Scenario 2 (Activity D) Soo Hoon/Siyun

Scenario 2 (Activity D)

In this activity, you are to read Scenario 2 carefully and then describe what you would do differently from Mrs. Xing in order to prepare for the e-learning week (you may change the topic if you wish). Post this in your group blog and invite others to respond.
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E-learning can be a useful tool to adopt but at the same time, if it is not planned and monitored properly, it may result in many issues (in Mrs.Xing lesson, they were plagiarisms and pornography). I feel that Mrs. Xing has great ideas for what is to be done during the E-learning week just that the instructions should be in more details to lead the students and optimize the effectiveness of the E-learning week. Furthermore, Mrs.Xings did not include cyberwellness education into the preparation . The followings are what I will do instead.

Preparation before E-learning week

• Conduct cyberwellness lesson (at least for the components on plagiarisms and pornography) in class to educate them about the dangers which they may encounter during the E-learning week.
• Bring students to the computer lab (Scenario 1) and perhaps for them to use the Freemind to construct mind map on cyberwellness. (This helps to the students to internalise the things they have learnt about cyberwellness in class)
• Ask the students to post at least 1 item on the discussion forum on cyberwellness.
• Group blogs are to be created during the lab session. (Blogger)
• All the above help to equip the students with the necessities for the E-learning week.
• Check that all students have Internet access and suitable Microsoft PowerPoint at home.
• Teacher is to remind the students that after the E-learning week, she/he will build his/her lesson from the mindmap they have constructed. This is indirectly informs students that this assignment does not serve merely for the E-learning week. They are suppose to complete their assignment conscientiously.
• A brief outline of what students are supposed to do during the E-learning week without revealing the topic. (A sheet of instructions can be printed and be given to the students)

Assignment for E-learning week

• A PowerPoint file (2003-2007) will be uploaded into the school's Learning Management System (LMS). The file contained instructions for the task, Web sites students could visit, and some questions to guide and stimulate students' thinking.
• Teacher will be on Skype during allocated slot to answer students questions and provide help if they face technical problem.
• The students are to research on the topic energy and draw a concept map using Freemind to organise the information they found.
• Students are to take part in discussion forum in the LMS based on the concept maps they created. Each of them are to post at least 2 items.
• After the active participation in the discussion, they are to write a reflection on their group blog (at least 100 or 150 words) of What they have learn, what they want to know and etc.

E-Learning Activity B (sheng zhi)

In general, Mrs Xing suffered from the following problems:

1) Some students were operating the computers without permission early on in the class
2) Some students were not clear of the instructions
3) Computers not working
4) Mrs Xing could not catch the attention of the students because of the computer screens
5) Mrs Xing was the bottleneck of the session
6) Students who finish earlier disturb those that have not
7) Many students gave slipshod work

Intervention strategies to help solve or prevent these problems:

1) Recce the computer lab at least two days before the session, find out the arrangment of computers in the lab and take note of any particular seating arrangements for the students. Meet the lab tech to enquire about any faulty computers, lighting, chairs, tables and request that he be present for the first 15 minutes of the session.

2) In the period before the computer lab session, list down the Dos and Donts in class, make sure that the students are clear of the rules in the computer lab, such as do not operate the computer without the teachers permission, do not run about and disturb others, etc..

3) Give out worksheets that has instructions on how to operate the computer and how to locate and how to operate the software also in the lesson beforehand. Prepare more copies in case students forget to bring on that day.

4) If the seating arrangement allows, form them into groups and select one from the group who is conpetent in computer to be the leader. He will be in charge of maintaining discipline of the group and troubleshooting

5) At the start of the session, highlight the rules again on the screen and take note that the students are in their assigned seats (Chai & Wang, 2009).

6) If possible download softwares that gives the teacher master control of all the students' screen. If that is not possible, instruct them to turn over their mouse with the flat side facing upwards to hinder anyone from surfing the internet without permission. (Secondary Video)

7) Go through the topic to be written carefully, provide scaffolding and give guiding questions. (When did the memorable outing happen? Who was there with you? What happended? How did it happen? Why was it memorable?) This is to prevent students from going off-topic.

8) The teacher instructs the class to switch on the computers and report any faulty ones to the lab tech immediately. Assign them to free computers or take out a piece of paper to write their draft.

9) Prepare visual aids for them to catch the attention of the teacher such as coloured cups. The teacher can also signify certain actions that the class should look up and pay attention, such has dimming the lights. (Secondary Video)

10) Encourage peer editing. Let students learn from their classmates mistakes. Students can learn to rectify simple vocab and grammatic errors.

11) Teacher can then check for coherency and the flow of the essay, shortens the time for editing each draft.

12) Prepare worksheets, quizzes or crosswords for those that finish early to keep them occupied.

13) Remind students along the session to check for coherency and keep to the topic "A memorable outing"

References
E.D.T. Secondary Video
Chai C.S. & Wang Q.Y. (2009). ICT: For Self-Directed And Collaborative Learning. Pearson.

Elearning activity: Scenario 1 Activity B

Scenario 1 Activity B
The first foremost step she has to do is to do orientation with the computer lab. She has to familiarize herself with the computer lab layout and decide where to seat her students. She has to test whether the computers and other equipment are working. It is equally important to visualize in detail how the class are to be carried out. I think Mrs Xing did not plan her lesson well with poor SIOs with lower order thinking and poor lesson objectives. She should review her SIOs and ensure that it is in the ABCD model and to include higher order thinking skills. One way to do this is to instruct the students to do peer editing. In this case, the students are able to achieve higher order thinking skills. If Mrs Xing were to carry out the editing on her own, one-by-one, it will be very time consuming. The students would learn little and would achieve nothing. Mrs Xing should also survey her students’ computer literacy level to have a rough idea of how well her students can use the computers. It will also be beneficial to have a pre-e-learning activity before this to brief students on behavior and on cyberwellness. She could also demonstrate to the students on how to use the programme as students may not be familiar with it.

E-Learning Activity A

In this activity, you are to read Scenario 1 carefully and then identify implementation issues Mrs. Xing faced in her lesson.

I believed the root of all problems came from Mrs Xing 'desperate' attempt to implement an ICT lesson. She had little experience in conducting ICT lessons. What she did was to pluck out an idea from Edumall without thinking the compatibilty of the tool to the calibre of the students.

Implementation issue 1

Mrs Xing forced herself into choosing an ICT tool that fits her area of teaching. It seems that she had a poor idea of how the tool works and may have the mentality of trying outm taking it maybe like an experiment. Prepartion work for this ICT lesson was minimal and at most superficial.

Implementation issue 2

Mrs Xing did not give proper instructions on the Dos and Donts in the computer lab. She could have implemented a few simple rules like:
1) Do not on the computer without the teacher's permission.
2) All students should go to the computer that corresponds to their Register Number.
3) Students will be punished if they start to surf internet without a valid reason.

This will enable basic order in the class. This brings me to issue 3.

Implementation issue 3

Mrs Xing should have checked for level of computer literacy of the students before bringing them to the computer lab. The more computer literate students can either be paired with a computer iliterate student to facilitate in the flow of the lesson or they can serve as the group leader of the whole group if the number do not allow pairing up. From the video we watched, Mrs Xing could have used different colour schemed symbols to symbolise whether student's need help. A red colour symbol can be used to represent help is needed and this will prompt the computer literate student to answer to the quiry. If this is beyond the student, he/she can then approach the teacher for help. This helps to maintain order and minimise unwanted noise.

Implementation issue 4

Mrs Xing should have done her own prepartory work by ensuring that all the computers in the lab are in working condition at least the day before lesson. As a beginning teacher and being new to ICT, Mrs Xing could have ask for help in the form of a teacher aide or a more IT savvy colleague. This could have solve the problem of too many students trying to seek help from her.

Implementation issue 5

Mrs Xing did not plan the lesson in a practical way. She had planned to do too much in one lesson. Another issue that ensued was the way she tried to make up her little lesson time by allocating little time in giving out instructions. This could have resulted in the students submitting incoherent and badly-organised works. To counter this issue, lesson objectives and proper guidances should be made known at the start of the lesson.

Implementation issue 6

Mrs Xing had created the bottleneck situation. Students can only go on with their 2nd draft after she had done her editting. The waiting time will cause students to become restless. The teacher are not practical with her expectation. A solution to this would be peer evaluation. Students can be paired in a way such that they can help each other to look through each other's essay. Not only this will help in clearing the bottleneck issue, Mrs Xing would have freed herself up from being tied down on assessing the assignments and be able to walk around to make sure the students are on task. This indirectly helps Mrs Xing to solce the problem of 'out-of-reach' students.

Implementation Issue 7

Poor time management from Mrs Xing was one contributing factor to the incompletion of task. Mrs Xing could have allocated a timeline for students to finish their first draft and a time limit for students to comment on each others essay.(That is if she implement the pair up system to edit each other's work.) From the video, the teacher signalled the end of an activity by dimming the light. Another way is to use a bell to signal the end of an activity, similar to Dr Tan's method.

Feel free to comment on the implementation issue that I have brought up!

e-learning scenario 1 activity B

in the scenario, the issues that surfaced are not uncommon in a lesson conducted in a full computer lab. however, there are measures & strategies that can minimize the occurrence of these problems; though not fully eradicate as there are variables (such as the working conditions of the computers) which are not controllable by mrs xing.

firstly, before mrs xing even conducts the lesson, there are preparatory measures she could have taken which would have been essential for the lesson. she should have made a recce visit to the computer laboratory that she had booked for the IT session to familiarize herself with the working conditions & affordances of the computers (both student & teacher) as well as other technological facilities by trying them on herself. she should try to rectify (with the help of the IT technician) or at least pre-empt any possible technical issues she may encounter during the lesson. most importantly, she needs to thoroughly know how the software she is using works before she can implement it during the lesson, and if time permits, to meet the class IT representative to briefly run through with him/her the basic technical know-hows of the software. on her part, she has to set certain rules and regulations for the class to adhere to so as to maximize the efficiency of the IT session. it would also be good for her to prepare materials such as 2 different coloured plastic cups or a set of 3 coloured cards for every student as standardized measures to get their attention or as signals either indicating their readiness to continue the lesson or that they may be needing technical assistance ('traffic light' concept - where red means attention, green means good to go, while orange means not ready).

during the lesson, instructions and rules/regulations should be made clearly and explicitly. students' attention could be captured by freezing all activity in the student workstations & screening the live demonstration of the procedures using the teacher's workstation onto the students' workstations (provided that there are such programmes installed). otherwise, another possible method would be to get the students to gather near the teacher's workstation with pen & paper to jot down instructions before they proceed to work at their computers. it would be excellent if the teacher's computer workstation contains software that allows mrs xing to monitor student activity on their individual computers. this would help regulate discipline within the IT lab and hopefully cause students to more focused on their task. another possible alternative would be for her to walk around the lab to check on the students' progress and position herself behind the lab. supposing she wants to have the students finish their 2nd edit by the end of the lesson, she could perhaps set a time limit for them to finish and submit their 1st essay draft. also, she should have either the IT technician or a more senior teacher (who's available) who is equally IT-savvy on standby during the lesson should there be any further technical hiccups encountered that are beyond her ability to handle.

Chester's e-Learning Activity B

1) Disciplinary rules and activity procedures should be communicated clearly to the students and enforced from the start of the lesson.
2) If instructions are hard to “digest”, it could be done step by step.
3) Furthermore, instructions should be clear, not necessary short.
4) This will minimise the occurrence of misbehaviour and facilitate the flow of the lesson.

5) The students should gather at the front of the classroom as the rules and procedures are being communicated.
6) During the lesson, Mrs Xing should stand at the back of the classroom, so that she can see all the screens at a glance. –
7) This will ensure that students do not misuse the computers.

8) Being the first e-lesson, a technical assistant could be called upon to help Mrs Xing with technical support, while Mrs Xing focuses on the conduct and performance of the students.
9) The “red cup” strategy can be adopted, where students with technical or instructional problems use the “red cup” to provide signal to Mrs Xing or the technical assistant (if present).
10) Instruction guide for simple troubleshooting (if any) should be provided in the computer room.
11) This will minimise disruptions in the learning processes.

12) Scaffolding tools in the form of worksheets and checklist should be used to guide the students to complete their task.

session 4 reflections

the bulk of the last session was spent writing our lesson plans in our TEL demo groups and subsequently critiquing the SIOs that other groups came out with. well, this isn't my first time coming across SIOs in the ABCD format as this was briefly covered during the teachers' preparatory programme before we began our ESE attachment. nonetheless, it was still a challenge crafting out our lesson plans within the time limit we were given, in the specified format according to the template.

from the general feedback that came from our classmates, i learnt about the importance of being specific both in my lesson objectives as well as tailoring the lesson activities such that the objectives are met. what may work for high-ability students may not necessarily be the same for average-ability students & even those in the normal stream, thus it is good for every teacher to be flexible in their pedagogies such that they cater to different groups of students. the experience of writing SIOs for my group's lesson plan made me realize that incorporating all the elements of ABCD is not easy and it takes much practice to become more skillful in writing good SIOs and lesson plans.

i wonder though, for subjects like chemistry & mathematics where degree of accuracy is pretty clear cut given specific jargon the students have to know or calculations that have to be made, how then do we fit in the component of degree of accuracy in the SIOs of such subjects? it seems unreasonable to expect the students to be able to answer all the questions perfectly by the end of the lesson itself, yet at the same time putting in something like 70% accuracy in a SIO looks rather weird too. are there other ways of expressing this component?