Straight after graduation trip, I have been put into a pre-NIE enhanced school experience (ESE). Yuan Ching Secondary School (YCSS) was the one I have been posted to. My teaching subject is Chinese Language. I was arranged to observe 4 classes during my 4-weeks attachment. And very fortunately, I had the opportunity to experience the school e-learning. Students are required to accomplish their work on certain time through the school e-learning portal called ‘Ask and Learn Portal’. By the time, they no need to come to school for 2 days.
During my secondary school time, I didn’t have opportunity to experience such thing. Then, I was very itching to get on with this e-learning. Thank to my mentor and the school ICT HOD, I was given an account to access the ‘Ask and Learn Portal’, so that I can observe the process and progress of students’ e-learning.
My mentor has designed a Chinese idioms lesson for her 3E1 class. Those selected idioms are not from their textbook, the reason of selecting materials out of syllabus for e-learning lesson is because 3E1 has already completed the certain syllabus at that time, and my mentor wanted them to go beyond their text and gripped some resources about Chinese Idioms from internet. In that senses, the objectives of this e-learning lesson are not only to teach Chinese idioms, but to let students know that there are much more materials and resources out there on the internet for reference and also to encourage them to do their own learning.
The outline of the lesson is students were instructed to browse certain related videos with URL link provided; those videos are the background information, such as the history or the origin of the Chinese Idioms. The stories and explanations are presented using animation; this is one of the ways to engage students’ attention and interest. After finish viewing the videos, they are required to do a worksheet to test whether they are fully understand the meaning of those idioms and to consolidate what they have learnt. The worksheet consists of MCQs; fill in the blanks, and sentence-makings. Students were required to submit the worksheet online on time as the participation of their e-learning lesson.
Although the lessons were not conducted in class but on internet platform, from the result of their worksheet can tell that they are manage to catch something new on their own. In what I have seen, this is also a way to apply ‘Teach less, learn more’ concept and it really attains the goal under this concept. Teacher is to provide the tools for students to catch their own fish but not feeding them the fish, so I think this also meets the target of ICT too!
However, during the 2-days e-learning, teachers are still busy around in the office, sometimes even busier because they have to work on those students who failed to log in the portal, and the busy network system. I saw my mentor stayed in front of the computer for most of the time to keep track of her students’ participation. She told me that the use of ICT is a tendency of now a day teaching and learning method, it accords with the habit of the internet user which our students are now. She also said that not every lesson is suited to be conducted using ICT method, especially language subject, because too much reliance on technologies students will lose the basic abilities, and she stressed that ICT is a very powerful tool for those who use it appropriately.
