Reflections (Week 2)

ICT tools has been increasingly incorporated in schools and utilized in classrooms of today nowadays. During my time in Secondary school, despite being in one of the best-equipped school, ICT tools were limited to web searches, website creation, and at max, forums. Teaching was still very much teacher-centred then, and student-centred learning comes in the form of projects and presentations, which rarely takes up more than 10% of curriculum time. Transparencies and chalk and talk was the "pop culture" of educational methods at that time. But now, as we begin to focus more on student-centred learning and making it more effective in lessons, ICT tools becomes useful learning aids that bring versatility and innovation into our classroom learning.

Through the e-learning lesson, presented before me were some effective tools that a teacher has utilized to great effect in making geography come alive in computer lab setting. The key however is the teacher who set a good system/structure and comes in promptly when students are not learning through the tools. Role of teacher = planning and set in place a structure for learning content, tweaking the conditions as you reflect upon effectiveness of lesson, facilitating the lesson by observing and keep things tight and efficient. ICT integration into lessons can only take flight and reach its full potential in energising learning in class if well-planned and cooperation from students is not a serious issue.

Questions to ask:
What tools are suitable, what are not?
What structure/system should be in place to effectively incorporate the ICT tools?
What should the flow of the lesson be? How to link each part of the lesson seamlessly?
What should students learn through each part of lesson and each ICT tool involved?

Equipping a teacher with the know-how of ICT tools is important, but the onus more often than not is on the teacher to be interested and curious enough to search and find out about these tools and understand its usefulness/limitations. The real equipping that's required for ICT tools integration to work in SCLA(Student-centred Learning Approach) is the thinking and planning process that's involved before, during and after the execution of such a lesson. This module, I hope, will do precisely this. It's really quite a challenge... as NIE prepare us to put aside the student-mind (one that sits and receive what is taught) and begin to put on the teacher-mind, one that is always concern about how students are to learn. Even seemingly easy concepts which we were sure we didn't need much fireworks and liveliness in class to grasp, the student-centredness approach would implore us to use methods with or without ICT, to bring them through a process of exploration and discovery in their mind. Wow... lots of challenges ahead for teachers.

I feel like I'm in BTT(Basic Teacher Training), a new recruit, scrawny and pimple-faced... going through training that prepare us for further training as we put into action what learn here in real-life units(schools) with the outfield exercises that tests how well these works(Practicum)... and finally to battlefield(actual school we'll teach as full-fledged teachers) where we are still continually learning to fight smart, to apply innovative tactics as we stand on our feet in battlefield... but that's where experience builds up and what works, what needs fine-tuning, and better decision-making comes in. Haha, an adventure awaits every teacher.

Experience do count, but before that, passion and a great attitude to learn.

Lots to learn, my fellow BTT mates. I'm glad I have great mates alongside me.