Enhanced School Experience: Classroom Observations of ICT Use

(I) Specific Observations

School Name: Northland Secondary School

Class: 2NA

Profile of the class: (For e.g., the students’ academic abilities, stream and other characteristics) There are about 41 students who make up 2NA. They are mostly students who are strong visual learners are opposed to traditional pen-and-paper learners. They are students from the normal academic stream and they require constant engaging by the teacher. Boring lesson delivery does not entice these students. Instead, what appeals to them are images, videos and incorporating music into the lesson. The students require constant interaction with both the teacher and the lesson in order for them to be engaged. They lose their focus very quickly and often become restless when the teacher drones on for very long. They are specifically very keen on music, and enjoy the lessons best when the teacher is able to infuse current songs and music artistes into the lesson.

Subject:

What ICT tools are used in the lesson? Images from the internet was saved and made into a slide show for students to view when studying the poem ‘HDB Metamorphosis’.

Describe how ICT is used for teaching and learning in the lesson. The teacher implemented the use of ICT in her lesson by making use of pictures on a powerpoint slide to engage the students to learn. She started off by talking to students about the poem ‘HDB Metamorphosis’ and explains the idea of metamorphosis to students. The poem talks about the change in HDB flats from past to present. As many of these students were only born in the mid 90s, they are unaware of what HDB flats used to look like before. In order to aid the students in their understanding of the poem, the teacher supports the written words with images. The images help the students to visualize what is written in the poem. The images work in two ways – a) it assists in the students understanding of how far Singapore has come as a nation state. The teacher flashes images that corresponds to certain words or stanzas to help the students to visualize what is written. As many of these students come from non-English speaking homes, their vocabulary abilities are not as strong an Express class. As such, the students may not have been exposed to many of the words used in the poem. Thus, the images that the teacher shows to the students becomes more than just a visual aid. Rather it becomes a crucial element to the students learning and understanding. b) The use of ICT is also very important in a class such as 2NA because it provides a break from the monotony of boring pen and paper lessons. For the students in 2NA, visual aids are important because they need little activities such as the image slideshow to keep them engaged. Without the use of ICT, the students end up being bored and disengaged. Instead of merely sitting and copying notes from the teacher, the students are allowed to play an active part in their learning by engaging with the images and interacting with them.

(I) General Observation:

How do teachers in the school feel about the use of ICT for teaching and learning? (For this question, you may want to speak to the HOD/ICT and other teachers you know in the school.)

Most of the teachers in Northland Secondary School incorporate ICT into their teaching. Using ICT appears to be a big part of the teaching culture at Northland Secondary School because of the student profiles that they have in the school. Majority of the students in the school require a lot of engaging. It is not enough for the teacher’s to merely use a paper and pen approach to their teaching. Another reason why the teachers appear to use ICT is that it allows the students to participate actively in the lesson as well. For example, instead of asking students to take out a foolscap paper to copy down lesson notes, by using powerpoint slides and handing students a handout to copy their notes down, students actually pay attention to the slides and what they teacher is saying in order to fill in the appropriate blanks etc. ICT for teaching and learning also helps to develop the students interests in subjects and helps to enhance the teaching of a particular lesson.