Reflections for Week 2 (Sheng Zhi)

For week 2 of ICT lesson, we build on the five aspects of meaningful learning with self-directed learning (SDL) and collaborative learning (CL).

I have learnt that SDL is when students learn a new skill, knowledge or expertise on their own using the resources that is available to them. These resources could be books, internet search engines, videos or other forms of media.

Firstly the students have to identify what they need to learn, set a goal for themselves and then decide what they need to do to acheive their goal. If they want to make a documentary, they have to learn how to operate a video-camera and how to contact the people they want to interview.

As the students are learning, they have to pose questions to themselves. Taking the documentary example again, they have to decide what type of video camera they need, what do they need to learn about video-making, how elaborate should their documentary be, how many interviews should they conduct.

Then they have to plan their time to get all the individual tasks done so that they can complete the project in time. After completion, they have to do a self-review on how they could have done the project better or what mistakes they made so they dont repeat them in the next project.

CDL is more about bouncing ideas around and constantly sparking off new ones. The students have to consider the ideas given by their peers. They learn that there are many points of view on the same subject. They also learn to question ideas given by others and voice their opinions.

In CDL, each student or different groups of student will have a different task. By completing their assigned task, they will achieve the ultimate result. After that, they will have to review each other's work and what they have learnt from doing the project.

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I feel that both SDL and CL are skills that students have to apply to their work in the future. Technology promotes SDL and CL by making them less tedious than when we have no technology at all. For SDL, now we have various internet search engines, e-books and forums which makes searching for information much easier. We can have electronic calendars which helps us manage our time and give us timely reminders of datelines we have to meet.

For CL, we have many online collaboration tools which assist us in gathering different ideas from all our group members. We can then reflect on other people's idea, build upon it and give relevant feedbacks. All these ideas and feedback are collected in one (online) place making them highly accessible and convenient.

If we do not have mindmeister mind map for this session, probably we would have to draw the map on the whiteboard. This would eliminate small group discussion as there is only one whiteboard. There will probably be no feedback as well, as we are generally shy in large groups. If we draw individual mindmaps on a piece of paper, there will be no collaborative learning as we cannot see other people's point of view.

One thing I noted is that the technology introduced to promote self-learning shouldnt be too difficult to master or too flashy with too many animation. This would take away the student's attention from learning. Secondly, when we are searching on the internet for information, there are chances where some information might be fake so processing of information is important as well.