Bringing students into the 21st century via info-technology

Ms Angela Quek Guat Choo Tampines Junior College Singapore

Introduction

Students today are bombarded by technology everywhere – at home, in public buildings, and on the way to school. To prepare them to be full citizens in today’s increasingly high-tech world, it is imperative that they learn how to make full use of technology in a meaningful way. As such, the English Department at Tampines Junior College embarked on a program that incorporated the use of information technology (IT) in the teaching of General Paper. As the head of the Enrichment Committee in my college, I have had the privilege to steer this innovative directive. To date, we have included the following IT-infused lessons and activities to ensure that students know how to use the latest technology.

Procedure/methodology

Blog on iNet student online conference: ‘Global citizens: Are you a global citizen?’

Students were encouraged to ‘attend’ the above online conference in December 2006. As a follow up, one teacher, Ms Dawn Ng, created a blog (06s16gp.blogspot.com) for her students to express their ideas about the issue. The whole class participated enthusiastically, and even those who had never used blogs before took part in it. Students wrote about their experience of the conference, as well as their thoughts on what the issue of global citizenship meant to them. A link to this blog was posted on the college website, so that other students would be inspired by what these students had learned, as well as to entice them to participate in the next online conference. Even the teachers were impressed by the learning outcomes and were convinced that it was important that all their students should take part in future online conferences.

Podcast project

Groups of students were given different contentious issues and told to go out of the classroom to interview people on the topic, using their hand phones or mp3 players. There was an initial test run to ensure that students could create podcasts and post them on the internet. The second project was more fine-tuned to the learning outcomes desired in writing essays and opinions. Students had to prepare questions to prompt their audience, so that there would be no gaps in the interview. This way, they learned what questions to ask to trigger the development of an idea. This would help them remember how to develop an idea in a paragraph. Students then uploaded their podcast onto the link provided on the college website at: www.tpjc.net. This allowed them to learn how to use the latest IT equipment and facilities, and gave them a chance to showcase their own work. In addition, students had to write a brief introduction on their topic, and give a summary and assessment of their interview. They also had a chance to view and make comments on other group’s podcasts. This allowed them to practise the skill of critical assessment.

General Paper (GP) Newsthreads

In an attempt to get students to read more appropriate articles suitable for General Paper, the college made all students subscribe to either Newsweek or Time magazine. They could either pay the one-and-a-half-year subscription via cash or use their Edusave Fund (money given by the Government to every school child). In addition to using the lesson plans that accompanied the magazines, two classes were rostered every week to write comments on online threads on the topics chosen for discussion, one each per magazine (www.tpjc.net and www.tpjc.net). This gave students a platform to express their opinions. It also encouraged them to give critical assessments, a skill required in the comprehension paper of GP.

WikiTP

The WikiTP is an English Department project aimed at increasing learner's autonomy and building an online database of information on topics that are relevant to the General Paper. Based on Discovery Rewind 2006, a special Discovery program that featured all the major events and issues that surfaced in the year 2006, the GP Enrichment Department created a series of connected blogs (wikitp.blogspot.com) that featured all the topics covered in the documentary. Year1 classes were put in charge of each topic. After watching the documentary, students did further research on their given topic, and updated/upgraded information on WikiTP, just like with wikipedia. In addition, to stimulate critical assessment, students were encouraged to post comments on each topic. They were told that a poll would be set up at the end of the project to vote for the best written topic. This was to ensure a serious attitude towards the project, as well as to add a competitive element. This project is targeted to end in mid-July. It is hoped that students will find this to be a useful databank; one where they had the opportunity to take ownership of their own learning, and create resources that will be useful to them for the revision of the General Paper.

Conclusion

Through infusing technology in the curriculum, it is hoped that the students not only learned to make use of the latest technology that could be useful to them in their working lives, but also found lessons more exciting and meaningful. By constantly encouraging students to assess the material they have gathered/created via various media, we hope that they will get into the habit of critically analysing the information collected. This will prepare them to deal better with the wide array of information, from various sources, in the world. We are currently exploring the use of podcast in the curriculum, as well as role playing games. By tapping into students’ interests in these areas, we hope to encourage them to see that GP is not only a subject on current knowledge but also a ‘live’ subject with relevance to their daily lives and interests.