ICT for Meaningful Learning

Looking back, when asked what I thought I'd learn from this ICT course, these were the five things that I had stated in my wiki page :
- What is ICT,
- The importance and relevance of ICT in today's classrooms,
- Alternative methods to make classroom teaching more interesting and engaging, using ICT tools,
- The importance of staying relevant in terms of delivering the subject content by using tools available on the world wide web and
- How to manipulate ICT tools such as YouTube and Blogger and use it to give students a more hands on and meaningful lesson.

Having said that, my learning goals for this course is a summation of the 5 things I thought I'd learn. They are:
- To understand ICT and
- To be able to use ICT to engage my students and make their learning experience more meaningful.

So, have I achieved my learning goals?

I'd say yes and no. Yes, I now have got a better understanding of what ICT is compared to the very first day I stepped into class. How did I make that happen? For a start, attending class regularly and with an open mind did help a lot. Each week, there is something new to be learnt and with that something new learnt, I get to deepen my understanding of ICT and its works. Reflecting on the lessons on the group blog also did help me to recapitulate on what I've learnt in class and how it has affected me.
However, I am yet to be truly able to put what I have learnt into real practice. I am looking forward to the group demo as it might have a serious impact on my understanding of ICT and how it can affect my lessons in the future.

Were my learning strategies effective and efficient and how can they be improved?

I do think that my learning strategies are working for me right now but I know that something better is always in store and its up to me to explore new strategies to help me be a better learner. I could, for a start, on my own, try to find out the ICT tools currently used in secondary schools right now, especially in my subject-Home Economics so that I'll be in the know of what is going on and how I might be able to keep myself in line with the current strategies used or, better still, how I might be able to introduce new ways of incorporating ICT in the future.

Did the group processes support my group's learning?

Yes, it definitely did. I believe that there is always something to be learnt from others, be it from their success or their mistakes. Through collaborative learning, we get to fill up each other's knowledge gap and at the end of the day, we all become better informed. That is what being a teacher is all about. As what Razali higlighted in response to my e-learning post, we as teachers should not only teach, but learn as well.

An area that my group can definitely improve in is to be more reponsive towards each other's post. Besides reading the posts put up by our peers, we should also respond to them, let our views and thoughts be known and most importantly, be open to the opinions of others. In this manner, we can all learn to look at things from an analytical perspective and develop our own thoughts and opinions. By being more receptive towards the opinions of others, we are also teaching ourselves to be more understanding and accepting of the widely diversed world that all of us will be stepping into in the future.

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