ICT for Meaningful Learning

1. Mrs Xing brought her students to the computer lab but only one-third of the class were familiar with the computers.

• Mrs Xing should have briefed the students beforehand in class on what they are required to do in the computer lab before actually bringing them there. She could have asked the class to find out who the more it-proficient students are and make them the row or group leaders. These row/ group leaders will be in charged of assisting their less it-proficient classmates should they meet with any problems.

2. The students who had managed to log onto the computer started surfing the internet, leaving their classmates desperately trying to get help from Mrs Xing.

• Mrs Xing could have locked the computer screens of the students who had managed to log onto the computer. This will prevent them from distracting the other students and "force" them into helping their other classmates log on on their own accord so as to kick start the lesson proper quickly.

3. Mrs Xing could not see the faces of some of her students as they were blocked by the compouter monitors.

• Mrs Xing could have also provided blue and red cups (taken from the Secondary School Video Clip) for the students. As these cups will be placed on top of the monitors, there will be visible to Mrs Xing and will be a form of alert to her should the students need any troubleshooting.

4. Two computers were not working and the affected students had to pair up with their classmates.

• Mrs Xing should have gone into the computer lab to check on all the computers beforehand to ensure that every student would have a chance to use the computer independently. She could have postponed her ict lesson if she had found out that the two computers were not working.

5. After the students were instruted to write the narratives, Mrs Xing noticed that some students finished earlier than the others and begain distracting the rest of their classmates.

• To decrease the chances of this happening, Mrs Xing could have acquired the timer stopwatch and allocate a certain amount of time for the particular work to be completed in. This would have pushed and "pressureize" the other students to finish their work in a shorter time.

6.Mrs Xing realised she had became the bottleneck by having the edit all of her students' scripts and this resulted in some students becoming restless and making more noise.

• Mrs Xing could have assigned some work to be done by the students while she was marking the scripts.
• She could also have locked all of ther students' computer screens and make them watch a movie or short video clip associated to her subject; English to keep them entertained. (Idea gotten from: Ministry of Eduacation (2008). Movies in Language Learning. Retrieved from http://www3.moe.edu.sg/edumall/tl/it_integration/engaging_it_practices/1movies.htm)

Claire