Session 10

This course ICT for engaged learning has truly engage me every single lesson. I still remember that I was stressed at the beginning of this course because of the overwhelming information in each 2 hour session. However, I find that coming to class every Friday at 8.30am is really worth it! I find this course truly beneficial for a non-IT savvy person like me.

Our course instructor Prof Ashley has put in a lot of effort to make each and every lesson an "engaged" lesson. He cleared my misconception of engaged learning does not mean fun learning. By the end of this course, I've realized that Prof had actually planned each and every lesson so attentively, hoping that we could pick up some of his engaging lessons, in an informal way, even without noticing it. For example, he introduced us the usage of PbWiki right at the start of the course and allow us to be familiarize with ICT tools such as doing a weekly blogging. He introduced us the various pedagogies approach and let us explore and discuss lesson ideas.

All of his lessons were designed in such a way that, firstly engaged us to our prior knowledge, his role was as a facilitator by giving minimal instructions and appropriate scaffolds, he monitors our progress, provided us opportunities to do group discussions and collaborations, coached us how to critique other people's work politely and lastly made us reflect what have we learnt from every lesson by introducing the KWLQ framework.

The most interesting part of this course is when Prof introduced learning through gaming and the James Paul Gee's 36 learning principles of games. I never thought that gaming also had a positive impact on students and that can be incorporated into lessons because I've not realized that the students out there in schools are a much more technology integrated generation. Using the traditional teaching method in classrooms might not be beneficial for them as in contrast was for my time.... long long time ago...

I've learned that for future generations to come, we will be teaching the digital natives generation and like it or not, we as educators really need to wake up and change our teaching approaches, just like what Prof Ashley said " We need to step out of our own comfort zone, in order to reach out to them!"

I've always ask my friends from other tutorial groups what they have been learning when my tutor was trying to expose us into games. Most of my other friends mentioned that their tutor just showed them how to use tools like Excel, and when I told them my tutor allowed us to play games, most of them were skeptical towards gaming and they expressed that I might be wasting my time in class. I was sad for them in the sense that they are missing something BIG from this course, but I can't blame them for their ignorance. Perhaps MOE should conduct more classes on educational gaming as well as the awareness of the digital natives to MASS prepare teachers with the adequate knowledge.

The list of ICT tools that I think are cool and I might use it in future:
1. Prezi (tried using, a bit complicated, will try next time)
2. Comic life/makebeliefs comic
3. mindmeister/ bubbl.us
4. google docs (very popular when doing group work)
5. dabbleboard
6. skype
7. second life
8. PbWiki

I will try to use all the strategies and ICT tools that I've learnt through this course appropriately in future.