QED522-Reflections

"Engaged Learning" Revisited

2008-10-14T10:06:00.002+08:00

We've now come to the end of QED 522: Engaged Learning Using ICT.

Looking back, it has been quite a fruitful journey. I had always been very skeptical about ICT usage in class before QED 522. I mean, how can the lesson be value added if students are shown PowerPoint Slides, instead of diagrams on the whiteboard? To a certain extent, when ICT is used in this way, whiteboard could be a better choice as it allows teachers to respond immediately to students' needs.

Come QED 522 and now, my perspectives change. ICT is not meant just as another presentation tool for teachers, but rather a tool to empower students to seek and construct knowledge. With ICT, students will be able to create even with little technical knowledge of the final product and thus, they will be able to fully utilize their mental resources on the content. And “the content”s are the ones that we want the students to learn. For example, we might want students to learn about the possible social issues in allowing gambling and to make the lesson more interesting, we want them to produce a radio talk show. Without Podcast, students have to spend time to familiarize themselves with radio recording. However, with Podcast, the recording becomes intuitive to them and thus, more time can be spent on the content itself, i.e. the social issues in allowing gambling.

With a more interesting way of presentation and a chance to create a product to call it their own, students will naturally be more motivated to learn the topics at hand.

Another important aspect in engaged learning is the use of reflection and I gained this important insight from my tutor, Dr. Tan. Without fail, he will always request reflection from us, either as a class discussion or in our personal course blog. Personally, I find this useful as the reflection process “force” me to organize all the activities which he has engaged us in and form a construct which will be personally useful to me. In the same way, a reflection process will be needed in our lessons with students so that they will not be lost in all the “fun activities” and form something personally meaningful to them.

In short, QED 522 has indeed “opened my eyes” to the wonderful possibilities of ICT in student-centered learning.

Learning Environment - COTF

2008-10-06T23:26:00.003+08:00

I have just visited the COTF today and I must say that I am very impressed with the technological affordances for learning, ranging from incidental learning at the "cafe" to homework in the form of games. However, what really struck me is the learning environment of the classroom.

With a touch of the button, students will be immersed in different "environments" through the interplay of visuals on the wall and sounds. The seating arrangement, together with the interactive screen on the table, allows optimal collaborative learning.

Learning environment, I mean literally the physical environment, is one area which I personally feel has not received much attention. Therefore, it is my hope that in designing the classrooms of the future, although technology does play an important part, I believe the same care and attention should be focused on designing the best physical environment for our students.

Game-based learning is also featured in COTF and I cannot deny the intrinsic motivation that this holds for our digital natives. The intuitive manipulation of the armoured vehicles for the optimal projectile angle is definitely helpful to students who can't grasp the same idea from mathematical formulae and/or static diagrams. However, care must be taken to supplement this learning with conceptual understanding. Otherwise, students might graduate from school with only a superficial intuitive understanding of physics concepts.

Perhaps, this brings to mind Marc Prensky's article about Digital Natives. In his article, he mentioned the use of ICT for reflective purposes. I guess this serves as a good reminder for us teachers-to-be that we must create opportunities for students to reflect. Personally, I feel that learning without reflection is basically computer programming. We are human beings with a free will to act and how we act depends very much on our belief and values. It is only in moments of reflection that we are able to own our learning experiences and internalise values abstracted from them.

Second Life

2008-10-06T21:49:00.003+08:00

Here's a youtube about Science Learning in Second Life:

Basically, the video showcases Second Life as a rich repository of information with the possibilities of magnifying micro and nano structures so that learners can explore them. I could see that this can help students to visualise them better. Another interesting feature is the virtual conference which is attended by people from all over the world. Again, another platform to encourage collaboration among people from all over the world.

However, as the "structures" and information are all created by people and not real-life instances, thus students have to be educated to ensure that they are not misled by "false representations" just as the "false information" in wikipidea and other Web 2.0 knowledge base. This brings back to my point about the importance of affective education. In this age and time, education is rightly more about instilling students with a sense of right and wrong at a younger age rather than just feeding them with information and knowledge.

Real-Time Online

2008-09-22T22:47:00.002+08:00

Dr. Tan let us try Mindmeister (a kind of online synchronous mind-mapping tool) and I'm truly amazed at the amount of knowledge the whole class managed to generate. I guess one important factor that ensure the success of this mind-mapping tool is the fact that each small group is able to know what the other groups are doing almost instantaneously. This allows for group dynamics at 2 different levels - intra-group (face-to-face interaction within each small group) and inter-group (via the real-time updates of the mind map). What is more important is the fact that the ICT tool is able to match up to the amazing speed (or almost match up) that our human brains are capable in "throwing out" ideas.

Upon reflection, this is also the main reason why my group decided not to use Yugma for Demo X. Although we can see the potential of this programme for collaborative work, my group mate has tried it and find that the "refresh rate" is too slow for real-time communication and this might impede the progress of discussion. Thus, as a result, we decide to go for MakeBeliefsComix, an online tool for easy generation of comic strips.

It looks like selecting the right ICT tool is a form of art. On paper, the functions might look good. But I guess as teachers, we got to have some kind of personal experience with the ICT tool before deciding the suitability of the tool.

Educational Gaming

2008-09-14T18:07:00.002+08:00

From the article which I have read, this left a deep impression on me: "Students are frustrated and increasingly dissatisfied by the digital disconnect they experience at school." I guess this echo what Dr. Tan has always stated that it is irresponsible for us to teach the way we feel comfortable and not the way our students learn best.

Okay, it is good that now we know (or rather, we may know) the best way our students learn and it is also true that all of us are engaged in the games we have been playing for the past 2 weeks and we can see the educational values and even discuss how we can incorporate these games into lessons.

Personally, as I reflect on these experiences, I'm convinced that educational gaming does have its place in a student's education. However, I'm at a loss on how to incorporate all the content learning objectives into such lesson plans, ensuring that my students are able to answer all the questions in the exams. Again, the question of assessment.

As I have reflected in some of my past blog entries, there are definitely benefits in our current assessment methods and it is dangerous to throw the baby out with the bath water if we feel that we need to revamp all the assessment methods just because they don't fit in with these more engaged way of learning. Care has to be taken to find the common ground.

In the meantime, I guess I shall strive to keep a balance and if opportunities arise, I will try to include these games and/or other ICT-related activities to ensure my students get to learn in their own terms for some (if not all) of the topics. This shall be a baby step towards the bigger ideal, at least for me.

Reflections from MxL Studio 1

2008-09-02T23:38:00.000+08:00

Was engaged in Station 1 and Station 5 today. Here're some of my initial thoughts:

Station 1:
The MacDonald's game is pretty cool and I think it will engage the students and perhaps, illustrate marketing, economics and supply & chain management concepts through the virtual experience. In a way, it can also illustrate to the students the possible complexities in the world out there and all the concepts they have learnt from textbook can only give a microscopic view of the scenario.

As for the other game, perhaps it will engage the kinesthetic learner as they "experience" (virtually) the "meaningfulness" of the idea of bearing (navigation).

Station 5:
I guess what is more interesting here is the idea of collaborative learning vs cooperative learning as put forth by Dr. Tan. I chanced and browsed a book titled "Thinking in Education" by Matthew Lipman. In one of the chapters, he mentioned "communities of inquiry". I did not have a chance to read in details but I guess he would mean the construction of knowledge through inquiry in communities. So, perhaps the trick in encouraging collaborative learning is to start by recognising, acknowledging and believing that knowledge belongs to communities and not to individuals. In this way, true collaborative efforts may take place when accountability does not fall on any one individual.

However, the reality in encouraging collaborative learning is easier said than done. With the emphasis on individual performance in assessment, it is no wonder all students are confused and become defensive of their efforts and I guess teachers are guilty of this as well. But without individual grading (be it in assessments of students or performance rating of teachers), will all individuals put in their best efforts in all that we do? After all, we are dealing with humans and not some inanimate objects. Thus, in a way, I can understand the world's trend towards "performance-based" ratings. It is the most effective way to get things done (though I must say, might not be the best way).

So, as a teacher what can I do?

I have to let my students see the value of learning in itself and that we learn as a community. Hopefully, I'll still be able to demonstrate such classroom discourses (inquiring as a community) in learning and be "wow"ed by ideas put forward by students. At the same time, hopefully I can build a peer support group with elements of collaboration with my colleagues. Sounds idealistic?

I guess we have to have some ideals regardless of the realities around us. When the burdens of realities weigh down on us, hopefully these preconceived "ideals", with the help of like-minded friends, will keep us going.

Discipline Vs Freedom

2008-08-28T14:14:00.000+08:00

It is really an irony that sometimes, the greatest freedom can only be found within the strictest discipline. You see these in some of the creative works of mankind and now, we see this in integrating ICT into teaching and learning.

Why?

One of the main strengths in ICT is its affordance to allow students to construct their own knowledge easily (mind-mapping tools, wikis), to build knowledge as a community at their own pace (wikis), to have a professional end-product (MS PowerPoints), to review their process and progress of learning at any time (editing function in MS Word, wikis) etc. In short, it allows students to have freedom in their own learning. Yet, in my experience as an untrained teacher, my students are often not learning when they are given these tools.

After going through the materials for e-learning, I guess I know the answer. My classroom environment was lacking of the discipline necessary for students to be engaged in learning. I guess it is a case of shutting down all other possibilities so as to ensure that the students channel all their creative possibilities into learning and not in other actitivities that could act as distractions (such as chatting with friends, playing online games on computers etc.)

So, I guess I could say that I've learnt something valuable this week. “Not to be too enthralled by the novelties of technology to forget the basics in pedagogy - classroom management.”

Pedagogical Approaches - Part 2

2008-08-22T16:37:00.000+08:00

Taking Dr. Tan's advice, I re-start my journey of reviewing and re-shaping my ideas on the various pedagogical approaches. I have to admit that till now, I have no concrete ideas on them. But since writing and peer review are "powerful cognitive tools" in shaping and constructing ideas, do allow me to share my preliminary thoughts.

Reviewing the approaches again, I can't help feeling that Knowledge-Building, Inquiry-based, Project-based and Problem-based (especially the 2 PBLs) require higher level of thinking skills. The students need more metacognitive abilities in these approaches, for example, identifying knowledge gaps in Knowledge-Building, reviewing the thought processes and re-visit, and if necessary, re-formulate the initial questions in Inquiry-based, regulating the thinking progress and process in the 2 PBLs etc.

Of course, metacognitive skills are needed in the other approaches. But it seems to be less intensive on the learners.

On a lighter note, after reviewing one of my coursemates' wiki who cleverly put Project-Based Learning as "Learning by Creating", I have tried to do the same for the other approaches:

Anchored-Based - Learning by Relating (to a scenario, a real-life situation etc.)
Case-Based - Learning by Reviewing (past cases and examples)
Goal-Based - Learning by Achieving (target goals)
Cognitive Apprenticeship - Learning by Modelling (the desirable skills, attitudes etc.)
Inquiry-Based - Learning by Questioning
Knowledge-Building - Learning by Sharing (knowledge, ideas etc.)
Problem-Based - Learning by Solving (problems)
Project-Based - Learning by Creating (courtesy of my course-mates)

Well, please do not take the above too seriously. Just an attempt to put things in lighter perspective......afterall, learning has to be FUN. :)

Pedagogical Approaches

2008-08-21T12:50:00.000+08:00

Categorisation is a necessary evil in learning. With categories, the uniqueness of each will be lost. However, it is necessary in our learning so that we know the functions and applications of each and more importantly, we can relate each with our prior knowledge as well as our future knowledge with categorisation. So, for my own benefits, I have "forced" a personal way of categorisation for the pedagogical approaches that Dr. Tan had shared. (On the other hand, it falls nicely into the way Dr. Tan has arranged. Perhaps all of us had actually come up with the same way of organising? The power of perception in learning.)

I have broadly categorised them into 4 ways of looking at the 8 approaches:

1) Meaningful engagement (Anchored instruction / Case-based learning) - Minimal engagement with the real world (only background information) in anchored instruction and maximum engagement with the real world (background information and solutions offered) in Case-based learning

2) Learning skills (Goal-based scenario / Cognitive Apprenticeship) - Specific skills (psychomotor or cognitive) with goal-based scenario and processes (consisting of series of skills / more complex skills) with cognitive apprenticeship.

3) Learning dispositions / attitudes (Inquiry-based learning / Knowledge Building) - Good attributes of learning at the start with inquiry-based learning and the attributes during the process of learning with knowledge building

4) Learning metacognition ( Project-based / Problem- based) - Emphasis on the analytical /critical thinking with Problem-based and emphasis on the creative / divergent thinking with Project-based. Please note that only the emphasis or extent is different. I believe both crtical and creative thinking are involved in both PBLs.

With this categorisation, I guess it will be easier for me to decide on the pedagogical approach. For example, if a student has difficulties following a series of steps if cognitive apprenticeship is used, I might switch to goal-based scenario to help him/her to master the step one by one. Both PBLs may be combined if students have to deliver a final prototype based on a real-life messy scenario.

Personally, I have experienced Knowledge Building in my Ed Psy Mod. All of us are asked to read up on one particular topic in learning theories and are grouped in 2 ways: first with fellow peers reading up on the same topic and then, with peers reading up on different topics. It was quite an interesting experience as each individual brings his/her prior experience into the shared information and what we have, is a more revealing understanding of the topics in our context.

Unfortunately, as there is a time constraint, the depth might be lacking. Perhaps this is where ICT can play a role. With wikis (as what we are doing for ICT class now), there is no time constraint on the amount of depth and/or breadth we want to build. It looks like I have glimpsed some light on how ICT tools can be used in engaged learning (with reference to my first blog post).

However, in reality, not all students in schools will have computers and even if they have, my guess is that they will be more distracted by computer gaming. Well, I guess motivation is the key factor here. Perhaps, we can include some forms of gaming into collaborative learning (such as knowledge building)? Alternatively, we can address students' motivation directly by demonstrating love of knowledge for the sake of knowledge? My guess is that the latter will be a more appropriate solution (I mean, how many of us will have the means and time to design computer games and can we outbeat the industry players?) but by no means, an easy one. Perhaps, the educational system should be less focused on standardised tests (as pointed out in my second reflection) so as to allow the students to learn what they love? But, we have to consider our future workforce. Will they be as good without the "gatekeeping" function of standardised tests?

I guess there is no easy solution and for the moment now, as a teacher we have to play our part by demonstrating the "Wows" and the "Ahhs..." in our process of learning with the students. Perhaps it is time for teachers to be sent for some theatre training?

Wikis and Knowledge Constructs

2008-08-18T12:14:00.000+08:00

Reviewing the video on the use of Wikis, I’m amazed by the ease in which people can just simply get together and collaborate on the creation of knowledge. It seems that with Web 2.0, users (including students) are given the “power” to construct and create knowledge. Looks like the company of Foucault & the postmodernists have indeed gotten their idea and point (albeit in a superficial sense) to the mass consciousness.

* You see, Foucault thinks that we’re all victims of the power structure in the knowledge handed to us via the various forms of authorities (which includes our social norms, our schools, our governments etc.). This will imply that as individuals, we must be aware of this “power construct” and critique the various “kinds of knowledge” that we learn and arrive at our own versions and understandings.

As adults, we “arrive at our own versions and understandings” with some value judgement, whereby our own belief systems and values have a bearing on our “final version” of the knowledge we received. We form our beliefs and values through years of learning from life experience. However, for our students, do they have the “years of experience” to fall back on to make the right call?

I guess this could be one of the reasons why Dr. Ng Eng Hen talks about the importance of teaching values to our students. With the increasing usage of ICT in education, students will be exposed to a variety of information and they have to learn to form judgement for themselves the “right kind” to believe in. Perhaps, this is truer for the humanities rather than the hard sciences whereby facts will always be facts. However, do the students have the means to verify the so-called “facts” found in the various so-called “scientific websites”? I guess critical thinking has to come into play here.

It looks like with the implementation of ICT, as much as it engages the students in their learning and allows them to be self-regulated learners and to be stake-holders in knowledge creation; we have to guard against the possible “ill-effects” of ICT. Perhaps, values education and critical thinking have to be implemented into our educational system in a systematic way (not in the piecemeal approaches currently adopted by some schools in Singapore) into our local educational system. Or, perhaps “Philosophy” (which I think, combines some aspects of values education and critical thinking) should be included in Sec. School education?

Personally, I would hope for that day to come as I have found the subject useful ever since I got interested in some basic philosophical concepts a few years ago. Of course, “Philosophy” need not have to be the “chim” (pardon my use of Singlish) type. Even till now, I have not read a single original work by the great philosophers and I’m sure I have only achieved a surface understanding of those basic concepts. But the key thing is not to be an expert in this (let us leave this to the real philosophers) but to know enough and construct our own knowledge base to serve our purposes and in our students’ case – to be able to think critically and evaluate the consequences of their beliefs.

* Note: The writer would like to admit that he is not a philosophy student. Thus, the information about Foucault and “Power Construct” might not be 100% accurate. In the spirit of “collaborate knowledge construct”, any corrections are definitely welcomed. :)

Engaged Learning

2008-08-05T23:03:00.000+08:00

During the group discussion when each one of us was supposed to share our most "engaged" learning in our school days, I was pleasantly surprised to realise one common feature amongt us, that is, self-regulation.

Be it a simple research assignment, an exploratory lesson on computer programming or a "trial-and-error" in a D & T class, all of us regulate our own goals, our own timeline and our own learning pace.

This realisation has put me in an "enlightened state" on the benefits of self-regulation in learning. True enough, literature research has pointed out that self-regulated learning should be the way to go but many a time, I always had the doubt on this point about engaged learning. Now, at least for today, I know this is the right path.

However, with the society's emphasis on standardised tests and results, we need to ensure that all students are able to self-regulate at the same pace. Are we able to achieve this across 40 students in a class, let alone across the whole school? Or, perhaps we should re-look into our assessment methods and place less emphasis on standardised tests?

Masterplan 1 Vs Masterplan 2

2008-08-02T23:23:00.000+08:00

Incorporating ICT / IT in lessons and/or computer / IT skills have always been emphasized since my school days. I remember that I have to go through computer and IT lessons to get myself equipped with the relevant skills for "our future". I also remember teachers using videos and other audio-visual equipment in their lessons. (In those days, the DOS operating system (without the Windows Interface) is still the prevalent operating system and Apple just released their first version of Mac computers.) Therefore, before exposing myself to the materials for the lesson, I would think QED 522 is just another module to get ourselves exposed to these ICT tools and aids and hopefully, we can adopt similar lesson ideas for our future career as a teacher.

However, after viewing the video about MP2 and doing some personal comparisons between MP1 and MP2, it dawn upon me that incorporating ICT in today's lessons should be more than just "skin-deep". We should really think of ways to harness the potential that ICT has made available for us to rethink instructional / pedagogical methods so that students can be engaged in learning, can construct their own understanding and be actively aware of their own learning and thinking process - in short, a student-centered learning environment.

Good that I now accept this philosophically. However, is it possible in real-life teaching practice?

Hopefully my journey through this module and other modules will offer me some insights to my question.