Reflection (Lesson 3)

Looking at the comment from Dr Tan from my previous post, it seems like i am currently in danger of falling into the trap of using ICT tools to impress and not for meaningful learning(ML). Looks like I have to be more conscience of my direction. Recalling what my RO had said to me previously, " We are here to educate and facilitate the learning of the students. We are not here to entertain them." I guess I have to constantly reminding myself over this.

Bringing back to the reflections for lesson 2 that i missed out on.

Meaningful learning is the incorporation of any of the five elements into the lesson, making it active, constructive, cooperative, authentic and intentional. But it is hard to incorporate all into one lesson. So, to me now, careful planning is thus needed to ensure that one lesson at least fulfills one aspect of ML. Collaborative learning is one way where I strongly believed in and feel that this helps incorporating both self-directed learning (SDL) and collaborative learning (CL). An example that can be used on the chapter on Energy where we can give students a scenario to work with and explore the contents on their own.

On the other hand, students should use the soft skills they had learnt to help make learning meaningful. They should be open to the concept of learning in a group and also accept that students themselves should be more independent in their learning. This is a problem i foresee in students in neighbourhood schools. These students may not be ready for these learnings. Also, these schools may need sometime to be ready to make this a large scale affair.

As I mentioned before, MLs can be implemented without ICT. ICT tools are there to help and facilitate the enforcing of ML. They provide us with a platform where teaching can take place. This platform allow students to share their knowledges. It also allows students to clear up their misconceptions and fill in all the gaps that are present.

Back to present, in lesson 3, we were introduced the 'IT' word in education, 'PEDAGOGY'. In simpler terms, it is the different methods of teaching. Five methods introduced were Case-Based Learning (CBL), Inquiry-Based Learning(IBL), Project-Based Learning(PjBL), Resource-Based Learning (RBL) and Game-Based Learning(GBL).

We were also exposed to the jig-saw method. This is not a new method and this is where CL and SDL are being practised. Each of us was tasked to take a specific pedagogy. After which, we shared our area of 'expertise' with our group. Although we were given specific URLs to start our research, no restrictions on us to wander away from the few help sites.

During the process of researching and discussion on my area of expertise (GBL), where learning was done through the incorporation of games, one area of concern came to me. Will the students actually pay too much focus on winning the game and neglect the primary objective of learning? Although I was supposed to work on GBL but I feel that the more prominent methods are PjBL and IBL. In my school, we tried to come out with an IBL lesson package and enforced it. These lessons took up more time and students were often lost. We served as facilitators and guide them along the way.

As for PjBL, it encompasses the other pedagogies. In doing projects, students will be exposed to both SDL and CL. Not only that, they will also be able to pick up the soft skills. Students will also be able to inquire, search and extract informations from resources and case-studies. As for GBL, my personal opinion feels that it would be more appropriate for this pedagogy to be used during revisions.

Concerns from me. How to incorporate ICT into at least the five teaching pedagogies? Second concern, how can we make IBL and PjBL 'closer' to the standards of the NA and NT students? How much more guidance do we give them? Or do we just treat them as per normal but using a different set of assessment criterias?

Hope that these questions will be answered soon!