Baseline ICT Standards (Singapore): Where is Web 2.0 for Primary level?
This afternoon I attended a briefing at MOE HQ on Pupils’ Attainment of Baseline ICT Standards. The highlight of the briefing was the demonstration of the Online Assessment Tool which is task based and automated. Pretty impressive stuff.
However what made me a little upset was the glaring absence of Web 2.0 for Primary level Skills areas in the revised standards.
Frankly, I was quite puzzled by this first ICT Focus:
Pupils will use the Internet for email and searches.
and this Skills Area:
Learning with Communication Tools: Online Communication: Send a message. Send an attachment.
While Secondary and Tertiary levels placed some emphasis on Web 2.0, I can’t say the same for Primary level (except for the brief mention of ‘Digital portfolio’ and ‘blog’ as ‘Suggested Evidence’).
I can’t help but ask myself: Is Web 2.0 deemed too early for Primary level?
I will probably slap myself first if the answer is a yes.
As what Deputy Director. Professional Development & Consultancy, Mr. Sin Kim Ho pointed out, the Baseline Standards will be evolving.
I guess evolving is just too slow. It needs an immediate transformation.
Note: Primary level pupils in Singapore are between 7 years old (Primary 1) to 12 years old (Primary 6).
Social Media Revolution
I’m a big fan of Did you know?. You can be sure I’m amazed by this 
TEACH WEB 2.0
Got to know this great wiki from Day 9 of K12Online Conference 2008. It contains links and reviews of Web 2.0 tools for teaching and learning. Highly recommended.
Comiqs in the news
Source: Sunday Times, 4 May 2008
Comiqs | Create & Share your comic-style stories
This website is done up by a group of brilliant guys from Singapore. Kudos for making comics alive in the form of a web2.0 tool! It is another great tool for language teachers, particularly useful for digital story telling.
Perhaps the only let down is lack of Chinese character support (just like Voicethread).
There is just the Web
From ReadWriteWeb:
Something struck me while listening to Tim O’Reilly’s keynote speech at the Web 2.0 expo yesterday: glancing at my notes after he walked off stage, I noticed that his current definition for Web 2.0, is a lot like the definition he’s given for Web 3.0. Based on those and past comments on I dug up via a few web searches I am forced to one conclusion: Tim O’Reilly, the man credited with popularizing the term Web 2.0, doesn’t actually believe it exists. For O’Reilly, there is just the web right now. 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 — it’s all the same ever-changing web.
As mentioned in my previous post, definitions are for purists. I guess my statement holds for even the definition of the web. Call it the return to innocence. Welcome back, the web.
PowerPoint + YouTube = ?
One of the 25 tools is Slideshare. With Slideshare, you can upload PowerPoint presentations, tag them and share them with others. You can also synchronize them with an audio file to create a narrated presentation.
Another free tool (not featured in the ‘25 tools’) which has similar features is authorSTREAM.
I have tried both and they work great. I had uploaded a PSLE Chinese Oral presentation to authorSTREAM last year and it has an amazing 7000+ hits as of today!
Try using them in teaching! You can also get your pupils to upload their PowerPoint slides and share them with their classmates. Another way is to upload pupils’ slides yourself and embed them in the class blog or equivalent.
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