Reflections for Week 3 (Sheng Zhi)

This week we learnt about pedalogical approaches which is how teachers teach. Although I have been a student for almost 20 years, I have seldom question how my teacher teach. More often than not I accepted their teaching style and adapted to it as long as I can score in my final exam in the end. Is that the same for the rest of you too?

The two subjects that I am teaching are chemistry and maths which to me has basically two distinct teaching styles. My teachers taught me chemistry via a content base method where we have to do lots of memorising of various principles, types of reactions and reaction conditions. On the other hand, maths would involve many repeated "hands-on" exercises and tests so that we get enough practices to grasp the math concepts.

Nowadays students are exposed to all types of media influences ranging from social networking sites to multiplayer online games. Generally, they have a shorter attention span than maybe students 10 years ago. Furthermore, some of them may come from lower-income or dysfunctional families and are prone to being more restless in class. Therefore the introduction of suitable teaching styles for students is all the more important when we become teachers ourselves in the future.

Of the five approaches we learnt in week 3, I feel I will use more of project-base learning (PBL) and game-based learning (GBL) in my classes in the future.

Through PBL, students take greater responsibility in their own learning and "spoon-feeding" is minimised. Case-based. inquiry-based and resource-based learning can all be included in PBL as well. Students can learn to do research on relevant topics, ask question about how to solve the problem at hand and work on real world cases, all as part of their project.

Personally I like GBL probably because I like the idea of a little friendly competition and excitement when I am learning a topic. When I was in secondary school, I enjoyed my chinese class more when we get to divide ourselves in groups and play mini games. Points will be allocated for the right answers and I always feel a sense of achievement when I score points for my group. If I get the answer wrong, I feel obliged to get the next one correct which means that I have to know the contents of the textbook well. Unknowingly I have learnt the chinese nouns under the package of having fun.

ICT is not a compulsory inclusion in our teaching methods but it is certainly a useful addition. Online collaboration tools help students organise their data and reduce the hassle of doing a project. Online educational games of course helps to reduce the amount of work the teachers have to do to advocate GBL.

However, I feel that although we often emphasize on self-directed and independent learning, the usage of ICT in these approaches should be closely monitored, at least in the early stages. This is because students who are newly exposed to the internet may not be aware of the dangers in cyberspace. The internet is filled with many eye-catching websites that attracts students to click onto the link which in turn leads then to a malicious site.

Lastly, I feel that if we are going to introduce online educational games that are accessible from the student's own computer at home, we will need to be very careful. This is because these are not licensed games that they can only access in the school computer lab. They can easily disguise any game they are playing at home as "educational games that the teacher wants me to play", especially to parents who are not IT savvy. Addiction to these online educational quest games is very possible as well. Such cases have to considered if we decide to venture into GBL using online games.