.

4) When Mrs Xing finally got most of her students to launch Word, she started giving them instructions. Since the lesson had limited time and the students had written narratives before, Mrs Xing wanted the instructions to be as short as possible. She told them to write a half-page narrative on a topic "A memorable outing" and submit their draft work to her shared folder. She would then retrieve the drafts from the shared folder and provide feedback by using the Track Changes function. Students could then improve their writing and submit a second draft. She hoped to be able to go through two rounds of editing by the end of the lesson.

Firstly, short instructions can be miss intrepreted and since this is the first time she is conducting therefore probably more time will be needed to ensure everyone understood what must be done. She may want to allow them to complete their essay in class and save in the shared folder. They can return to lab to complete their second and third draft on other day. Meanwhile, she may want to discuss their experience and highlight on how she editted their work.

5) She noticed some students finished faster than the others. That resulted in some unnecessary noise, which in turn, disturbed those who were still working. In addition, when Mrs Xing moved around to edit the students' work, she realised she became the bottleneck by having to edit all forty scripts. As a result, some students became restless and made more noise. She also realised many of the scripts she had marked were either not on- topic or lacked coherency. Many were also badly organised.

She may want to prepare extra activities for students who first early. If she just wanted them to complete their essay then she should not be bottleneck during lesson instead she may retrieve the files to edit them later. Instead she may just ensure that they are on topic and orgarnised by taking examples from those who have completed theirs so those who are on the right track can help those who aren't.

6) Finally the bell rang and Mrs Xing called it a day. She did not manage to complete the first round of editing and had to continue after school. She was determined to find ways to improve the lesson.

Introducing a new activity to children may take time, therefore teachers must be ready to provide for this time and space for children to make learning meaningful...

These comments are mostly based on my personal opinion and ideas I get from readings and videos that I watch... There's plenty more to learn especially when you are actually doing the real thing...it's easier to comment...right?

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Reference

Textbook: chapter 9