Monday, January 29, 2007

Week 3 Task

We've assigned the designated task to respective members in our group. As I am especially interested in the part of "role of teachers", I just downloaded some views regarding this, which I consider representative.

ROLE OF TEACHERS

The role of the teacher changes from being the “sage on the stage” to “the guide on the side”.

http://books.google.com.sg

teachers will be in due course be compelled to become competent IT users as productivity tools and to act as facilitators of learning in order to enhance the learning of their students and to assimilate and accommodate new strategies and use of media into the subject they teach.
http://eprints.qut.edu.au

An important job for all educators is to enable learners to author using the media of their time. It is not enough to teach today's children in ways we were taught because they live in a different age. Rushkoff (1996) calls them Screenagers: today's children have been "born into a culture mediated by the television and the computer" (p. 3). Screenagers participate fluidly in online, interactive digital environments and virtual spaces--the rapid-fire, nonlinear, chaotic, multisensory world of digital media. Screenagers invent uses for computers and networks that adults often do not anticipate and frequently misunderstand. What educators first assumed children needed from us--careful instruction, step-by-step activities, and computer lessons developed with a close eye to scope-and-sequence--is often exactly what gets in their way (Clifford, Friesen, & Jacobsen, 1998). At home, much like the adult work experience, today's children are multitasking and exchanging documents for social purposes using wireless networks, personal data assistants, digital video and audio devices, and distributed gaming environments. We must examine the implications of these daily interactions with technologies for schooling and for Faculties of Education. How are student teachers taught to leverage today's digital technologies for their own, and for children's, learning and collaboration needs?
http://www.questia.com

Friday, January 19, 2007

Week 2 Task

Similarities between my local teaching & learning circumstances and Gate’s message in “The Road Ahead”:
1. Classrooms are largely connected to the network, which enables both teachers and students to get access to better communication channels;
2. Multimedia classroom environment has been created to make the most of the combination of text, images, sound, video and animation.

Differences:
1. The Road Ahead depicts the classroom environment as “teacher centrally important, spending more time with small groups of students working together using a personal computer that is connected to the network”; while under my local circumstance, many students can’t afford such a luxury;
2. The Road Ahead draws a picture of using digital white board in the classroom, which seems marvelous in use; while under my local circumstance, there’s still some way to go before we can really put that into practice.

Monday, January 15, 2007

Week 1 Task : Trial Post

Work load for the last several months in Singapore is comparatively not so heavy as that of the previous semester, but all the four subjests we are taking are somewhat difficult and challenging. Maybe hard work we need to take to get things going smoothly.