Blog Entry 1: My Enhanced School Experience

Enhanced School Experience: Classroom Observations of ICT Use

(I)                         Specific Observations

School Name:  St. Patrick’s School

Class: 4T1

Profile of the class: Majority of the students are generally weak in Chinese and a major contributing factor is that they lack the motivation to learn the language. They also tend to have short attention spans and are usually talkative and rowdy in class. These students learn best through visual means.

Subject: Basic Chinese Language

What ICT tools are used in the lesson? 1) Application software – Microsoft PowerPoint The PowerPoint slides included information about the following areas: -       Introduction to the historical backdrop of the Chinese classic “Romance of the Three Kingdoms” -        Characters of protagonists in the story ‘赤壁之战’(‘The Battle of the Red Cliff’) -         Brief analysis of the story ‘草船借箭’(‘Borrowing of Arrows with Straw Boats’) 2) Flash Clips  Animated flash clips on two stories,‘草船借箭’(‘Borrowing of Arrows with Straw Boats’ ) and‘刮骨疗伤’ (‘Hua Tuo Treats Guan Yu’s arm’ Part 1/Part 2)

Describe how ICT is used for teaching and learning in the lesson. This particular lesson is a follow-up to a lesson in which the class was shown the movie ‘The Battle of the Red Cliff’. In this lesson, the teacher builds on students’ prior knowledge of the protagonists in the story by delivering a PowerPoint presentation on the protagonists, using animated flash clips of 2 other stories from the novel ‘Romance of the Three Kingdoms’ as illustrations. The teacher started with 2 introductory slides which 1) explained the novel's historical backdrop and 2) showed a geographical map of the 3 states in which the stories took place in as well as pictures of their respective rulers. The students, being largely visual in characteristic, were clearly engaged by these pictures.  The next slide acted as a ‘flag-post’, indicating to students that the lesson will be focusing on the story ‘The Battle of the Red Cliff’. The teacher drew students’ attention to the visual form of the Chinese character ‘red’ (‘赤’) in the title projected on the screen and linked it to a phrase ‘面红耳赤’(red with anger), expanding vocabulary in the process. Slides 4-10 showed the pictures and analysis of the characters of the 6 protagonists in the story. When analyzing the protagonists Zhuge Liang and Guan Yu, the teacher further illustrated their characters through two other stories from the classic: Zhuge Liang’s wit as shown in ‘Borrowing of Arrows with Straw Boats’(linking to slides 12-13) and Guan Yu’s bravery evident in ‘Hua Tuo Treats Guan Yu’s Arm’, enabling students to gain additional knowledge of chapters in the novel simultaneously. The two stories were presented in the form of animated cartoon flash clips with Chinese and English subtitles and these catered well to the visual students. The video on ‘Borrowing of Arrows with Straw Boats’ was rather unique and fun to watch, as the story was enacted with a modern day twist, with English words and mobile phones used by the ancient cartoon characters. When the flash clips were shown, even restless students quietened down and paid attention to the screen, proving the usefulness of using flash clips in drawing back students’ attention. At the end of each video clip, the teacher tested students on their understanding of the content and they were able to give appropriate answers. This further indicated the effectiveness of flash clips in engaging students’ interest to learn.   In conclusion, the two ICT tools used in this lesson, Microsoft PowerPoint and flash clips, allowed the teacher to capture students’ attention with colourful illustrations and are thus proven to be effective teaching and learning tools for this group of students.

PowerPoint slides

(II)                         General Observation:

How do teachers in the school feel about the use of ICT for teaching and learning?

Generally, teachers agree that ICT can be useful in engaging students and sparking their interest in a subject. However, they feel that the preparation work for an ICT-based lesson can be very tedious unless resources are readily available. Also, teachers are enthusiastic and excited about using the new ICT tools available, but at the same time, unsure of how to incorporate these new tools into their lessons. They therefore see the need to hold regular brainstorming sessions within the department in order to come up with ways of utilizing the new tools effectively. Teachers also reveal that a major limitation they face when planning for ICT-based hands-on sessions is that there is inadequate physical infrastructure in the school. There are only 4 computer labs catering to the entire student population of close to 1500, making it difficult for them to book labs for ICT hands-on sessions.

With regard to the use of ICT for teaching and learning in Chinese lessons specifically, teachers in the Chinese unit feel that it is sometimes difficult to integrate ICT into Chinese lessons as the actual lesson time per week is very limited, since a lot of time is wasted in getting the students to settle down after the changing of classrooms. There are also certain lessons in which ICT tools may not be needed at all, such as composition writing and workbook practice lessons. Even when teachers take the effort to deliver interesting ICT-based lessons, some students who are highly unmotivated in learning the language may not respond well to the lesson or show their appreciation for the teachers’ efforts by paying attention and developing interest, leaving teachers demoralized. Nevertheless, Chinese teachers are still eager to experiment with new ways of incorporating ICT into the curriculum in order to make lessons less boring. An important point they know they will have to bear in mind when selecting ICT tools is to consider students’ age, academic capabilities and their interests, as these variables directly affect the effectiveness of an ICT-based lesson.