Futuristic Classroom

"Could ICT replaces the role of teachers in the future"

That one simple statement got me thinking how much ICT has been involved in the classroom from the start of over head projector to computer and now smart-boards. I find it easier for teachers to teach their contents as they are able to visualize what they want to teach and children are able to see it and engage into learning much better. The interactivity of learning has increased with the multiple sensory learning, allowing the children to participate actively in their own learning, leaving the teacher behind to guide and to prompt them.

It came to mind how and what would happen when the teacher's role are taken over my machines. You going to see machines talking to students and teaching them, each child having an individual teaching robot or perhaps children learn from home from the comfort of their bed entering into the virtual classroom with avatars. How cool is that?

Put fantasies aside, actually that would not be a good idea and indeed will not happen as human intereaction is seemly important and must not be removed from education!

Classroom Management

Throughout the whole professional experience, I was facing difficulty in controlling the class. I have never been able to manage the class well or perhaps due to the short duration I am not able to get the kids to understand my expectation for them. Upon reflecting on it I came across Class Dojo on Lindy's blog which is a behavior management software. The software allows us to create an avatar for each of the child and earn rewards of points upon their completion of a task or perhaps their behavior in class. This is another type of ICT that can be integrated without the use of direct teaching. Sad thing is that I did not manage to try this software with the kids in my class.

Perhaps the next session when I am working with kids, I could use this software for managing the classroom, as compared to the traditional use of stickers or any physical rewards. 

What's ICT from today onwards?

The successful integration of ICT in lesson indeed made the lesson interesting and improve the quality of learning for the children, and of course there are failure times as well with the ICT. However what is it from here on-wards. As practical comes to an end quickly, and tomorrow being the last day in school. I was wondering what will I be doing with ICT, how will I use it to the max to integrate learning in the future. Along side with Neeno, we had implemented a few combined ICT lesson. She strikes out one important point of how ICT can be used in capturing attention before the class. With the guidance from the mentor, I come to see that ICT can indeed be used for

Capturing Attention

Retaining attention

Recap learning

Reinforce learning

Learn better things

and the list goes on......

Take a look from Miss Tan's blog reflection on how she carries ICT in class.

Toodles!!

Have anyone tried using the listening center as part of teaching children. Recently I had the privilege to actually try out integrating this into the lesson of Science. It captures the interest of the child to have their headphones on their ears and the teacher speaks through the microphone softly, the children pays attention in listening to what the teacher says and watches attentively o the video as they watch it. I find this interesting, it is basically the same method as teacher speaking and the children listens however with the use of this listening tool, the children tend to be more excited and intrigued by the device. What I would say is that this device actually managed to capture the interest and attention of the child, more to helping the lesson to run smoothly. 

My Pad Your Pad Our Pad

Those little monsters are awesome, they are able to use Ipads for their lessons. I am quite sure back when I was six years old I am no where near to knowing to use technology as good as they are now. No doubt time has change and children are now more tech-savvy and literacy is expanded beyond reading and writing.

As the days go by, I find it fascinating how much more attentive children becomes when we are using ICT in their lesson, how much more they want to participate and pay attention in class. They are basically wanting to try out the activities done on the Ipad, smart-boards and computers. These types of active interaction in learning allows the children to construct their own knowledge as they explore. One interesting part that Mandy actually conducted for her ICT integration during station games was the simple touch game that allows the children to think before passing to the next stage was rather awesome!

The Success of ICT integration

Back in the first week of practical, I was given the task to teach nutrition based on the school's lesson plan. It was not easy at first looking at how to teach that in a short period of 30 minutes with 15 children however it all turns out well when 2 were absent and was assisted by another peer. Thank goodness for the many resources available online for me to check out suc as from the Smart Board Resources and Smart Exchange that I could adapt and modify in aligning to the school's goal and lesson objective. The lesson was pretty much interesting with the children fascinated with the use of smart-board and nonetheless their reflection was done using twitter where they write a one sentence reflection on what is their favorite fruit that is healthy.

Tomorrow marks the second week of practicum, with all the blooming ideas that I can find online, lesson planning is now hassle free, it is just the integration to make it meaningful, sometimes I think that as educator we too do deviate from the real purpose for example introducing twitter taking a longer time and in the end it becomes teaching them to use that software rather than using the software for their learning benefits. 

First ICT integration

Somehow when it comes to creativity, I think that I am not at par with most teachers. I am trying my best to integrate ICT in the most creative manner but somehow the first week has ended and here is some reflection to be done. I think that most of my lessons at the moment was rather at its basic and has't been more interesting. As I was reading Megan's post, I was challenged to be more creative for the weeks to come. In doing so, do check out this particular site on Creative Classroom that offers many creative ideas to be read. 

With the first week of practical over, I came to realize that there can be hundreds of ideas out there but then again, it really depends on how the teacher carries it out and what they believe in, and at the same time we should rather be conscious that the real object should not be removed and be replaced fully with ICT.