Final Reflections

Our last lesson. A bit nostalgic about it, frankly.

Our SCLP went through many transformations in a span of a month. These are the changes I remember.

Scenario: Terrorism --> Gang Fight in a Local School

The change in scenario was suggested by Dr Tan. A gang fight in a school is more relevant and authentic for students. Terrorism, while a pressing concern in the real-world, is less of an immediate concern to Secondary School students. Perhaps using terrorism as a topic would be more appropriate for Junior College students.

Method: Every student does all four sources individually --> Each student does one source, get together in a group of four to collaborate --> Each pair of student does two sources, get together in a group of four to collaborate

It was a bit of an eureka moment actually, when Dr Tan prodded us to the realisation that we could get students to do different sources and get together to collaborate. It challenged my presumption that every student has to learn the exact same thing in every single class. Although splitting the sources up meant that not every student will access the audio or the video, arranging it this way meant that each student would have a different piece of the puzzle, forcing them to collaborate to write the email. A stroke of genius, I say. :)

Patricia and I later decided to do pair work so that one partner can type in the note-taker, while the other views the video. The task also becomes less intimidating for students when they work in pairs.

Platform: Flash --> Powerpoint --> Wiki

Creating a button in the the new Flash CS3 threw me off big-time. It is so different in the new flash! So Flash went out of the window and we settled for the safer Powerpoint instead. Then Patricia suggested using wiki. At first I was a little confused about how to use a wiki, but after a little discussion, we realised that wiki may be ideal: it allows us to launch everything from a single platform, and it is perfect for the creation of note-takers.

So, as you can tell, we have changed just about everything from what we first imagined our SCLP to be. :)

Our SCLP: Preventing Gang Violence in Schools

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Thoughts on the ICT course

This ICT course has firmly embedded the words "Student-centred learning" in my brain. It has given me a theory on how students learn, i.e. Constructivist theory. I learnt that teaching is so much more than presenting information. That it requires priming the students by activating their prior knowledge, setting up a learning environment that is safe, and creating opportunities for students to discover things on their own through collaborative learning.

And I learnt how ICT can play a role in Student-centred learning. It supports both indepedent learning and collaboration, and is an engaging medium for students. I picked up a few tools for my ICT tool-kit: Comic Life, Hot Potatoes, Digital Storyboarding, Wikis, etc. Read my thoughts last week.

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How does the future look?

In our last class, we watched a video in2015. It's kinda crazy the things they imagine can be done in 2015. Part of me worries about the separation between the virtual and the non-virtual life. I mean, to navigate inside shopping centre, you actually bury your nose in the screen of a little gadget to tell you when to turn left! We have to live in the "real world" sometimes, if you know what I mean. I worry that we will need more Psychiatrists.

But on the other hand, I'm excited. I realise that this means that the world can be in my classroom: it is only a matter of harnessing the power of technology.

The world in my classroom... oh, the possibilities!

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Dr Tan,

Thank you for your guidance in this journey. I wish you the best in your research on Web 2.0. I am always open to the idea of doing further research.

Best regards,
Faith

Reflection on the SCLP Process

Less than a week to the submission deadline.

It is 1:20am and I'm working on my project.

On a certain level, I don't really mind the final grade I get for this course. If I were to be true to what I believe real teaching is — that knowledge is better than good grades; learning better than testing — then this class is top-notch already, no matter what my final grade is.

I've learnt key pedagogical concepts in this class that has in turn shaped my understanding of teaching in my other English and Literature classes. Who would have thought a class in ICT — a class that meets only once a week for twelve weeks — could teach me so much pedagogically?

My SCLP partner and I met Dr Tan this week to talk through our Project. The most interesting part of the meeting was near the end, when Dr Tan posed to us a question:

"Why bother doing the SCLP at all, when realistically, teachers don't have the time to create such elaborate packages?"

My first instinct was to give a utilitarian answer. Actually I gave this answer in class when Dr Tan asked it last week. I think I was sleepy, hence the bravery. I said that it was useful to do the SCLP because the process of creating such a package is important. Once you have run through the steps once, you could either replicate the SCLP on a smaller scale, or even take apart the parts for mini-lessons, for example, creating an audio clip with audacity for oral, a wiki page for the class, etc. But I think Dr Tan was looking for an answer that was a bit less pragmatic, a bit more conceptual.

While sitting there throwing about ideas on why SCLP is important — by the way, I admire Dr Tan's commitment to the thought that it is better for students to discover on their own, and hence his patience in never telling us the answer — we were gently prodded towards a realisation: that the SCLP exists to make us think out of the box and get used to working outside our comfort zone. ICT is the ideal way of keeping us on our toes because it is changes so quickly.

I realised that it is important for our time here in NIE to be an uncomfortable one — where we get prodded to do things we wouldn't normally do, think in ways we don't usually think, and consider options that we would normally think too risky. When we go back to the schools, the stress and the limited resources tend to only mean one thing: we choose the easiest and safest way to teach — the method with the most credo and the least risk. Before long, we'll get stuck in the rut using these safe methods — Comprehension; Reading; Grammar; Composition; rinse and repeat — because we are used to these methods and we think that nobody can tell us any different just by virtue of the sheer number of years we've used these methods. We would have become Senior Teachers.

I hope I will remember these things when I go back out to teach. I hope I won't get swept away by the overwhelming pressure to produce good grades, and forget that at the heart of teaching, is learning. If I can teach one thing to one person every day, it would be worth it. And although I would like to be Senior Teacher one day, I hope I will never be too stuck-up to change myself and my mindset for the sake of the students.

That's about it. I had better get back to working on the SCLP now...

Week 7: Assignment 1 deadline

It feels like we're at a transition point of our ICT course. I handed in my individually-written lesson plan today with a bit of fear and trembling since my group's lesson plan kinda sorta got butchered. Not exactly fun being pointed out to three entire classes as a "bad lesson plan" to learn from, but at least we had a lot of fun doing the group work...

Anyway, it feels like a transition because suddenly we are expected to come up with a draft proposal for an entire SCLA package in ten minutes, as if lesson plans dropped into our brains like manna. Sigh. Do you know how long I mulled over my individual lesson plan? How many times I threw out my drafts and started again for one reason or another? Lesson plans do not come naturally to me. And now I have to think of another one.

It is never the ICT that intimidates me. It is being a teacher...

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My group presented Hot Potatoes today. I thought our group worked very well together and did a good job. Well done Ruva, Si Min and Donna! On my part, I felt that I was talking much too quickly, without any idea whether anybody understood a word I said. Sigh. What to do. Want to be teacher, must talk and must be clear. I wonder when I'll be good at this...

Lesson 6: e-learning week

Perhaps it is because I'm just ditzy, but I always overlook the second page of the PDF instructions file. I just skim through the first page and think that is all there is to the task. This is the second time I'm doing it already. Hence, this post is a little later than normal...

1. From a learner’s point of view, how was this week’s activity related to the previous weeks’ activities? How do you think it is related to what is to come?

We wrote a 500-word article online collaboratively this week. It was an interesting process because, one, I'm not used to doing process writing; and two, I'm not used to doing process writing over email. It brings "collaborative learning", a key aspect of student-centred learning, to a whole different level.

One of the difficulties about working collaboratively over email is that you cannot respond to the body language cues of your group mates. In an office situation, where there is a clear demarcation of roles and hierarchy, it is easier to work over email. In a group of peers, where everyone is equal, it seems harder.

For me, one of the best things I took out from this collaborative process writing process was being able to see my group mates' work. Although it was the same material, they thought of things I didn't, and phrased things in a way that I wouldn't. That helped me broaden my ideas about student-centred learning, especially since that I've been thinking about SCL so much that what I think is getting stale.

2. From a teacher’s point of view, how do you think your instructor designed this task? Why was it designed this way? What considerations did he possibly take into account? What can you take away from this experience?

The imposition of a 500-word limit forced our group to collaborate further. It is pretty ingenious to use a tangible requirement to encourage a student-centred learning approach. I think this works much better than stipulating that the group "collaborate over the internet" or using any other contrived instructions.

The instruction to create our own wikis also allowed us to go through the process and troubleshoot the issues that come up, such as passwords, access, etc. There is a subtle shift from being participants in a wiki, to being creators of a wiki; and this is similiar to the shift from being students in a classroom, to being teachers.

The timing of this task is appropriate. We're about mid-way through our course, and we know our group mates better now than two weeks ago. One consideration a teacher has to have is whether it is a good time in the year to introduce certain tasks, especially when it involves collaboration.

I think that for this task, the process is more important than the content. As a teacher, I need to be aware of the processes—as that is where students learn—rather than focusing only on "project deliverables".

Lesson 5: Lesson Planning — Getting our hands dirty

This week we learnt how to translate the theoretical into the practical.

Theoretically, lesson plans should have observable and assessable objectives, employ student-centred learning approaches, and if applicable, use appropriate ICT. (See last week's post.) All this theory is very sensible, but I found that it is actually quite difficult to fit it all together in a coherent lesson plan.

What ICT should I use to re-create which aspect of a student-centred classroom for the purpose of what kind of objective?

The mind gymnastics required is quite daunting.

I admire experienced teachers who can look at a topic and formulate a student-centred, modern, engaging lesson plan in five minutes. It is a certain way of thinking that I must learn, I think; similar to the way I learnt how to "see" the outline of an essay I want to write: "intro, statement, evidence, conclusion" is kinda similar to "objective, pre-activity, activity, post-activity". But I just don't "see" in that way yet.

It helps to brainstorm in a group and to read other groups' lesson plans. Listening to other points of view breaks me out of the insular thinking that I sometimes get trapped in. Prof Tan's particularly pertinent question about whether the ICT we wanted to use aided low-level thinking or high-level thinking shed a lot of light on my thinking. (Out of the window goes my idea for assignment 1, sigh.)

If anything, it is comforting to know that I can only get better; theoretically, that is.

Lesson 4: From fluff to substance

My eureka moment: the lesson plans that I churned out as a contract teacher are nothing but fluff.

Today we learnt how to write a lesson plan. First, Prof Tan told us that lesson objectives should be observable and measurable. Now that I'm thinking about it, it seems so common-sense; yet, before my eureka moment, I am sure I peppered my lesson plans with lofty but vague words such as "understand", or even words such as "master" and "learn". How do we quantify learning? With Bloom's Taxonomy of action verbs. (See list below.)



What a useful list! It is even categorised into lower and higher mental functions. (According to Vygotsky, higher mental functions arise from social interaction. But Vygotsky's definition of higher mental functions seems less cerebral than Bloom's.) I read though the list and highlighted those that I thought may be more frequently used while teaching English and Literature.



We also learnt today that objectives must specify four aspects: audience, behaviour, condition, and degree. This is known as the ABCD model. The difficulty with such a model is that it seems tailored for the sciences. How do you quantify the extent to which a student has formulated his or her own personal response to a piece of text without having to constantly get the students to reflect on paper (or on a blog, as in the case of this class)? I will have to think about that one some more.

On the whole, an interesting and helpful lesson, as always. :) I'm getting somewhat saturated with all the methods and theories we are learning in the various classes: the science of teaching, so to speak. If I write a lesson objective with four observable aspects, that uses three student-centred learning approaches, and employs three ICT tools, does that make me a good teacher? Will I get to learn the art of teaching?

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Postscript:

i. I like the demos.

ii. There is a free public talk by Denise Atchley coming up on 27 Aug titled "Defining Digital Storytelling".

Lesson 3: Student-Centred Learning (SCL) Approaches

Today, our class had the mind-boggling experience of learning about student-centred learning in a student-centred learning classroom. We were our own guinea pigs, so to speak. So while we were frantically looking online for information on the various types of ICT-based SCL (problem-based, case-based, inquiry-based, project-based, game-based, and resource-based) and brainstorming in our groups about a SCL lesson plan, we were at the same time supposed to be observing ourselves and the way we learn and interact in a SCL environment.

Content-wise, I learnt a bunch. For one, I learnt that there is quite a bit of overlap between the six SCL approaches. Prof Tan illustrated the relationship between the six approaches as six intersecting circles in a Venn diagram, but it wasn't until our group was trying to figure out what exactly was the difference between problem-based and project-based; project-based and inquiry-based, that we appreciated the truth of that Venn diagram. (Ah! Is that SCL at work? Did discovering it on our own by doing research online and discussing it with my group members make the content "stick in my brain" better?)

I also noticed that the overlap isn't only confined to the six SCL approaches, but that student-centred learning is stretching across practically all my classes. I find myself reading about the value of using authentic sources in my Oral communication class, about problem-based learning in my Educational Psychology class (Dr Tan Oon-Seng's book), about the negative effects of a teacher focused on "testing" rather than "teaching" in an article titled "The Backwash Effect", and many others. This student-centred learning thing is pretty pervasive.

Through today's experience of being a student in a SCL environment, I realised that the hurdle to successful implementation of SCL may not be the theory, planning, or even implementation of SCL approaches in the classroom, but rather the need for mindsets to change. Teachers need to get used to not giving all the information, and students need to get used to not being given all the answers. At some point in the lesson, I wanted Prof Tan to just tell me the answers already!, despite knowing that he wasn't going to do it. If I, a teacher-to-be learning about SCL can feel this way, what more a student who has a content-heavy exam to pass before he can graduate? How do I persuade him to change his mindset that the process is just as important as the end-point?