FORQED

Dreamfactory - The Superband waiting in the wings

2008-05-13T03:19:00.002+08:00

This year's Channel U Superband competition means an extra something to me, as Dreamfactory is one of the 16 finalists!!!

They are not just another band or idols-wannabes. This is the local band that I've been supporting, not least cos I know the band members personally, but also because they are a band of substance and character. Talent, ability and looks can only take us so far, but character differentiates those that lasts the distance from those that fade away with time and pressure. Dreamfactory rockz in every area!

Check this out: http://www.dreamfactoryfanclub.com

Read about what others say about Dreamfactory, explore the substance within, check out the videos of their performances at esplanade, and read about their humble backgrounds! You might just fall in love with their music-making and sign up as their fan as I did!

Watch out for Dreamfactory this June, Channel U, Superband. Their performances might just blow your mind and redefine what it means to be a rock band for you.

Long Awaited Post... so much happened...

2008-05-13T01:48:00.007+08:00

Dear longsuffering readers,

You must have grown some beard waiting for the next post... Here's an update about me for the past months... haha...

February 14th, 2008... I got attached to the girl of my life, Siew. My first relationship is going well, it's been simply amazing how we got to know each other for 5 years and finally got together after much twist and turns... I can't help looking back and thank God for how He arranged this to happen. We have much in common, both are teachers (she's a Primary Sch teacher while I'm gonna teach Sec level), both are involved in Boys' Brigade and Girls' Brigade respectively as Captains of our respective companies, both are helping in church, both are slim and sporty... and lots more! Happily in love. =)

Did my Teaching Practice at Hwa Chong Institution, High School. Awesome feeling to be giving back to the school that taught and groom me in many ways as I was growing up in my adolescence years. My Chemistry Teacher at that time became my teacher mentor. Much has changed since my time there as a student, system, culture and student profile(In terms of potential and ability, of course they still belong to the highest grade. In terms of outspokenness and ability to express themselves, this generation of students are generally much well-exposed and well-trained to speak up). It's very different, the approach towards education between being a teacher here and a student. The students naturally are concerned about their grades and homework, while teachers are concerned about delivering an easier pill of content knowledge to swallow through an unbelievably short amount of time. Admire the capacity of all the teachers. Simply world-class.

Finally, my posting come this June. Back to Hwa Chong institution, as a Chemistry teacher. Hooray!! My wish has come true... to be able to give back to my alma mater, and literally living out one of the core values of this school, "drink water must remember the source" = "饮水思源". My dear ex-classmates, don't worry. You don't have to become a teacher to live out this core value. By making yourself useful, you're doing the same to the society who has helped shaped our learning environment and given us a safe and stable environment to grow up in. I'm just so proud of my ex-classmates, all excelling in different fields. We have pilots in training, engineers, teachers, researchers (in English Language!), doctors, and entrepreneurs! Wow! I'm proud to say I belong to Sec 4D '98.

So much for my update. Attached the following for your viewing pleasure... and hopefully stir up something in the younger readers... What is your passion? Do not belittle the voice of one, the strength and determination of one. It takes one who dare to stand up and do something... to transform their community, their circumstances, The Power of One... who cares.

If everyone cares, by Nickelback

Adieu

Movie Craving Satisfied =)...And More

2007-10-12T01:25:00.000+08:00

Dun know y...

It's been hard since coming to NIE, to find someone to catch a movie with... hmm... when was the last time I watched a movie? Let me think real hard... Either Transformers or the latest Harry Potter film... forgot when was that, but it seemed like ages ago. A favorite pastime of mine and I believe for most city dwellers in Singapore (rural people are almost extinct in Singapore though maybe Pulau ubin still shelters a handful of these, together with the kelongs along parts of our seashore.) Ah... maybe it's the workload of NIE weighing down on my friends here... maybe it's my schedule which can't seem to fit in with the rest of my friends in the world outside... maybe people just dunno I like watching films and tend to leave me out of movie outings... haha, suddenly a cold wind blew pass, the sound of ruffled leaves falling... the loneliness feeling...

But today... my craving is finally satisfied! Watched Resident Evil: Extinction, with my dear friend Marklin, haha... never thought it would be with him... but it was cool... yeah... Thanks for the company. =)

The show was good... though not as exciting as I had wanted... my craving demanded much more actually. But it was good enough. The sound effects giving me a few scares at times... haha... but the storyline which is always a bit weak in this series has always been compensated by the pulsating fun of zombie-whacking.

At the end of the day, I'm glad it was more than just a movie outing. What started out as a meet-up for dinner, a time to spend with someone whom I don't really get to speak more to on a consistent basis... ended with a movie and a small talk over the coffee table (at MacDonald's, of all places! haha, cos Wang Jiao coffee place was already closing...) Really it was time well-spent, every moment of it. Hope you received something from tonight's fellowship and sharing. Some of the heart-to-heart talk was really wonderful.

God has His ways of granting the desires of our heart... but everytime... it's better than expected.
Thank God for a wonderful cell group and for all the friends I have. Everyone is a blessing that you've given me.
Thank God for the people in my beloved family... everyone is a blessing. Thank God for all the friends I have made... everyone is a blessing.
Thank God for teaching me how to count my blessings.

Whoa...How blessed I am so I can be a blessing to others.

Reflection: Week 7(Lesson on 13th Sept)

2007-09-17T23:23:00.000+08:00

Phew... the value of reflection can only be fully harnessed when the reflected event is still vivid in your mind, i.e. ASAP after the lesson!!! It's so tough going through all 4 weeks' reflections in a day... Sorry, Dr Tan, I guess it defeated the purpose of you having us reflect upon our learning. But this is so far, my earliest entry after a lesson... just 4 days after.

The start of this lesson was used to address the issues faced during E-learning week. Think Dr Tan did help to clear certain doubts we had about E-learning not being able to serve its purpose. Kudos to him for being frank in saying this year's E-learning week is worse than last year simply because it failed to build on last year's inauguration. And the fact that even our own tutors are slow in adjusting to use E-learning modes of teaching effectively. Enough of E-learning...

The Demo group of the day introduced the use of Windows MovieMaker to make videos for classroom use. It is surely useful especially if specific video contents are not available online. One very good suggestion proposed by the team and then rounded to become more SCLA based is to have students taking a demo video on the right way do a titration or any other experimental technique. And then having the class to critique on it. However, the time-consuming nature of taking and editing such films and the need to have motivated students who are willing to spend additional time doing such filming are all possible limitations to movie-making being widely implemented in classroom lessons.

As for the lesson proper, we were first introduced to the major major project called SCLP. I was totally blown away by last year's winning SCLP for a NIE-wide competition. It was so well-designed, every slide... and the fact it used only Powerpoint mainly to come up with a creditable game is really amazing! With great graphics from Initial D and well-thought gameplan, it really absorbed me into the case scenarios of the game. Quite wonderfully done! From what I understand, SCLP is going to be a package that showcase effective usage of ICT tools for student-centred learning purposes for specific topics. For a Chem n Math class like ours, I believe the packages we can come up with would surely bring a new wave of ICT craze into the respective schools we're going into, provided we are allowed to share the SCLPs we have come up with, at least within the class. That will be rather cool.

THe process itself is long and arduous given the time constraints and the juggling of multiple projects and presentations, but we're gonna come out stronger and better equipped, not just with a few more white hairs and hopefully no obvious wrinkles, but also the ability to enlarge our capacity to take the burdens that comes with teaching and the SCLPs that will at least spice up a few lessons.

Ultimately, I believe it is Dr Tan and NIE's wish that all of us can use this as a starting point for more creative efforts in coming up with more SCLPs along the way despite our busy schedule as full-fledged teachers...

Reflection: Week 6 (E-learning Week)

2007-09-17T22:28:00.000+08:00

E-learning week was being described by Dr Tan as having become "Eeeeeee!!"- learning week... for some of us... hahaha... Appropriate description of it for many of us... Simply overloaded with tonnes of assignments/discussion forums/online work to do... it was like finally a break from school but the comp has become the staple food for this period... literally hours and hours and hours of companionship.... Really trained us to make this lappie and that deskie our best-friend...

They say for times like SARS outbreak and possible epidemics, e-learning week like this would ensure learning continues in midst of such crises... but I wonder if we would be in the right state of mind to continue with studying and handle this amount of workload. Should we have an epidemic and lessons are halted, isn't the crisis around us so overwhelming that ensuring our friends and kin are alright takes precedence over studying?

Focus, e-learning lesson... ours was quite different from the rest. Got to come out with a student-centred learning plan to convince teachers of the usefulness of this approach, with ICT aids... rather similar to our assignment 1... that's why many commented it became like double work. Nevertheless, it got us to plan for possible student-centred learning lessons and how ICT can help... so we got more practice. Won't call this drilling us, but I guess with each practice comes more fine-tuning of our ICT-aided student-centred learning ideas.

E-learning has its pros and cons.

Pros:

Allow for OTOT(Own time Own Target) learning...
save on travelling time for those who needs 1-2 hr travelling time...
Allow for mass posting of discussion on discussion forums(though a bit enforced and became a bit meaningless towards the end...)

Cons:

Too much repetition of the kind of ICT tools used across different modules
Too much work and not all the lessons are that suitable for e-learning, for e.g. the chemistry module's lesson is supposed to deal with what makes a good lesson plan and to critique on 2 lesson plans. Content delivered to us are just 4 slides and we need to use that to critique on 2 full lesson plans... in the end, the tutor has got to re-teach part of the e-lesson to ensure we have gotten the right concepts.
I haven't experienced any network down, probably becos I'm staying in hall, but friends using comp at home were complaining about blackboard's inability to support the massive number of users.
Not easy to get immediate feedback from the tutor with regards to the lesson. Not every lecturer is like Dr Tan, who uses Skype to avail himself to us... others were mostly communicating through blackboard. Some were rather active, modelling what a teacher should do in discussion forum activities by posing guiding questions and adding value to the discussion. Others were less active in engaging us the students during the e-learning week... more like e-tasking us than helping us learn.

Ok... believe it's long enough... To cut the story short, the full value of e-learning week was not experienced and could have been better. All the best for future batches of student teachers.

Reflections: Week 5 (Lesson on 30th Aug)

2007-09-17T20:18:00.000+08:00

The key to writing good reflections is not in the length... MUST NOT WRITE AS LONG AS THE PREVIOUS ENTRY!!! I was shocked!!! Can become a 1000-word essay!!!

Ok, now for lesson 5...

C-mapping Tool was presented. Personally, I do not like to make use of concept map as a student because I find it more of a hassle. I would link the ideas up as I read and study. But I cannot deny its value in helping students link large amounts of abstract concepts together in a big picture. It may not be useful to me, but it still helped millions of students all over the world to study better. That would mean I have to learn to use make mind-maps effectively, so that I can suggest this as a plausible method to help my students link the many chemistry concepts together, especially Mole concept. That was the hardest most abstract concept I tried to figure out for the whole of sec 3 before finally understanding it in Sec 4. One more useful tool to equip myself with. THanks, dudes!!

On the other hand, the lesson proper, we were introduced to some fine ICT resources and half-completed a lesson plan on Periodic Table Group Properties. Wasn't easy. Dr Tan was squeezing ideas out of us on how ICT should be used for higher level thinking skills like analysis, synthesis, evaluation and the best we could come up with was C-mapping Tool and online quiz. Sometimes, certain lessons may not be suitable for ICT to come in for higher level thinking skills, but still as teachers, we need to strive to build on that area in our teaching... Good training, got us really thinking too. Teachers need to be able to look at each topic from many angles and think so much more in order to get the thinking out of students... Need to internalize this process now and practise it during practicum... This course has really challenged me to think out of the box and put away the traditional teaching methods of the past that I was used to... ginger that's old is not always hot in this case... time for overhaul of the old mindset.

Reflections: Week 4(Aug 23rd Lesson)

2007-09-17T14:07:00.000+08:00

To my horror, I've missed four consecutive weeks of reflections!!! Time to really reflect about the happenings of the ICT lessons before all the lessons zoom past in a flash... and increasingly little learning experiences is left to be reflected upon....

For week 4, I remember the group demo on Skype rather vividly. It was a wonderful and brave attempt by the group to conduct by far the most challenging presentation. 4 members using 4 different computers within the MxL Room to mimick the actual execution of Skype as an ICT tool for teaching purposes. Through their presentation, although Skype is user-friendly for internet and video calls, it might still have its limitations in terms of being used for teaching/learning purposes.

The group proposed the use of Skype as a means for instant feedback between teachers and students during e-learning week(which Mr Tan really did implement during our e-learning week) and as a tool for multi-party communication across nations/organisations/schools for collaborative projects. While these can be somewhat effective for student-centred learning via reflection and cross-border peer-to-peer/ professor-to-enthusiastic-students(like in the COTF experience) learning and sharing, it was rightly pointed out by some of us that MSN messenger is a more widely used tool that can be equally effective. Only advantage of SKype over MSN so far is that it supports up to nine individuals in a video conference call.

But in the near future, with constant improvements and additions to the add-ons that Skype supports, it may not be long before Skype becomes more widely used. The group showed us one of the many additional features and programs supported by Skype, a virtual whiteboard. I've done a little search on Skype and found that many individuals are developing conferencing tools and collaborative tools as Skype compatible free-wares that enhances the whole Skype experience. The potential of Skype as an online teaching tool cannot be underestimated and as student teachers, it does help if we equip ourselves with this cousin of MSN which is fast overtaking it in terms of functionalities. One thing to note is students must be well-equipped with good webcams, mics, and fast-speed internet connections.

Of course, that's only the appetizer for lesson 4. The crux of this lesson is to get us to complete our write-ups on SCLA and to critique another group's writeup. We critiqued on Game-based learning, which is a rather interesting approach to learning. Through games, either via computer or on interactive whiteboards, or even hands-on ones, students are motivated to learn because of the fun and uncertain outcome of the game. However, it's not easy to find suitable games for every lesson objective and thus should only be used when it does enhance the overall learning and not for the sake of having fun and variety alone. Quite impressed that the game-based group propose the long-time chinese RPG gamers' favorite (Romance of three Kingdoms) which may allow students to learn about a certain era in China History but may not truly reflect the historical facts in the right perspective. It can be used to stir up interest though in one of the most talked about period in the history of China.

This lesson also introduced to the framework or structure for lesson planning to be effective, zooming in on writing good lesson objectives based on ABCD (Audience, Behaviour, Condition, Degree) Framework (this happens to be the only module so far that uses this framework, was not mentioned for Chemistry and Math modules). Dr Tan suggested that a framework should be adhered to for new teachers, especially when we have no prior experience to fall back on in terms of lesson planning.

Over the weeks, I've learnt lesson-planning is really tedious, but it keeps the teacher accountable to both the HOD and the students. You plan to fail if you fail to plan... Even teachers, as the "master" of the classroom, need to realise that learning does not take place just because we are know the subject well. One of my tutors say, teaching is like 5 days a week of putting up a show in front of students, in a bid to capture their attention and communicate something to them. It's hard work!!! There's a Chinese saying, "台上十分钟，台下三年功." That's to say 10 min on stage is the fruit of 3 years of hard labour! Lesson plans are like battle plans, knowing your students, knowing yourselves, half the battle's won!

Prepare...prepare...prepare.... NIE prepares us with super hectic project deadlines seemingly for the same reason. Projects Galore!!! Hats off to seniors!!

Amazing Story of Nick Vujicic

2007-09-05T02:40:00.000+08:00

Nick Vujicic's life story is gonna change your view about the troubles and problems in life. He's an overcomer who choose to believe there's no limits with God despite of his own limits. His in-spite-of faith has inspired many to live life with greater purpose. Read his full story at the link below:

http://www.lifewithoutlimbs.org/about-nick-vujicic.php

Have a look at this video to know how he actually does the simple daily tasks we take for granted since young.... brushing, combing, drinking...etc.

If you have read his life story, you would have known he's overcome all odds to attain bachelor's degree, able to dream great dreams for himself, and believing he's gonna achieve it! How positive can one be... placing no limits on himself despite the obvious physical limitations to the human eye... The positive environment he grew up in really made a difference, coupled with a strong personal decision never to bow down and give up hope, holding on to great attitudes in life... He succeeded in living out a quality of life that supercedes many of us!

His story can inspire us teachers too...
Are we putting limits on our students just as easily as we put limits on someone like Nick?
Are we going to stop at equipping them with content knowledge and be contented that we're fulfilling learning outcomes?
Or are we gonna break down the walls of limitations in their minds and add wings to their dreams by believing in them, encouraging them, looking at them and say there's no limits to how far they can achieve? It's not building self-esteem here, it's shaping lives and lighting that passion within them to go for something that's larger than life.

The influence of a teacher goes a long way in students... don't waste it away.

Surfing the Net with Kids

2007-08-24T00:52:00.000+08:00

Look at this video... rather inspiring for educators and leaders of youths alike.

There's still many interesting chemistry links at http://www.surfnetkids.com/chemistry.htm. Found the chemical comics part particularly interesting. It presented what is called the Periodic Table of Comic Books. When you click on each thumbnail that represents an element, say oxygen, comic strips where oxygen is mentioned shows up. And some of these comics really teaches something about the element. Check this out...
http://www.uky.edu/Projects/Chemcomics/html/mm_31_5_co.html
Tells you quite a lot about metals... haha... didn't know comic writers of the marvel heroes era (quite old one...) know how to use their stories to teach Chemistry!! Possible SCLA ya? Just something Chemistry comrades might wanna explore a bit more... can be a lesson appetizer for the topic on Periodic Table. Quite a number in my Teachers Preparatory Programme(TPP) class actually talked about utilizing comics to teach, mostly with regards to the humanities and moral issues... but I didn't know, even Chemistry can be learnt through comics!!

The web provides such a wide resource that if teachers are really looking at using ICT tools effectively, or for the matter, outside textbook material kind of teaching, regular websearch can sometimes reap little gems(polished or unpolished) for the teacher to creatively turn it into a useful tool for teaching and learning...

It really takes a lot for one to be in a position to consistently inspire and influence... but it always bear fruit when you sow the seeds... just that sometimes, when the fruit falls, you won't be around to see it and taste it.

Keep lighting that fire in our students...

and in ourselves too. =)

A Basic Tutorial on Audacity... on Teachertube

2007-08-23T22:37:00.001+08:00

Hi, all

Found this on Teachertube...

Hope it's useful to teachers out there. (Psst... it took me very long to download this video fully, hope it won't happen for you)

Some of the things you can do with Audacity are recording, editing and packaging your own digital audio file into a preferred format such as MP3 or WAV for use in presentation or post it on your website. The features include:

Record audio clip.
Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs.
Edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, and WAV sound files.
Cut, copy, splice, and mix sounds together.
Change the speed or pitch of a recording.

Get it from the educational tools section at our CITE website. Spice up your lessons with some sound... I haven't try it... but I believe it's good to equip ourselves with the basics of more ICT tools now, so that as we plan for lessons, we already have a few ICT tools to choose from that we can operate and incorporate effectively.

Learning never stops...

If only all learners understand... including ourselves.

Reflections(Week 3)

2007-08-23T02:17:00.000+08:00

Lesson 3 of ICT was held at the MxL lab... basically a place set up with the aim of facilitating resource-based learning where students can be divided into several groups and make use of the partitions equipped with computers and computer linkpoints to start discussions, view videos etc. With a centre floor filled with rows of chairs for about 25 and a large screen, a tutorial space of instruction is available, useful for teachers to teach and students to do presentations.

So the lesson was kick-started with the first group presentation on interesting ICT tools that will be helpful in our lessons. And this pioneering group did a wonderful job in teaching us how to download Youtube videos onto our computer for use in lessons without the need of going online and waiting for it to load during lesson. The extraction can be done via a net based webpage at http://www.keepvid.com/. Instructions can be found on http://ict-course.pbwiki.com/Group23A for those who are interested to find out more. One interesting SCLA suggested by this impressive group was to give the students a specific topic to go Youtube to search for a representative video that best illustrates this topic, download it via keepvid and hand it up to the teacher, with justifications why this video is chosen. This provides the students an opportunity to source out suitable videos, analyse their relevance, justify their stance and thus in the process, the responsibility to learn about this topic is placed on the students. Resource-based learning.

Which leads me to the next portion of the lesson, in fact the bulk of it. We were introduced to five learning approaches utilized in SCLA and divided into groups to research on a specific one.
These learning approaches are:

1) Problem-based learning
2) Case-based learning
3) Project-based learning
4) Resource-based learning
5) Game-based learning
(with the exclusion on inquiry learning which Dr Tan supposed we are rather strong at being Chemistry and Math Teachers-to-be.)

And Dr Tan did was really to model for us how to be a facilitator of resource-based learning, incidentally what my group is doing. He gave a starting point of research by providing a website link for each group, went about reminding each team the time given and ensured each team is researching along the right track. And then he got us to critique his lesson... wow... great training for us whom as teachers ourselves, we gotta learn to reflect and critique our own lessons as well. Come next lesson, there will be more on these areas as we round up the research and present suggested lesson plans using these learning approaches.

Credit to Dr Tan for giving us the opportunity to learn from him as he modelled for us one way to introduce SCLA in lessons.

By the way, Dr Tan also introduced the Youtube for Teachers worldwide ---> Teachertube!! There might just be some interesting resources here to spice up your lessons and demonstrate some interesting effects/reactions/issues to your students. I've signed up for it... have you??

Reflections (Week 2)

2007-08-22T12:39:00.000+08:00

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.

Reflections on Lesson 1 (2nd Aug 2007)

2007-08-15T01:05:00.000+08:00

Oops... I know this is a bit late...

K: What I already KNOW about this week’s topic

I know Information and Communications Technologies(ICT) is an essential tool to be incorporated into today's classroom environment, especially in the fast-changing world we live in, where ICT has been central to many of the improvements and advancements we see around us. I know that as a teacher, I need to be well-equipped in this area so that I can introduce some of the relevant ICT tools in my teaching effectively, so that in the midst of learning content, the students can be well-versed in the usage of ICT in preparation for the challenges ahead of them.

W: What I WANT TO LEARN

I want to learn how to make my class come alive with the help of ICT. I believe ICT when incorporated effectively, can break the dullness of everyday classroom activities... it can bring learning to a new dimension. How much ICT is good and effective and not overly burdensome on the students? How to use ICT creatively to achieve the goal of introducing applications and bringing to life on what's been learnt and yet do not compromise on the amount and depth of content learnt?

L: What I LEARNED this week

I learned, first and foremost, that we are not allowed to drink in computer labs, even if it's just water. That's how strict we have got to be with ourselves, starting right now in NIE, so next time we will be conditioned to do the same in our schools too. To protect the school's property - the beloved computers... from suffering waterfalls that might come crashing down on them when accidents happen... sorry, drifting. Was the first to get caught drinking in class in front of dear Dr Tan, and it was something new, because no food and drink signs have meant "but plain water is alright if you are thirsty" all my life, except in the chemistry labs of NUS, and in this instance. So well, I learnt something new, non-content material. haha, but I do understand the need to do so. If we are going to use ICT tools, we first got to learn how to protect and safeguard their well-being.

What I really learned from content in class today is that ICT tools is especially helpful when it comes to implementation of student-centred or learner-centred learning. While most of the people my age(grand old age of 25) belongs to era where learning is still very much teacher-centred, indeed there is an increasing need for learner-centred education approach. This caters learning according to the abilities and needs of the students and ICT tools opens new doors for learners to explore amongst themselves and with the surroundings. This pose challenges for us teachers from a different era, and that's why the importance of this module, and the need to keep learning new things even as we age. (Sorry for sounding like an old man... but sometimes their age-old advice still applies...)

I also learned about wiki, a user-friendly platform that facilitates interaction amongst learners and with teacher, where ideas and files can be shared, where learning is done together on a ship instead of individual sampans... But I've still got lots to learn about wiki's because apparently, it isn't quite user-friendly to me as it should...hmm...

Q: What QUESTIONS I still have

Oh, plenty. They will surface as we go along in this course. For now, just some appetizers... ICT tools like palmtops and touchscreens that we saw in the video remains a premium for many schools, as many would consider it a luxury to have a visualizer in every class. While some schools are luxuriously equipped in this area, giving them a wider scope of exploration with ICT, others would have to make do with creativity in the midst of limitations. Are there plans underway to create a leverage for schools less furnished in this area? Even so, I believe ICT tools are getting flexible and more easily accessible to teachers and learners than before. This means without sophisticated gadgets, ICT can still make learning fun and multi-dimensional with collaborative learning objectives being met. So there's lots more to explore in this module... looking forward to learning from my beloved peers and Dr Tan.

Hope my long postings still sound coherent...

Tsk... Night cats like me, my father say, should not have chosen teaching as a career. But ESE has given me hope, that I can successfully finetune my rest-time for the rigours of teaching. It was tough, agreed.

Finally a first blog...

2007-08-15T00:29:00.000+08:00

Dear Readers...

An amateur blogger passing by... and here to stay!!! Welcome to my very first blog... thanks to QED522 module in NIE... And that explains the interesting name of this blog... FORQED!!! Please dun use it in any vulgar sense... it's read (to me if it does exist as a word) as "FORKED". Meaning I was arrowed to do this... and it so happen that I am struggling right now with a thorn in my flesh... so here I am, Forked... Forqed.

But on a serious note, I do agree with NIE's view that teachers have become digital/IT immigrants, where now the 18yr-olds and below are the digital/IT-savvy residents while we teachers-to-be are lagging behind quite a bit. Haha, the present generation of students probably would have baulked at us only becoming bloggers at the grand old age of 25! So here we are, on a mission to not only catch up, but to be at the cutting edge, preparing our students and lending them confidence to thrive in the age where technological literacy is fast becoming a basic requirement for survival in the ever-changing world of today.

It's gonna be fun sharing my thoughts with you about how we are going to achieve that via this module... but I won't be sharing just that, bits and pieces of my thoughts, feelings, visions and dreams will also be released... so do look out for more from the amateur blogger who's just a tad over-excited about the fact he just had his first blog!!!

Tsk... my family doc just described my 'newest' hairstyle as a pyramid! oh well.... time for reflections... =)