I was employed St. Andrew's Secondary School for my contract teacher stint, and deployed there during my ESE. There, the students are not affluent or "techno-wizards" of any kind, just casual users of end-user technology.
Therefore, I'm very glad to have witnessed students taking charge of their own learning and producing works; videos, articles and blogs, and maintaining content on the school webpage.
One video, in particular, was very encouraging. Boys working on a project for the Commonwealth Essay competition approached Mr. Tan Yan Ho, coordinator for the Secondary 3 level, asking if they could send a video entry instead of writing the conventional essay. They had a passion in making video, and the Mr. Tan, along with the school's Visual Art teacher, Mr. Finosh Philips, facilitated in their learning, offering lessons on video editing and effects production to equip the boys with the requisite skills to finish their task.
The end product was a trailer that encompassed good narrative technique from their storyboards, good cinematography for their level, and good special effects for beginners. The project contained many IT skills learnt in a short period of time, and it was mostly learner-centric since the boys were the ones asking the questions, taking the time to experiment independently and preparing all the materials for the shoot.
This ties in well in the Ministry's aim of "transforming the learning environment and equipping [students] with the critical competencies and dispositions to succeed in a knowledge economy".
The video was one of the many projects initiated at SASS, along with sports journalism, class blogging, and website maintenance, in a bid to tie in the students' passion with elevating their proficiency in the English Language.
The Minitry of Education at North Buona Vista Drive
It is imperative for MOE to develop the third Masterplan for ICT in education as our students requires IT skills for work and play.
Having served as an assistant editor and sports journalist for ESPN STAR sports and served an internship at Mediacorp at 938LIVE's Sports Desk, I have come to learn that the ability to pick up and use new technology is highly valued. I recall, in a video, that the top ten careers at present did not exist in 2004.
This is because jobs such as social media analysts, apps developers and professional bloggers (the irony!) weren't in existence.
The task to equip our students with a plethora of know-how in the latest of technologies is now a need, and no longer just a luxury.
Our children do not only need technology to succeed in their future professions, ICT is the way to expose themselves to more ways of consuming information, entertainment and interacting socially.
The ability to communicate with family, friends and acquaintances without the restriction of geographical boundaries allows access to new trends, giving them an advantage in staying current in this postmodern world.
I have to be honest that the MOE's ICT masterplans did not impact me till my enrollment at a Junior College. My secondary school did not subscribe to IT technology use till my Secondary 4 year (1998), when they did bring in computers as I was preparing for a certain national written-based exam. Junior college curriculum did expose me to ICT tools, with school and personal endeavors requiring me to pick up word processing and sound editing skills; serving as a launch pad for a future career in sports media, and subsequently, a teaching career.
We were given access to computer work stations during our General Paper and Project Work periods, enabling us to immerse ourselves in what was then known as the "worldwide web", the "technological super-highway". Research needed for projects in Geography and Literature required us to learn the concepts of intellectual property and citation, staples in these times.
The good ol' days at Malan Road
Teachers at my JC readily accepted change in their job scope, playing the role of facilitator of lessons, rather than an information provider. My teachers also inculcated an invaluable skill, at least in me - the common sense in sieving out rubbish from the information that is critical. In other words, filtering.
Ms. Kalyani Kausikan, my Literature teacher, once said to me, "Google is your good friend. But without your other good friend, common sense, Google is just a loudmouth that spews forth whatever comes to mind."
Good advice, if you ask me.
I believe my role as a beginning teacher in the near future will be also one of a facilitator in the classroom. In addition to preparing my students for the secondary school national exams, it will be important to equip them with writing techniques for the various platforms, research skills to separate important information from the redundant and respect for other people's ideas and innovations.
In my stint as a contract teacher, I was assigned to help my mentors, specialists for writing and oral skills. I was tasked to teach my students journalistic writing skills (to some extent, reporting as well) and presentation skills, as well as the technologies that went along with it (web publishing, video and sound editing). These competencies are integral in the information age we are living in at the moment.
In the century when technology progressed at a pace of 20,000 years worth of growth, I believe that besides the rudimentary skills of reading and writing, we have to equip students with the necessary strengths to survive well in the virtual era.
There is the other aspect in the current master plan: teacher development.
I believe that, as a beginning teacher, it is absolutely important to learn from the veteran teachers, fellow peers in the teaching line and other industry professional. This is where ICT comes in. It is impossible for teachers, in their day-to-day job scope, to find time to consistently cultivate new skills and improve old ones. Access to stored beacons of information online in the form of manuals and videos helps in that area. This, as well as, professional development periods, department best practices presentations and cluster sharing aid in teachers further develop their skill sets.
As a beginning teacher, I know that I will have to be consistently involved in upgrading my technological competence and sharing what I know with fellow education professionals.
3SA is the best class in the secondary 3 level, rivalled only by fellow elite class 3SB. They are part of the RKS Adams programme of St. Andrew's, a special setup where the school devotes more resources and opportunities to expose the students to more possibilities in the future.
This class learns fast, and goes the extra step in asking questions of their teachers when in doubt, unlike most classes in a boy's school, which exhibit textbook behaviour of keeping quiet when encountered with a problem, as detailed by Michael Gurian and Kathy Stevens in The Mind of Boys.
The boys of 3SA are also very vocal, and tend to talk a lot when the teacher is speaking. However, unlike the 3NA classes I have taught, 3SA prefer individual work to group work, wanting to prove their proficiency in the subject by themselves.
Subject: English (Journalism)
What ICT tools are used in the lesson?
For this session, the students presented their work on journalism using Prezi, an online mind map programme as their main vehicle. They interlaced the presentation with videos of their coverage of a rugby game (as part of the journalism course), the transcript of their interviews, Facebook posts of how they went about preparing for the match coverage, as well as the final product on the 3SA class blog, the school website The Village Online and Red Sports, a website dedicated to local sports.
An example of the boys' work on The Village online
Describe how ICT is used for teaching and learning in the lesson.
In this case, a pair of students presented to their peers about what they learnt from their coverage of a rugby match during their English lesson. The pair was part of smaller group given prior lessons by Mr. Leslie Tan (of Redsports) and I on the rudiments of sports journalism.
The Prezi presentation was a strong visual tool, offering a powerful mind map that the students could easily take to, given that boys are more visual learners. The videos added were also a useful visual aid in the lesson, as the boys could easily find out about the presenter's experience "behind the scenes". The transcripts of the interview, Facebook log and liaison posts were informative and their classmates could easily learn from their experience for their own journalism projects.
The boys' work on Red Sports
Finally, the articles produced from this exercise, on the class blog, the school website and Redsports are a powerful teaching tool, as the students get too see the impact of their work. Members of the public, be it school alumni or sports enthusiasts, left comments on the articles, which gave the presenters a sense of accomplishment, pride in their work and that their work mattered. The responses to the articles also gave the remaining boys a push to outperform the pair in their own journalism exercise. Boys generally perform better when subject to competition.
How do teachers in the school feel about the use of ICT for teaching and learning?
Most of the teachers I spoke to took a genuine interest in trying to include ICT in their lessons, citing the need to better connect with their students.
Mr Kenson Go, a beginning teacher at St. Andrew's, developed a Secondary 3 narrative package, involving videos and animation. He reasoned that the technology ensures that the students are competent in one aspect of writing, since most productions have the basic Orientation, Conflict, Climax and Resolution patterns that the boys are very familiar with.
Mr Go, along with veteran English teacher Mr Stanley Ong have also been using blogs for learning and disseminating information to the students. Many classes in the school have their own class blogs where the boys frequently populate with content and lesson notes. The teachers also sometimes give instructions for lessons there and summarize a previous lesson as well. Mr Go and Mr Ong believe that the presentation of information in a form the students can relate to have been key in the boys retaining information more efficiently.
Another veteran teacher, Mr Tan Yan Ho, has been getting students to write for The Village Online, the St. Andrew's Secondary School's website, which he believes creates an authentic writing exercise for student.
Mdm Seow Geok Chew has turned to Facebook to give students information, such as speech writing format. The inclusion of formats and instructions on Facebook will save on printing and these will always there on their group wall. She believes that the use of Facebook saves time for the teacher as he or she does not have to keep repeating him or herself long after the lesson has ended. She also added that since the students usually log on to Facebook in their homes, it is a good tool of reference for them when they attempt their homework.
