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Sincerely, Jingwen Chen %23%jingbon@hotmail.com

Podcast reflection

Though today is public holiday, i know i still have to finish my podcast reflection by today. Was thinking what should i write for days. I read what my course mates wrote. From what we reflected on wiki on Wed, i had a better understanding of what is an effective and ineffective learning environment and why is it so important for learners. My reflection as below:

I believe in order for effective learning to take place, first and foremost the school would have to ensure that the physical environment such as the classroom’s facilities (Lightings, fans, projectors, tables and chairs) would be in working conditions so that learning can take place.
Next, the school would need to have a series of programs and structures lined out for the students to develop them holistically in their 4 year stay in the Secondary school. For example, my school has provided many leadership opportunities for the students to take up in class or CCA, so that we can meet their personal needs. This is a chance for them to grow and learn, thus a boost to their self-esteem. When the students feel safe in an environment, they will then have a sense of belonging and will strive for their best in whatever they do, be it academically or in their CCA. In our school, we have a programs in place named EDGE, for every level to Experience, Develop, Grow and Emerge as fine gentleman.
As a teacher, we can also make a difference to the effective learning environment by taking care of our students’ psychological needs, constantly communication with the parents to understand our students better and to ensure the parents that their children are doing well in school. But most importantly is to use a variety of teaching methods to cater to the different needs of our students. For example, a shift from teacher-centered to learner centered activities, to tap on the various IT platforms which are widely and readily available. Even Mr Lee Kuan Yew mentioned that the teaching of Chinese needs to move towards IT based direction. As teachers, we need to arouse their interest through fun-filled activities such as IT or drama so as to better engage them in the lesson.

An ineffective learning environment would be one lesson that is totally teacher-centered without any activities and without the opportunity for students to work together and self- learn and internalize learning. I still remember in my sec school days, our English and Literature teacher would come into class, sits on the chair and go through our Literature text. She would not even touch the chalk and blackboard as she claims she is sensitive to chalk. All of us would have to follow line by line to understand the text. There were no group discussions or any activities carried out. No one dare to raise any questions as of all of us are terrified of her because she would always use our testimonial to ‘threaten’ us saying she would have nothing to write in our testimonial if we misbehave. Of course, I would not say learning does not take place but is effective learning taking place over here and how many students do actually benefit from it?

Just to add on: I am not trying to badmouth my teacher.But its just a reflection on my part and it also sets me thinking of my own teaching style and whether i create an effective learning environment for my students.

Session 3: Part 2

For the afternoon session, we learnt about whatn is LE, why do we study LE, how LE is studied, key components of LE, how does LE affect a person, his personality, human behaviour and also how can we access the environment by being a participant, a gp of people or by being a detached observer.

Next, we break up into gps and our group was supposed to identify what is a learner centered environment.Below is our gp's reflection:

Group 1 ( Normila, Nasyitah, Ching Boon and Ruziana )
Learner-Centered Environment
Characteristics of a learner-centered environment:
a) Student-focused
b) Activity based
c) Cooperative learning strategies
d) Teacher acts as a facilitator
Considerations in designing a learner-centered environment:
a) Sensitivity to cultural differences ( multi-racial country)
b) Individual learning differences ( multiple intelligences)
c) Relating to students’ experience – authentic learning experiences
d) Respect the language practices of the students
Does the assigned design of the LE exist in Singapore context? Why?
Yes, because we want to promote better understanding amongst students of different cultural backgrounds. We want students to be able to identify and solve problems and make contributions to society throughout their lifetime.
Questions on Singapore Flyer in the N-Levels ( 2009) – more familiar to the students compared to a question on bus timetable ( 2008).
E-learning for Maths – ACE Learning Portal. Examples shown are those that students can relate to. Eg. F1 race to explain gradient.
OPW- Online Project Work for students. Students are expected to work collaboratively to complete a multi-disciplinary project work.

Dr Quek showed us how James' school did their IPW online by using blogger as a platform. Very impressive. =)

This afternoon session makes me think about how VS is able to provide such a good learning environment for the students. We had OPW (Online project work) for around 4-5 years. That was why i had to ask Ruzi what is IPW when i saw the term today. I even went back to the school website and take a close look at the system which we had provided the Sec 2 boys to work on. Besides working on their project in school for 2 periods per week via online, （ meaning all documents are documented online), they have the freedom of time and space to communicate with their peers online. It definitely had a very good system put in place i must say, and definitely well planned.This certainly fits very well with the learner centered environment that we are trying to provide the children with.

Session 3: Learning something new everyday~~:D

Hey! Its fun. I learn how to give permission to the members of my gp so that they are able to gain access to my blog. I also learn a new thing call Google reader. With this i am able to see what are the new updates from all the websites that i frequent. This session is definitely better than the previous 3 hr courses from TRAISI.

Now can even give access to some of my students to access my school blog, so that they can post and edit their own work or even help with the posting.

=D

Oh to add on, James showed us a website which can be linked to facebook to aid us in our teaching in school.

Webby: http://www.xtranormal.com/
The cute graphics would definitely arouse the students' interest. But too bad, it does not support Chinese text.

Session 1 23/11/09

So many readings.... frustrated cause my speed of reading is very slow.

Reading the class wiki, realised what i wrote and prepared to upload were a bit different from the rest of the coursemates. They did more on reflections. So i edited my work a little.

No problem uploading or editing the class wiki.

Went back to school to print out my notes.. shall stay up and continue reading tonight.

Planning to finish up the reflection on podcast after my post over here.

Pre session 16/11

I was quite taken aback with the first session with Dr Quek because i had to sign up for so many accounts: Gmail, WIKI, docs.google ,blogger and facebook. And i realised that i already had a gmail account which is linked to my blog which i seldom update. The only new thing which was introduced was WIKI and i took interest in the platform where all of us had to do our reflections on our readings on this IT platform. I was wondering will it be able to support so many students who would be logging in at the same time.I even told my colleagues about WIKI the next few days when i went to school. And we come to a conclusion that WIKI is more wordy and we have to explore other IT platforms such as facebook if we are to ask the students to post any pictures or videos online.

The very next day where i had to attend a International Conference at NUS, where again IT was the main emphasis when teaching chinese.Mr Lee Kuan Yew made a speech at the opening ceremony of SCCL where he mentioned that the teaching of Chinese had to be changed. He meant the learning environment for the students had to be changed. He mentioned that Spelling and dictation is out. Chinese teachers need to use whatever method, be it drama or even IT to engage the students.Above are some pictures which i took at the conference. The first pic: can u recognise what is it? It is actually Welcome to Chinese, in English but trying to write in the form of Chinese. This is how students are introduced to Chinese in South Africa, according to a professor who introduced us how they engage the students.

To a certain extent i agree with what he said. The learning environment is very important and we definitely need to interest and engage the students so as to make learning interesting and less stressful for them. However, IT has to be used correctly and efficiently. We must not use them for the sake of keeping up with times. It is more of the content and how you wish to

My conclusion after the first session: IT is definitely very important and i hope to learn more from this module so as to be able to incorporate them in my daily teaching.

P/s: Pls pardon my english as my teaching medium is not in english. :P

First post

First post~~