Tag: ict

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聊一聊 bearing fruit

was asked by 林振南老师 to join in the first iMTL NLC meeting of the year on 11/4 (wed) held at 老家SCCL. during the sharing of experience by an invited CL teacher on-stage, something on screen caught me eyes. take a look and see if you see what i see:

hint: it’s the ‘a’ word (:
i cannot fully describe the excitement of seeing the word on screen; not just once, but it appeared a second time in another slide later. what’s the significance of the sightings?

going back in time, 2 months ago on 20/2 (tue), i was at yio chu kang primary, and had two rounds of conversation with two groups of CL teachers on the topic of 《华文、学习、科技》. and 慧芬 who’s on stage was among the YCKPS teachers. i recalled it was the first time for some CL teachers to hear the term affordance (能供性); for a rare few, it’s probably the first time they were hearing technological affordance in the way i described it. the sessions were but a short 1-hour. and how do we know if teachers’ were impacted? what evidence(s) of learning do we have? it may not be easy to answer these qns, for many at times, learning is not fast, and it’s hardly evident in short term courses/workshops many at times.

and i am very thankful for 林振南老师 for asking me to be there, and of course PMTT林季华老师 and Dr. Sim SH for allowing me to be there. as a result, i had the chance to catch glimpse of the evidence of learning! not sure if the other close to 70 CL teachers (ST, LT & (P)MTTs) saw the significance. but it definitely tells me that what i’m doing is worthwhile doing, and i shall continue to pursue opportunities to influence CL teachers’ ideas and practice of CL, learning, and ICT. lastly not to forget, i am also grateful to 玉云 for allowing me to learn from & with her at YCKPS (:

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tool – nearpod

saw on lookang‘s fb feed yesterday this tool, and meiyin mentioned it to me today. what a coincidence. decided to take a quick look at the tool and examine its functionalities.

Screenshot 2015-08-12 16.05.50

it’s essentially a tool that builds interaction with live audience during a live presentation, somewhat like a PPT+Socrative 2-in-1. offline student-machine ‘interaction’ is available for a paid account that allows students to view prepared contents and answer preset qns (akin traditional e-learning **zzz**); click here for an example.

supports mobile apps on Android, iOS, and Windows phone. these apps would afford a teacher to ‘interact’ with students with access mobile devices w/active internet connections by gathering live feedback throughout the session/class. good for assessment for learning (AfL) (:

when a session goes live, control is only available from the main slide-to-slide view. if a slideshow is embedded as one of the slides, the teacher will have no control over the viewing of that slideshow.

besides pre-prepared content, teachers can also push website URLs, and Open-ended questions to students during a live session (somehow i got an error trying this on my droid).

teachers who would like to co-create presentation can do it through the Share via email function (not tested).

functionalities available to FREE account:
0. easy to navigate interface
1. create slideshow by importing PPTx files, images, PDF, and Google images search and insert directly
2. 50MB total storage & 20MB presentation size
3. export only PDF reports (per session)
4. 30 students per live session limit
5. UNICODE support (good news for CL teachers)

limitation of FREE (aka Sliver) account:
1. image upload size limit: 3MB
2. video upload size limit: 20MB
3. slide content eXcludes webpage, PDFs, live twitter feed, audio files
4. no self-paced homework/presentation mode
5. no CSV reports export, nor per student report
6. no export slides/presentation as PDF

paid account will set one back USD120 (annual billing). did not get to try the homework feature since i did not pay a fee.

to summarise, nearpod is a frontal presentation tool (~PPT) that affords teachers to build in feedback from students (e.g. for the purpose of AfL). students will need internet connected (mobile/laptop) devices to get this going. it may afford CoL where teachers/students may come together to co-create contents (not tested). however, using a free account, users would be limited to mostly static content #ithink (due to file size limit, and no linkage to external websites).

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tool – pear deck

pear deck is an interactive presentation tool. it’s essentially ppt+socrative. a few things to note:

1. the free acct only allows importing up to 5 slides
2. can’t see how presentations can be exported in the free acct (not sure abt paid acct)
3. supports unicode
4. the paid/premium educator acct costs USD11.99/mth, or USD8.33×12/yr

a quick overview:

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reflection on 12470-00004 facilitation

it’s been 3 weeks since the course started on 2/6. this is the first time Clinic is conducted with 3x face-to-face. an additional f2f session’s added in between based on our own reflection of the past runs, and participants’ feedback.

this time round, we have 7 participants who came. 1 MIA-ed, while 1, prior to the first f2f, was advised to sign up for the next run as the teacher couldn’t make it for this afternoon’s f2f, and the final f2f. during the first f2f, i learnt that another of the 7 belongs to this case. would have advised the teacher similarly if we were to know that in advance.

in the past 3 weeks, i observed 3-4 active participants. there were only 4 帖子B, and 3 weekly reflection piece from 2 participants. 2 reminder emails were sent, and only 2 echoes returned. not sure what happened to the rest. my guess is that our friends could have returned to PRC during this sch hols, and they faced difficulties accessing OPAL, ICON and/or fb due to the Great Firewall. will need to learn the real reasons behind if they were to turn up.

based on the 4 帖子B, i observed 3 of the participants were actively integrating ICT into their teaching and learning activities. except one, the awareness of conceptions of SDL appeared to include only incidental SDL along the SDL spectrum. consequently, the use of ICT to facilitate SDL reflects that understanding.

in the session later, my plan is to facilitate discussions to deepen the conceptions of SDL of participants. along with this, the affordance of ICT to facilitate SDL. would need to see how i could tie in what i have planned with their individual 5-10 minutes sharing.

looking forward to a fruitful session later. if time allows, we could even explore the design and use of rubrics as self-monitoring and self-management of learning cannot do without this important scaffold/tool.

sunrise photo(acknowledgement: jinsngjung)

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thoughts on post-workshop reflection

yes, we’ve completed our first round of ICT for SDL and CoL Clinic for primary school teachers (TRAISI code: 12541, or 12541-00001). was reading wj’s facilitator reflection, and it just occurred to me that we have missed an excellent teachable moment!

“我比较不解的是-其实他们之间分享了很多实例了，老师要的是什么实例？……”

some teachers have indeed voiced during the first f2f, that they would like to learn and see 实例。 yes, in the 1-month online discourse, many tried-n-tested examples have indeed been surfaced by fellow course participants. so what are they exactly looking for? wj’s hypothesis is they may be looking for technical hands-on (knowledge). my guess is it stems from their less sophisticated epistemic beliefs. some do not see that ‘learning’ has occurred if ‘learning’ does not take place the way s/he may have 预期ed.

as the self-proclaimed mentor to wj, her performance is a reflection of my hand-holding. there’s much to learn cos i am just more experienced by 2 workshops *hahaha* *oops*. there’s quite a number of things to take note, many of which i have previously noted down. after reading wj’s reflection, one key takeaway for me is the key influence of the facilitator’s paradigm. not mine, but that of whoever i am hand-holding. the “struggle” could be a great one, for s/he will need to manage two sets of paradigm shifts — participants, and oneself.

that’s all for now. perhaps “more later” (Wu, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015) (:

150304-macro-reflection_640(acknowledgement: ibangfotografi )

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