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