My Enhanced School Experience

Enhanced School Experience: Classroom observation for ICT use

School Name: Kuo Chuan Presbyterian Secondary School

Class: Secondary 1 Peace

Profile of Class:

The class is made up of students with mixed abilities from the two extremes (i.e. those who are very good in Maths and those are very weak). Students are more kinesthetic and visual learners with short attention span.

Subject: Lower Secondary Maths

What ICT tools are used in the lesson?

The ICT tool that was used in the class is an online lessons package (HeyMath) that the school had subscribed for the lower secondary students. HeyMath is an online lessons package where there are ready-made multimedia lessons on the various Maths topics with embedded audio. Teachers are free to record and add notes to the lessons to cater to their students’ needs. This ICT tool also allows teachers to assign online quizzes to assess the students’ learning and receive immediate feedback.

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

In this lesson, the teacher utilized on the functions of this particular ICT tool for teaching and learning of the topic, Algebra, in Lower Secondary Maths. Using HeyMath lesson presentation (which is very similar to the commonly used PowerPoint), the teacher made use of the visual animations embedded in the lesson presentation to illustrate the mechanism at work for teaching of algebra concepts. Traditionally, Maths has been a subject taught using the chalk and board method. Hence, the mechanism at work behind the various concepts especially when dealing with the movement of different terms from one line to the next line might not be so easily captured by the students. With the help of ICT, such as HeyMath and even PowerPoint, teachers are now able to show the movement of terms from one line to another in a more visual manner. This aid the students to see the mechanism at work for the various concepts, leading to more effective teaching and learning for both teachers and students especially when the class is made up of more visual learners.

In this current setting of a knowledge-based economy, teachers are commonly sighted in classrooms using PowerPoint slides in explaining the steps and mechanism at work for various concepts to help students visualize better. For this particular lesson, even though HeyMath was used instead of PowerPoint, similar teaching and learning was observed. However, HeyMath was used in this particular lesson as the teacher intended to introduce this portal for her students' independent learning (i.e. E-learning). She hopes that continual learning will take place even outside school curriculum time. In order to facilitate and encourage the use of the portal for independent learning, the lesson was conducted in the computer lab. Hence, each student was able to have hands-on experience in navigating the portal after she had taught the various concepts. This enabled individuals to revise and reinforce the newly taught concepts at their own pace, leading to more effective learning.

Besides more effective learning by the students, using this ICT tool also enables more effective teaching as teachers are able to receive immediate assessment on the students' learning. This is because in HeyMath, there is a section known as ' Check your understanding' at the end of each lesson where students were given a short quiz. The results of each individual students were sent to the teacher. Hence, at the end of the lesson, the teacher could assess on her students' learning and at the same time plan for her teaching more effectively given the analysis of her students' results.

General Observation:

How do teachers in the school feel about the use of ICT for teaching and learning?

Generally, the school is supportive of the use of ICT for teaching and learning. Majority of the teachers are using ICT tools in their lessons. The two most commonly used ICT tools are PowerPoint slides and videos. Most teachers recognized that the learners today are very different. Students have been exposed to technology and are much more IT savvy with shorter concentration span. Given such students' profile, the use of ICT tools are seen as means to engage the students for more effective teaching and learning. The school is also looking into creative teaching pedagogy where ICT can be incorporated to better engage students' learning.