ICT in the classroom

Hi everyone!! It is nice to see all of you again. Let’s begin my story….. 3 months of teaching practice left me with all sorts of experiences. Some are sweet and some are sour. Those experiences are memorable and unforgettable for me. However, what I went through within the period might not be enough in preparing me to the real challenges outside there as a teacher. The challenges that I am going to face in future might not be the same like what i had experience in teaching practice. It might be different according to the place, school environment, the pupils, the facilities and etc.

I was assigned to Sekolah Kebangsaan (Dua) Jalan Selangor in PJ together with my pair, Hozana Simon. The school shares the same compound with Sekolah Kebangsaan Jalan Selangor (Satu). I feel it is funny and awkward for having two schools in the same compound. I wonder why don’t they just combine the schools as both are small schools only. For English subject, I had been given a year 2 class with 19 pupils while for Mathematics I took a year 3 class with 26 pupils.

Me and my pair

This is my year 2 pupils

This is my year 3 pupils

ICT is not my preferable tools to be used in the classroom. The first reason that i can give is due to the existence of LCD projector. YES! LCD projectors are available in the classrooms but……..they are for DISPLAY only! The projectors can’t be used at all! It is such a waste for government to provide the facilities but the school does not preserve the facilities. It is really disappointing.

Next, why don’t I use the computer lab as one of the ways to utilize ICT in my lesson? The answer that I can give is because it is time consuming to gather the pupils in the computer lab. It will take about 10-15 minutes to settle down the pupils therefore an hour lesson will be cut to 45 minutes lesson. Not only that, it takes quite some time to set up the LCD projector before I can start my lesson. That’s how the time will be wasted just like that. In short, I will end up with implementing my lesson in rush or unable to conduct all the stages in the lesson. If this  happens, my effort that I have been putting to prepare my lesson will be wasted. For this reason, I would prefer not to use ICT tools in my classroom.

Not much of experience that I can share in utilizing ICT in the classroom. As I can remember, I used only one ICT tool in my lesson which was MP3. It was for the topic of Animals. I brought in my laptop and speakers in the classroom. That was the first and the last I used the tool. After that, I had never and ever used it anymore because of what I had experienced on the first time. Talking about the experience, the class became chaos as the pupils seemed to be over-excited to see the laptop and speakers. It was like they had not seen it for ages! or maybe that was the first time they saw the items (I’m not sure about this). The pupils were gathering around me, my laptop and speakers. The situation became out of my control. It took so much time for me to settle down the pupils and making sure that the class was under my control. I was almost gave up as they did not listen to me at all. It gave me a nightmare to use the ICT tools again the classroom. Luckily, it didn’t happen during my observed lesson by supervisor. Since that, I swore that I will never use ICT tools for my teaching practice. It is too risky therefore I prefer to play safe during the period. I’m such a bad teacher, right??

Here is the link for the animal sounds that I downloaded for the lesson. The animal sounds are cat, cow, duck, hen, horse and sheep. The purpose of the lesson was to introduce the animals and the sounds they produced.

http://www.stonewashed.net/animal.html

Frankly speaking, it is not easy to utilize ICT in the classroom and there are a lot of factors that can influence the appropriateness of using the tools.

Here are some positive and negative factors of using ICT tools in the classroom that I would like to share.

Positive	Negative
Variety = Fun	Technical issues
Interactive/ instant feedback	Classroom management
Enhanced presentation quality	Integration problems/issues
Acquisition of IT skills	IT skills required

Source: http://vnseameo.com/TESOLConference2010/Downloads/JuliaGardiner.pdf

That’s all from me……=)