Hello, welcome to My Haven of ICT! Thanks for visiting my site, I hope this would be a great channel for us to ponder deeply and share about what we know and do not know about ICT! In this entry, I will talk about my experience of teaching via ICT in the school that I was assigned for my 3-month teaching practicum.
The school that I was assigned is S.K. Assunta (2), which is located at Petaling Jaya. I have indeed gained abundance of wonderful and invaluable experience teaching in this school and finally we got to testify whether what we learnt are applicable in the real classroom.
S.K. Assunta (2) is an all-girls school situated in an urban area. Most of the pupils came from well-to-do families. Assunta (2) is a well-known school and it was once nominated as the top 10 school in Selangor. Most of the pupils have good command in English. However, this school is a missionary school which was initially run by a church; thus, it has very limited facilities. Most of the teaching materials and facilities were either sponsored by other organisations or produced by teachers on their own.
Here is some brief information about the classes that I was assigned:
Class 1: 4 Bestari (38 pupils)
Subject: English
Proficiency level: Average
Class 2: 3 Kaliber (35 pupils)
Subject: Mathematics
Proficiency level: Advanced
So here are some of my pleasant and not-so pleasant experiences of utilizing ICT in S.K. Assunta 2 🙂
Experience #1: I could still remember vividly my first experience of using ICT in the school. The first ICT tool that I had utilised was an mp3 that I downloaded from the internet. Since the school did not have a speaker, I had to buy one and Thank God the speaker was not very costly. I’ve used it for several times and I did not encounter any problem in using it. In fact, it was quite useful throughout my teaching practice.
So this is one of the topics that I’ve taught using song. The title of the song is “Under The Sea”. It was being employed during one of my Mathematics lessons, “Measuring objects using standard units“. In order to make the lesson fun and interactive, I decided to integrate a game called the “Mysterious Measuring Box” . This game is similar to the game “Poison Box”. When I started playing the song, pupils got very excited and enthusiastic and all of them paid their full attention throughout the lesson. I noticed that even the passive and rebellious pupils gave their full co-operation. Therefore, I found that the usage of song in the classroom is undeniably a powerful resource as pupils are able to learn in a less rigid atmosphere and it makes learning enjoyable. What I love about teaching this class is that most of the pupils were rather out-spoken and they would never feel shy to reveal their true feelings to the teachers. Usually, before I ended the class, I would get my pupils to reflect on the lesson, what they like, dislike and what they have learnt. Surprisingly, my pupils told me that this was one of their favourite lessons and none of their teachers have played such a song in the classroom. Overall, I felt that this lesson was really effective. This was one of the photos captured during the class and my pupils had real fun learning and measuring around the classroom.
Experience #2: Another pleasant experience that I found is that with the assistance of ICT, it enhanced the effectiveness of my lesson as it made the lesson interesting. With the help of the ICT teacher in the school, Sakila and I managed to get a LCD projector which was still in good condition. The teacher showed us how to operate the projector and she agreed to lend us the projector throughout the practicum. She even kept the projector in the library where we usually “hanged out” (the staffroom was quite congested and it could only accommodate half of the teachers in the school), so I felt that there should be no excuses for me not to fully utilize what was given to us. However, there was no extension in this school and we had to bring our own extension to connect the projector to the socket. This is one of the obstacles that I found while using ICT in this school. So I had to bring an extension and my own laptop to school whenever I wanted to use the projector.
During one of my lessons, I decided to use power point to teach the topic of “Introduction to length“. I managed to find a useful animation from the internet in which they showed how many milimeters are there in one centimeter. The arrow could actually move from one milimeter to another when we transfer it into power point presentation.
Attached is the power point slides that I had prepared for the lesson:
In this lesson, I’ve adapted a story about length as an introduction to this topic and amazingly, this lesson was vastly welcomed by the girls. Throughout the lesson, I noticed that all the pupils were deeply engaged and the response was rather encouraging as well. Perhaps it was their first time learning using ICT tool in the classroom.
Overall, I felt that the use of power point is very effective in my teaching because it can reduce the cost of preparation and it could assist pupils to grasp the concept better with the help of pictures and animations which I doubt textbook or teacher’s explanation can do. It can help the visual learners to learn as well. Some of the pupils came to see me and requested me to use the same method of teaching in the future classes! I was delighted to hear that and I felt that if we put in genuine efforts in our teaching, we can really make a difference on our pupils!
I’ve even showed pupils a video which my friend (Caryn) had done for our video kit assignment last year. What more I can say, the pupils were highly engrossed by the amazing animation! They could immediately grasp the content that I wanted to teach! My mentor who had observed my class told me that she had never used ICT to teach before and she found that my lesson was very effective and she might consider using it in the future.
Experience #3: I agree that ICT could do wonders in teaching, and it can make the impossible tasks possible; however, it can sometimes cause a catastrophe in our lesson if we do not have a plan B! When my lecturer came for last observation, there was a sudden change of venue as my class was being used for UPSR pupils. Therefore, my class was being shifted to a smaller class, and the sockets in the classroom could not function. I was so nervous and I did not know what to do, as my lesson was solely based on power point and video clip. Thanks to Sakila as she managed to find a bigger classroom which can accommodate my class and with proper sockets and finally I could carry out my intended lesson. The lesson was implemented successfully. I realized that it was a huge mistake not to prepare a back up plan.
Generally, it was all together a pleasant experience teaching the pupils and exploring the essential teaching tools in the school. I really learnt a lot from this practicum and it had indeed opened my mind on the reality of teaching. I felt that ICT can indisputably help pupils to acquire knowledge, as with the help of these tools, we can implement lots of interactive sessions in the classroom. However, it is vital for teachers to have variety of teaching methods in the classroom as frequent use of ICT could also indirectly impede pupils’ learning process as it might distract them with all the fancy pictures and animations or sounds. However, it depends on how the teachers utilize it. We have to also bear in mind that we should always have substitute materials or plan B if the projector or ICT tools are not available or fail to work at the very last minute.
That’s about my experience of utilizing ICT in the school. Thanks for reading and please feel free to comment! Have a nice day! 🙂
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