Creative teaching via the media
Kids nowadays are indeed precocious. They seem to know the latest happenings in the news eventhough they are unable to read the newspaper themselves. My pupils, despite being in Primary 1, are ardent television viewers and their knowledge of current national events are somewhat impressive. Many claim that they watch television, supervised by their parents, in which their parents will later explain the programme or news that is being watched.
A month ago, my class was all abuzz with the Singapore Idols audition. Vocabulary words such as "idol", "auditions", "judges" were heard from their mouths, a phenomenon somewhat uncommon in a Primary 1 classroom. Most of them had watched the television commercials showing life telecasts of people in long queues and apparently, one of the boys was proudly telling the rest of his peers that his elder brother had tried out for the auditions!
Seeing their interest at that particular topic, I decided to gear an English lesson on character description by asking pupils to list descriptive adjectives based on the title ' What qualities must a Singapore Idol have." Pupils were given mahjong paper and they had to write the adjectives in a form of a concept map.
1 period later, and with a little help with Spelling, my pupils came up with this list of 'qualities'.
A Singapore Idol must be:1) friendly2) funny3) tall4) a good singer5) handsome6) polite7) not shy8) clever9) like Sly10) like TaufikAlthough none of them came up with the word "talented", I was impressed that pupils could think of a list of viable characteristics on what a singer should have. Most of the adjectives were associated with positive ones and they could form simple sentences using them.
One pupils wrote: " A Singapore Idol must be friendly so that people will like him."
Another wrote: " A Singapore Idol must be clever so he can sell his music cd."
A comical sentence went like this: " A Singapore Idol must be handsome so that girls will like him."
The lesson went well and underneath the fun, I was able to engage pupils and direct their learning in a meaningful way using a familiar context. Sometimes, going beyond the textbook helps and can certainly bring much educational fun into the classroom.
- Farhana
Erasing the fear of getting IT into the classroom
IT greatly enhances teaching and learning in the classroom. Some teachers may have a fear of going into the computer labs to carry out computer-based lessons as they are not "IT-savvy" enough. It is the fear of the unknown that makes them dread conducting lessons in the Computer room or even to use the computer in the classroom.They also have this fear that the pupils know more than them.
Do you know that MOE provides several websites to help you deal with conducting IT lessons in the classroom?
Read more at http://intranet.moe.gov.sg/principals/2nd_Issue/stjosephsharing.htm
http://intranet.moe.gov.sg/principals/3rd_Issue/students.htm
Ming Suen
To integrate IT into content development
Ever heard of RDMC? Well, RDMC stands for Rich Digital Media Content. It is part of the IT Masterplan 2 to integrate IT into content development.
These packages offer teachers the flexibility to customise their lessons to suit the different learning styles of their students. They also provide opportunities for student-centred learning activities and allow students to learn at their own pace. These packages complement the current instructional materials and helped teachers to make lessons come alive in the classrooms.
Read more
Yoke Ying
My Students Know More Than I Do?
For the first time ever in educational history, students can actually teach teachers more about technology than the teachers themselves.
Will Richardson, an author and a reknown blogger on technology in the classroom, discusses in his blog about what teachers can do when faced with students who seem to know more than they do when it comes to IT.
Read his article here.
One step at a time
"Oh no!! More IT tools for the classroom??? Again??????!!!!"
E-learning, blogging, search engines, email, forum/discussion, hot potatoes, mind mapping managers, online dictionaries, podcasting, wikis, game learning, web designing, online word processors, and the list goes on....
...and on.....and on.....and it will just keep going on.....
Under that kind of pressure to try to cover almost everything or even try to figure out
one of those many IT tools, and our intense loads of the other 1001 things that a teacher needs to complete, the temptation is so great for us to just drop everything, throw our hands up into the air, and shout out, "I SURRENDER!!! PLEASE...let me off!!!"
But then, behind the scenes, here are our students who are obviously running in the fore-front ahead of us in technology. Some of them already own their personal blogs. Most already know how to email, or are quick to pick up emailing from their friends. A handful already own their personal website. Some know how to use the search engines.
Many others are yearning in desperation for a trip down to the computer lab - a great motivation for all of them.
So, what do we as teachers do? If we try to avoid using these technologies, aren't we then going to end up standing in the shadows of our IT-savvy students, instead of being the guiding lights who bring them safely and responsibly down the paths of developing even more IT skills?
Let's not panic....Take it one step at a time.
Search engines? No problem. For example, I took my P4 students down to the Computer lab during Social Studies. The activity book requires them to search for interesting information on people or places in Continents. So, use this opportunity to teach them about using search engines (e.g. skills of typing keywords for more specific searches). Doesn't matter that they can't finish searching, they can always continue searching at home, or if they don't have computers at home, tell them to use the library to find books on the topic to continue their research.
Blogging? Big problem? Who says you need to make it a full time affair? Just do simple ad-hoc projects based on it. For example, for Science, do your P3 pupils need to record their observations of the growth of their plants from green bean to seedling? Why not have everyone blog about the process on the class blog? This way, everyone can compare how their plants have been growing. Some might complain that their seeds did not sprout any seedlings. Others might comment on that and make suggestions. Why not? In the process of recording information for Science, your students try to write more coherently in English as well. Don't we have the best of both worlds then?
Cool Cat Teacher says that teaching students how to handle technology is basically teaching students to teach themselves.
I explain it to my students this way -- "the technology I teach you will be outdated in two years but if I can teach you to be unafraid of the technology, learn the technology with the tools at hand, and teach others -- I have taught you a skill that will prevent you from being obsolete for the rest of your life."
You don't need a degree or diploma in Computing to be IT-savvy. Nobody does. You just need a constant willingness to keep up with technology.
Many educators worldwide are now subscribing to RSS aggregators e.g.
Bloglines. These aggregators will collect news from websites around the world and put them into quick snippets for you. All you have to do everyday is spend 5 to 10 minutes reading the selected snippets that you find interesting on technology in education, and you will be very up to date with technology.
Can't quite figure out the technology? Then at least teach pupils the simple types of technology that you are familiar with. I'm sure that all of us should at least know how to email or use the search engine? Even using an online dictionary is as simple as typing the address of a website
www.dictionary.comI shall leave you with a snippet from a journal entry written by one of my students:
In school, we were briefed about the future learning way, the e-learning portal from LEAD. Each and everyone will have their own account.
Immediately, when I got home, I switched on my computer and began to access the portal. There were many interesting subjects...The tutorials and activities really play its part to reinforce what we have learnt in the school...
I really look forward to e-learning every day.
Do we want to be one step ahead or one step behind our students? It's really our own choice.
