Blog Entry 1: My ESE

ENHANCED SCHOOL EXPERIENCE:
CLASSROOM OBSERVATIONS OF ICT USE

(I) Specific Observations

School Name: West Spring Secondary School
Class: Secondary 2G
Profile of the class:
The students in Secondary 2G are in the Normal Technical stream. There are more male students than female students in the class and the class has a higher proportion of Malay students. Most of the students are rather hyperactive and 'loud' and therefore, they tend to have shorter attention span. They get lethargic easily and would tend to talk to their classmates once they feel tired and listless.

In my opinion, I think that most of the students in Secondary 2G are lively individuals who are not afraid to voice out their opinions or to ask questions when they are in doubt. This allows the teacher to interact easily with the students. In addition, the students are also very straightforward and frank children who will not hide their emotions away from you.

In terms of their academic abilities, most of the students communicate and converse in their Mother Tongue language and therefore, they tend to be weaker in the English Language. Hence, it would be a challenge to get them engaged and interested during English lessons. Therefore, injecting the use of ICT during their lessons would be of vital importance as this helps them to be participative and engaged learners.

Subject: English
What ICT tools are used in the lesson?
The ICT tools used in the lesson would be the computers from the IT lab in school, Internet, as well as internet resources such as web-based activity for the students (the teacher uses the Ministry of Education's We-Learn English Portal).

Describe how ICT is used for teaching and learning in the lesson.
In 2G's English lesson, the students are asked to log in to the We-Learn Portal. Before the students are asked to log in to the portal, the teacher has already pre-uploaded some activities (such as grammar editing and map-reading exercises) for the students. During the lesson, the students are asked to try the grammar editing exercise by filling in the correct answers. Once they are done, they have to submit their answers and prompt feedback would be given to them as the students would know immediately how they have fared. The correct answers would not be provided and hence, the students can attempt as many tries as they wish to perfect their score.

The incorporation of ICT in English lessons is important as a majority of these students find traditional English lessons boring. With the use of the We-Learn Portal, this encourages students to engage in more active and independent learning. In additonal, visuals and ICT can enrich the learning environment and better engage the students to be more enthusiastic during English lessons.

(II) General Observation

How do teachers in the school feel about the use of ICT for teaching and learning?
The teachers in West Spring Secondary School believe that the use of ICT for teaching and learning motivates the students to be participative and engaged learners. As the students in today's generation are more visual learners, infusing the use of ICT in lessons would be good as it helps attract the students' attention and allows them to be more interested and participative in class. Besides that, the use of ICT for teaching and learning provides students with access to ICT in all learning areas in the school.

However, some of the teachers feel that a substantial amount of time and commitment needs to be put in in order to infuse ICT in lessons. In order to efffectively incorporate ICT, teachers will need to be competent in the latest software and programme. Some teachers also expressed their views that they sometimes find it difficult to find a suitable occasion to infuse ICT in their lessons.

Perhaps, one limitation with regards to the use of ICT for teaching and learning is how well the school is equipped with the ICT tools and software as there may be times whereby the teacher wishes to use a particular software for his lessons but the school may not have it.