1st week Reflection (Soo Hoon)

(I will be posting my reflections directly to this blog!)

Well, frankly speaking, i was not looking forward to ICT course before i stepped into the class. First impression of Dr. Ashley Tan was that he is going to be another boring lecturer in NIE. Well, my perspective changed as he proceeded with his lesson. I've served contract teaching for the past one year in EVG Secondary School. Just as what he mentioned, many schools are still not ready for the application of ICT in teaching. Throughout this one year of teaching, I did not apply any ICT skills to enhance teaching. Neither do i see much ICT applications among other fellow teachers. Hence, my perspective of ICT module was simply " It's just another module which is not going to be of much use in future. It's a module to learn how to use the latest IT gadgets. However, I realized the module came out to be different from what i thought initially. Dr Ashley Tan started off introducing "Meaningful activity". He also explained that ICT module does not merely aim to teach students the usage of IT gadgets. It came to me as a surprise that powerpoint slides are not necessary considered ICT tools. In schools, I often hear from practicum students saying that they have to incorporate ICT into their lessons. Hence, powerpoint presentation is kind of unavoidable to cope with observations. From then, I have always thought that Powerpoint presentation is essentially an ICT tools. Well, the 1st lesson has cleared this misconception of mine. The framework for meaningful teaching interest me as I always find it a challenge to conduct a meaningful lesson during my contract teaching. I look forward to learning more ICT knowledge, hoping these will enable me to conduct meaningful lessons for my future students. I would like to see more of how a teacher could conduct lessons using ICT. This will be an eye-opening experience for me. I will also like to learn more ICT tools unlike the usual (visualiser, powerpoint slides, blogger) as this will expand my capability and create variety of options when choosing the right tools for lessons. I am looking forward to learning relevant skills to enhance my teaching!