Enhanced School Experience: Classroom Observations of ICT Use

(I) Specific Observations

School Name: North View Primary School

Class: Primary 5 Joy (Mostly 11-year-olds)

Academic Year 2011 Term 3 Week 3

Primary 5 Joy is a mixed ability class with a balanced ratio of male to female pupils. Pupils from the class are generally adept at word processing on a standard PC, partly due to the Standard ICT Baseline trainings they have received earlier in previous years. The lesson was conducted in a computer lab setting and every pupil had a PC to do their work with. The lesson was designed to allow collaboration within groups to create individual composition over a 4-week period. The lesson duration was one hour.

Subject: English

The lesson observed was on composition writing and pupils were instructed by the teacher to consolidate ideas and information which they have previously amassed on “A Traffic Accident” and then transpose those ideas and information into a coherent storyline on a word document.

With the internet, pupils have access to Gmail where they made use of Google Docs and its word processing capabilities for real-time sharing. Earlier, pupils have already been introduced to the online software, Mindmeister, an online mind-mapping and brainstorming tool that also allows pupils to interact in real-time.

Pupils have previously brainstormed and mind-mapped their ideas onto Mindmeister using various media. Through search engines, the pupils found and recorded descriptions on traffic accidents and even inserted photographs and video clips that were related to the theme onto their online mind-maps.

Then, they proceeded to share and comment on their classmates’ mind-maps within their own groups. With real-time sharing capabilities, Mindmeister allows pupils to read and comment on the shared mind-map documents at the same time without having to “take turns” and save on classroom waiting time, thus allowing pupils to spend more meaningful time on online collaboration. Pupils were also encouraged to continue expanding their mind-maps and discuss on their classmates’ mind-maps outside of curriculum time.

With Mindmeister, pupils have limitless canvas space on which they can map out their ideas and multiple copies of the mind-maps are periodically saved online to make retrieval of past versions possible in case certain important parts on their mind-maps were accidentally deleted.

During the lesson, the English teacher offered guidelines on contents to the class but pupils have the final say on what they would like to include as their content after they have considered the inputs and suggestions typed into their mind-map documents by the classmates whom they shared their mind-maps with. Such online collaboration allowed pupils to share ideas with one another and with these fresh inputs they are then encouraged to think through their ideas and directions for their compositions again. All pupils were also required to share their mind-map documents with the teacher so that the teacher could monitor their progress and add any necessary feedback on their mind-maps.

When pupils have finalised their mind-maps, they would then start to tranpose their ideas into writings on a word document available with Google Docs. These documents also have real-time interaction and sharing capabilities similar to Mindmeister hence pupils can continue the collaboration on their individual essays for their next lessons despite working on different online platforms.

It is the objective of these ICT lessons to encourage pupils to learn from their peers and to learn to make use of efficient sharing, that is made possible by technology, to refine their ideas and to improve on their English essay writing.

(II) General Observations

Teachers within the school generally felt that with the availability of cloud storage and real-time collaboration capabilities through the Internet, pupils can finally learn how to engage in active learning, as opposed to the past when teachers made use of slide presentations like Powerpoint to teach whilst pupils sat through the lessons still in their passive learning modes.

The teachers thought that the current ICT model helped to make group work more efficient thus greater progress could be made during a lesson than in the past. By reducing unnecessary waiting time, pupils could constantly stay engaged and stimulated during lesson time and with the ICT tools available, such as Google search engine and Mindmeister, pupils were then able to learn to search for information which they desire and organise these new data efficiently to facilitate their own learning. Overall, the teachers believed that the use of current ICT for teaching and learning would enable pupils to taste success through peer collaboration which in turn would motivate them towards the goal of self-directed learning.