Training and Using ICT – An Educator’s Journey

Last time, I wrote, I spoke about bringing the ‘Communication’ back into ICT.

This week, I want to bring up the issue of Training and Use of ICT

Whatever you think you know about ICT in education, throw it out the window. Chances are, if you are a career teacher, you are probably not trained properly in it. Now am I saying all teachers are not trained? Of course not! In my line, I have met plenty of well-trained teachers in using ICT for their lessons but there are many more who are not.

Today I am going to give you my reasons why. Some may agree and there will be those who will not. But I too will give you my solution for the educator who wants to improve him or herself in using ICT in their classes.

Generally speaking, teachers in all countries would go for teacher training, such as a centralized academy or through a course during tertiary studies. During training, trainee teachers would be drilled in their field of teaching, academics, classroom management, etc…

Now, modern day teachers are expected to use some form of ICT in their lessons. So during training, they may be using some ICT themselves, such as Laptops, Projectors, SMART Boards as well. And during training they may be taught on some approaches to using ICT in their lessons or examples done by others before them, but that’s pretty much it. Very little follow-up on training or updating themselves on new methods and approaches to using ICT in the classroom.

I remembering spending a good amount of time, sitting down with teachers, guiding them with their lesson plans on how to implement an ICT lesson, and I realized how lacking they are in terms of knowledge of what can be done and what shouldn’t be done.

Let me give you a general (Not Exhaustive) overview of what your lesson plan needs if you want to incorporate an ICT element into the lesson:

1)     What are your lesson objectives and goals

2)     How many periods are you willing to spend in this ICT exercise

3)     Is this a Individual or Collaborative exercise

4)     What medium are you going to use to conduct this exercise

5)     How are the students going to be evaluated

6)     And How are they going to submit their work

Many teachers also tend to not rehearse what they intend to do. So when they bring their class to the computer lab, for example, and things go wrong, they get lost and lose heart in the lesson. It is always good for a teacher to rehearse the lesson out to know what are potential problems, wouldn’t it be effective, will there be classroom management, etc.

Lastly and my most important point. Teachers MUST READ OFTEN.

This is a common issue in any industry. Teachers must read and be updated themselves on the latest innovations and techniques in Teaching and Learning with IT. But the fact is that many don’t. I did a yearly teacher’s survey in the school I was working at and almost 80% of respondents all said it is the responsibility of the school to update them on new ICT developments.

So unless you constantly update yourself, try it out yourself and refine your technique, then you will never be really trained.

So the challenge for this week? Make it a habit to update yourself, try it out and improve yourself.

Good websites to begin with are:

• http://www.teachthought.com/
• http://www.edudemic.com/
• http://nextvista.org/resources/
• http://ed.ted.com/

Putting the ‘C’ back into ‘ICT’

Being an ICT Educator, I often start my teacher training sessions reminding teachers about 3 things:

1. Doesn’t mean that when you are a user, you are also an expert.
2. What you think you know about teaching with IT, throw it out the window. Chances are, you were not properly trained.
3. Learn to communicate with your students.

Today I want to talk about point number 3, Communication.

I often remind and correct teachers that the term ‘IT’ is no more valid and they should be using ‘ICT’ instead. Why is adding ‘Communication’ important? It is important in today’s context because as we continue to live in greater interconnected world than ever before, with ready access to the Internet via mobile phones, tablets and computers, communication is a key area students MUST learn to navigate and survive.

Today, no one is a loner. No man is an island; no matter how hard you try. As much as you try to disconnect, we somehow end up being part of a online community that is always there 24 hours, 7 days a week.

Teachers today do not seem to engage their students much online, maybe due to a heavier workload in school, fear of loss of privacy among other reasons, but I like to challenge the teachers out there, “If you are not talking to your students outside the classroom, how do you teach them about how to communicate online?”

Now before you jump to any conclusions, my point today is what kind of communication culture do you have with your students? I always joked that the scariest question a student could ask me is, ‘Teacher, Can we have your mobile number? We want to add you to the class whatsapp group.”. Now that’s a scary thought isn’t it?

There are more ways other than just giving them an email address, facebook account or using whatsapp/messaging system.  How about a class blog? Use that to start building a online culture within your class. How about a message board? A place where students can post questions for the next day’s lesson? So there are ways you can still communicate online with your class and yet maintain your privacy.

Consider the fact that social media and the Internet has played a larger role in recent societal life. Spreading of information, exchanging of ideas and always-on access. How ready are your students to handle all of that?

So if you have not tried, maybe make a conscious effort to do so this year. Start with baby steps and don’t be afraid to fail. Give it a shot and never be afraid to ask another teacher for help too.

Its time we start putting the ‘C’ back into ‘ICT’.

How do I plan an ICT Lesson - 5 Basic Steps

Alright, here is a common question many educators ask me, how do I plan an ICT Lesson?

It is a valid and important question. Let me give 5 basic steps to help you get started.

Remember, these are just 5 basic steps. There are definitely many more steps and considerations to note and follow.

That being said, please do not feel demoralised or deterred from creating your ICT lesson for your class. Practice is important, and after a few rounds, many of these steps would become second nature to you, just like how you create your lesson plans or Scheme of Work for your regular lessons.

Here are my 5 steps to help you plan an ICT Lesson:

Step 1 - What is your lesson objective?

Most teachers get the wrong idea that for every ICT lesson, I must be able to teach and cover many topics in one lesson. We often call that the 'Shotgun' mentality, hard, fast and wide.

The truth is, you need to determine, what is your lesson objective first, before you can decide what topics or how you want to approach the lesson.

Let me give you a simple example:
Before you leave your house some questions you often ask yourself, am I going to exercise? or am I going out to party? or am I going to a wedding? Basically, why am I going out for?

From there, you know what kind of clothing to wear, isn't it?

Likewise, you need to ask yourself, I am going to conduct an ICT lesson, am I introducing a new topic? or am I going to reinforce an existing lesson? am I doing revision of past topics? am I getting my students to learn in a self-directed manner or collaborative? etc...

So first, define the objective of the lesson and then you will be able to scope your lesson accordingly. Shotgun mentality will not be effective compared to a 'sniper' mentality.

Step 2 - How many periods/How much time am I willing to commit to an ICT Lesson?

I commonly meet educators who thought that they only need to bring the class into the lab or special room once and conduct the lesson and everything will go fine. This is a very COMMON and SILLY mistake!

I bet you are wondering why I highlighted certain words in RED. This is because, it is a common and silly mistake.

Here is my reasoning:
Anyone can tell you, when planning for any event, don't you plan for contingency? No one plans that everything will go off perfectly. We should always plan contingency.

So now, how does that apply to my lesson planning?  Bringing your students directly to the lab to conduct your lesson on the day itself is too risky. Your risk wasting valuable periods if anything were to go wrong.

You need to ask yourself when doing your planning, how much time am I willing to commit to this ICT lesson?

What I recommend is that, you allocate a 1:3 ratio. 1 ICT Lesson to 3 sessions. Why so? Isn't that a waste of precious teaching time?

What I suggest is that you should have 1 session to get your students or yourself familiar with the teaching environment if you are not familiar with it. Meaning bringing your class there, conduct your lesson as an introduction lesson.

This has several benefits. Your get yourself or your class familiar with the tools before the actual lesson, thus not wasting precious time on the day of the actual lesson or activity. Additionally, it helps you identify issues or potential issues before it arises on the actual day. This will help you better adjust your lesson for the actual run.

After having your first session as an introduction lesson. and you have cleared any issues that arose (if any), you can conduct your lesson straight away. And because your students have been familiarised with the tools and/or environment, your lesson should go pretty smoothly.

The 3rd session is actually more for a spare lesson in the event that your students may need additional time to complete the task, or you may expand the scope due to the student's speed on completing the original activity.

So remember, you need to be willing to commit enough time to complete your ICT lesson. My recommendation? 1:3 Ratio.

Step 3: What resources do I have available to me?

Generally speaking, many ICT teachers thought that bringing their class to a computer lab is counted as an ICT lesson. This is a common misinterpretation of what an ICT lesson is. ICT lessons is not about using ICT in the lesson, it is about INFUSION of ICT into the lesson. I will speak more about the difference of this at a later post.

So how does using and infusion affect the way I plan my lesson? Resources are important because it affects your lesson outcomes. Sometimes using a PC is insufficient. So as you plan your ICT lesson, you have to ask your school or company, what resources do I have to make my lesson more effective or interesting? Mobile Phones, Tablets, Cameras, special learning facilities, are just some examples of resources that could help in your ICT lesson.

Let me give you one example of a lesson I once created. I was planning an outdoor lesson where students would go and take pictures of nature and come back and share with the class about what they have found, in a group setting.

Now in this scenario, using a traditional computer lab setting may not be the most suitable because of the way the computers could be laid out. Additionally, you may have trouble having everyone transfer all their photos to the computer. This would take a lot of time, which could be better used for other group activities.

So what did I do? I got a room that is setup for a group discussion setup. Every group would have a round table each. This would allow students to sit comfortably as a group. And I got the students to use iPads to take the pictures with, rather than cameras, this allow better sharing, ability to zoom in and I do not need the students to transfer the photos anywhere.

Try to be imaginative on using resources available to you. ICT lessons of course would require ICT tools, but there are non-ICT tools that affect your lessons too, such as seating arrangements and even venue.

Step 4: Know Thy Students!

Every educator should know the demographic or the type of students you are planning your lesson for.

Knowing the kind of students, will allow you to better plan the kind of ICT lesson best suited for them.

Factors to consider are:
- Age
- Learning ability (Fast Learner, Slow Learner)
- Discipline issues (if any)
- Financial Issues (If any)
- Learning disabilities (ADHD, Dyslexia etc)
- Others

Why do we consider these factors? You cannot expect students who are ADHD to read a wikipedia entry nor can you expect high ability learners to play basic games. You need to tailor your lessons to fit the ability of the learners.

Let me give you an example of this:
I taught a school in Singapore which had 3 class who are streamed as similar ability classes. All 3 classes may have been in the same stream, but their learning ability was different. So to best suit the ability, I came out with a standard ICT lesson, where I scaled the lesson based on the class ability. For the middle class, I conducted the regular lesson, for the higher ability class, I gave them slightly more to do, but still the same activity, and for the weaker class, I did the regular lesson but slowed it down for all of them to catch up.

Knowing your students will help especially when you are planning for lessons that introduce new topics or outdoor ICT lessons, just to cite a few examples. So... Know Thy Students!

Step 5: Plan realistic deliverables 

Some educators think that all students are very ICT savvy and can give them the moon, stars and sky.  The truth of the matter is that there are students who are extremely ICT Weak. I have even met a 13 year old student who didn't know how to create a new folder!

So when planning your lesson, don't assume your students know how to give you your deliverables with high expectation, unless you are very sure they are competent in the software/website/skills. Plan realistic deliverables because deliverables are the main cause for teachers exceeding their planned lesson time.
What you could do is set a tiered deliverable. Set a minimum target that you want your students to achieve and submit to you. But DO NOT tell them what the minimum is, that is for your own knowledge.

Rather, get the students to achieve the normal target that you will set for them. If for some reason they are unable to hit, then you can adjust your lesson accordingly and get them to submit the minimum target. Also do plan for a higher target deliverable, especially for classes that can do more, just as what I suggested in Step 4.

This is especially important when you are teaching skills. In the past, when I taught students photo editing using Adobe Photoshop, I used to set a target goal of 5 skills to teach the students during every lesson. But if I feel that the class cannot meet the 5 skills, I would teach at least a minimum of 3 skills for that lesson. For classes that could pick up the skills faster, I would add on 2 more skills. Ultimately this would affect the deliverables of the students.

So remember, your deliverables obviously are important, as they are proof that your lesson was conducted and it was effective. But you need to set realistic goals to go along with your deliverables. Set your expectations right so that you will not feel that your students have fallen short during your lesson.

I hope these steps and explanation helps you in your planning!

Originally posted at LeeAhLong.com on 11/06/2013

Learning Objectives? Why is it important?

Honestly, whenever I talk about this particular topic, sometimes I forget why is this important. So this is a good reminder for myself too.

How do you write good learning objectives?

Lets start by asking, WHY is writing good learning objectives important in the first place?

Alright, most of you are probably wondering what the heck are learning objectives? Man... this is getting complicated isn't it? So many questions to answer!

Lets start at the beginning.

Every teacher is taught how to draft a lesson plan.

In general, most lesson plans talk about what they intend to cover, how they are going to teach it, time allocated for teaching and additional information regarding the lesson. And like the saying goes: 'Always have the end in mind'

So teachers always have to think about what are the lesson objectives before they teach a lesson so that they know if they have met their lesson objective or not.

Now, clear lesson objectives make a difference. How? By being clear and accurate, we stay on track as we plan, think and execute.

Now, if you are a parent, what does this have to do with me? Well, I always felt that parents should understand this area because how you speak to your child, the language used, the syntax of the question helps form the way your child process the question and how he gives his answer.

Common mistake made by both teachers and parents are to give simple questions, that require only simple answers. but thats not enough! That does not stretch or test the child's thinking capacity.

Ok so lets get back to the original thread. We have touched on the 'Why'. Now lets talk about the 'How'.

Lesson objectives are not only confined to the classroom. It can also be the questions you ask your child or student.
The way we ask questions affect what kind of skill you are testing.

This comes from the commonly used concept of Bloom's Taxonomy. (You can read more about it here)

Bloom's separates the different levels of learning of the child into 6 broad categories.

By understanding these 6 categories, a teacher or parent will be able to test or plan what kind of information you want for the child.

The lowest level of learning is remembering.

So for example, we often ask children, 'Do you remember what colour was the car?'

How many of us are guilty of that? Now, not that the question is wrong. But it could be phrased better.

It could have been phrased as, 'Recall the colour of the car'.

Now you may say, that doesn't seem much of a difference, but you know, the more you continue giving simple syntax questions, the worst it becomes for the child in the future. This is something we all are guilty of.

So even when writing a lesson objective or a test, Bloom's Taxonomy is a good way to help you phrase things the right way.

So the verbs are important when crafting your questions.

Now, to be honest, I cannot claim myself to be an expert in this. But as a former ICT trainer and teacher, I can share with you simplified ideas on this topic.

We have to talked on the 'Why' and the 'How'. Let me introduce to you now how ICT and Bloom's Taxonomy links.

We have Smart Devices like iPhones, Samsung Galaxy or tablets like the iPad.

Now even though it says for iPad, majority of these apps will be available for Android, and Windows also.
You could always substitute them with a close equivalent also.
These apps, will help your child or student to achieve those learning levels that you plan for. But of course all this requires planning and thought. So TAKE YOUR TIME!

The worst thing you can do as a parent or teacher is to jump right in and throw the iPad to the child and expect them to use those apps without guidance. It doesn't work that way!

So I shall leave you here for today, but go check out the web link that I included earlier on Bloom's Taxonomy.

Perspective Thinking

Perspective.

We all have one.
Just like how it is illustrated in the graphic beside this paragraph, depending on where we are, perspective decides on how we form opinions of the World around us.

Let me give you one example.

When the Indonesian President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, apologised for causing problems to Singapore and Malaysia for the Indonesian Haze, depending on one's perspective, one could think that he was being generous and honest or he could be perceived as weak and bowing to its neighbors.

Perspective is about knowing where our ideas or views came from and being open to different or other views.

Now why am I writing about this? So often, we hear about people complaining and airing their grievances, and yes, to that person, those grievances could be very valid.

But consider this idea, before airing those grievances, take a step back and think, does it really matter? Is your problem or issue really that large to be made an issue? How does one learn to tell the difference?

Simple Answer: Education at home and school

I spoke to some teachers over the weekend and the general consensus was that students/youths of today, are not taught enough about Perspective Taking. Why that particular skill? It is because as they grow up, they are going to start forming and sticking to certain thinking and mindset on particular opinions. Such as what is their political affiliation or acceptance, their preference in work style and even the type of holidays they go on. Perspective Taking is important to help youths learn to explore all views and not just their own.

I am going to avoid talking about Socratic Questioning in this post, but Perspective Taking is something that is closely linked with that. Youths are very moldable at their current age. Easily influenced and can swing to extremes in terms of support or opposition because they tend to face tunnel vision fairly quickly.

Here is 4 basic steps on how to execute Perspective Taking:

1. When you come into my space, I have a little thought about you and you have a little thought about me.
2. I wonder “why are you near me?,” “what is your purpose for being near me?” “Is it because you are just sharing the space, do you intend to talk to me or do you intend to harm me?” I have to consider all these things in order to keep me safe around people as well as to predict what will happen next.
3. Since we have thoughts about each other, I wonder what you are thinking about me. 
4. To keep you thinking about me the way I would like you to think about me, I monitor and possibly modify my behavior to keep you thinking about me the way I want you to think about me.

Why is this relevant to education? Why must I, as a parent or teacher teach my child/student this skill?

In countries such as the US, where different areas of the country have different ideology, and many a times they may not understand each other's views. So often we have heard about elections, swing votes, etc... what does it all mean? Why does it matter?

Perspective Taking takes us back to the underestimated skill of teaching us on how we should be open to new views all the time. By teaching the young, we are preparing the next generation skills to not look inwardly, but in a global perspective. As the world continues to shrink due to the Internet and we are more and more interconnected through trade, politics and religion, it is important that we do not fall into the complacency that my view is the only view, as often accused by many countries to each other. Rather we should continue to strive for open conversation and debate.

To all parents and teachers:

• Question your child/students.
• Make them think about cause and effect.
• Challenge them to make a better world even if the world says No.

Remember, education is not just about imparting knowledge, it is also teaching them how to gain knowledge. School systems have been guilty of this mistake for many years. Parents have been guilty of leaving it up to schools to equip their children with everything. For too long we teach and educate based on a single set of knowledge, but have we taught how to gain new knowledge? How will they be creative or challenge the status quo? Have we become so cynical of change that we will not teach those skills and letting the child come to his or her conclusion?

I want to give a special mention of my secondary school History teacher of mine.
Yes, I know. History is a humanities subject and involves Perspective Taking but that is not the point. I remember her telling me something which till this day I value. She told me, never accept anything at face value until you have determined it to be so.

Perspective taking is just that. We should never accept one's views wholesale, even when it comes from yourself or from a credible source. Being human, we are prone to mistakes and tunnel vision. Let us go back to the point where we enjoy learning and challenging all views brought to us.

Remember, teaching selectively is not teaching at all.

Don't expect to just teach facts, but teach skills to confirm those facts.

Only then will we be properly adding foundations for our children for the future.