Tagged: education

不爱才是害！

Source: Lianhe Zaobao 18 June 2010

My Facebook response in Chinese:

笔者借鉴教授砸电脑的事件，凸显学生滥用资讯科技。我倒觉得这起事件揭露了时下的课堂教学与孩子在课外的数码生活脱节的现实。其实我们是否也应该想想：大人为什么开会时常被社交媒体科技“干扰”呢？是不是会议无法引起我们的兴趣？还是我们不懂得所谓的开会礼仪？无庸讳言，大家猛开的会议似乎也脱节了。

笔者提到我们可能会步西方国后尘，电脑资讯造成教学弊病，学校将首先成为灾难区。我倒想反问笔者，要是学生在中小学没有机会正确有效地学习及使用科技，难道要等到他们步入社会才学吗？那么灾难区不是将来的社会大学？

笔者也提到孩子缺乏自制能力。与其一律禁止和过滤，不如致力于教导孩子正确的数码公民价值观。如果教学还不迎头赶上孩子的学习需要，恐怕最终吃亏的就是我们的下一代了。

A Teacher’s Guide to Web 2.0 at School by Sacha Chua

Though I’m a little late in posting this, I guess it’s a good time to share this presentation by Sacha Chua after attending the ICT Mentor Training Programme workshop.

The workshop was great and without a doubt all tools used during the workshop are Web 2.0. However teachers who attended the workshop are constantly reminded, what matters most is HOW teachers used Web 2.0 for teaching and learning but not WHAT Web 2.0 can do. Pedagogies, instructions and learning outcomes always come first.

Now back to Sacha’s presentation slides. Enjoy～

A Teacher’s Guide To Web 2.0 at School

View more presentations from Sacha Chua.

We are less willing to let boys be boys in classrooms

Great read via Get Schooled:

Today’s classroom is better suited for the ways girls learn, says Rao. “When you promote all this assessment and increasing standardization, you narrow the way you are going to teach kids, eclipsing the ways that boys learn better. You go to much less hands-on and manipulation of objects and to more sit down and lectures.”

Is standardized testing unfair for most boys? I guess that’s the main reason boys are often misunderstood as late bloomers.

Technology has made it a totally different experience for a person to read, learn and work with the Chinese language

From Channel News Asia:

Technology has also made it a totally different experience for a person to read, learn and work with the Chinese language.

Mr Lee (Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong) said: “In China now, everybody uses computer inputs one way or other. The young people are working on keyboards so much that when they have to write the characters, they do not remember how to produce them.”

Communication styles too are changing, with more people using email and SMS.

Prime Minister Lee said: “There are all sorts of strange abbreviations. I was exchanging messages with a young person in Chinese and the person typed ‘3488’. So I asked, what on earth is ‘3488’ (‘暂时拜拜’)?

“There are all sorts of other abbreviations and synonyms which have become part of the lingo. If you stick to the traditional formal language teaching, you are not going to teach people that, you are not going to use that, and students are going to learn a very formal language. But that is not what they will often encounter in real life.”

Mr Lee said testing methods will also need to change.

“So, in an exam, you can bring an electronic dictionary along and ideally, everybody should have a keyboard and should type and write on the keyboard rather than have the burden of struggling with the mechanics of memorising and writing characters by hand,” he said.

 

My reflections:

1. Yes. Technology has changed it all. The challenge now is to use technology to teach and learn Chinese language effectively.

2. Email and SMS are two huge communication tools. That brings us to highly debated use of mobile phones/devices for learning in classrooms again. We must not forget the other 2 big communication tools – Instant Messaging (IM) and SNS (Social Networking Sites).

3. Does that mean we can look forward to alternative assessment with the use of computers in Chinese language tests and examinations?

The Piano Stairs

My thoughts  (questions) after watching this interesting video:

1. What do walking stairs and learning a boring and tough subject have in common?

2. Have you ever thought of making dull lessons fun with novelty?

3. How long can novelty last before it turns dull?

4. How does the fun theory apply to education?

Here’s how IT-savvy a Singapore school is

From TechXav:

Touted as “one of the most wired countries in the world“, Singaporeans second most tech savvy in the world as one of the most avid owners and consumers globally of entertainment technology. According to a survey conducted by Nielsen, Singapore also emerged as the country with the highest rate of mobile phone ownership in the world, with a penetration rate of 129.7%. The statistics mean that many Singaporeans own at least one or two mobile phones. Besides these, it’s a common sight to see teenagers interacting with their friends on Facebook, Twitter and MSN. Blogging is also a popular pastime by students.

As for today, I’ll narrow down my scope to how tech-savvy schools in Singapore are. In this post, I’ll share my personal experience as a 15-Year-Old student studying in Maris Stella.

From a Singapore student’s pespective. Although I must say Maris Stella is one of the more IT-savvy schools, it basically reflects the direction Singapore schools are moving.