ENHANCED SCHOOL EXPERIENCE: PREPARATORY TASK FOR ICT FOR MEANINGFUL LEARNING

Enhanced School Experience: Classroom Observations of ICT Use

(I)          Specific Observations

School Name: St. Margaret’s Secondary School

Class: 1E4 Express

Profile of the class: (For e.g., the students’ academic abilities,  stream and other characteristics) The students from 1E4 are in the express stream and have PSLE scores ranging from 200-220. They are considered one of the rowdier classes in school. However, this being a girls’ school, the rowdiness is more manageable compared to perhaps a mixed school where students have the same PSLE score. For Secondary 1 General Music in SMSS, students who belonged to choir, band and string ensemble and students with a certain standard of background in music (minimum Grade 5 theory + Grade 5 in any instrument) attended a separate instrumental scheme.

Subject: Music

What ICT tools are used in the lesson? The HOD of Aesthetics, Mr Tan used this website (http://www.musictheory.net/lessons/10) to conduct the second music lesson where students were to learn how to read notes on the treble clef. The website was projected onto the whiteboard in front of the class which was from where Mr Tan conducted the lesson. I was seated behind the piano to assist with using the software which operated like Microsoft PowerPoint. The second part of the three-part lesson was conducted using this resource (http://www.musictheory.net/exercises/note/bg1yyyy) which allows the user to customize settings for a note identification exercise. The last part of the lesson involved the students physically in a game. Putting aside how the games work, ICT came into play here where several instructions for the game were flashed on the screen so students could continually refer to it if they forgot any.

Describe how ICT is used for teaching and learning in the lesson. While the instrumental scheme sought to limit the range of pre-knowledge students brought to class, there were still students with a higher degree of musical knowledge because they had music lessons when they were younger or were in class because they were just slightly short of the minimum requirement to attend the instrumental scheme. Despite some students being more familiar with musical notation than others (which usually makes them more distracted as what is heard in class is a repetition of what they already know), the use of ICT made sure that most of the class were engaged in learning and/or revising. Using the first website, students were introduced to musical knowledge in a systematic manner (staff – treble clef – notes) and this was done effectively and efficiently with technology as a visual aid. Furthermore, the use of technology enabled the teacher to deliver the lesson very smoothly, giving an illusion of ‘magic.’ The teacher came to class extremely well-prepared and is knowledgeable and professional and the use of technology communicated those aspects of the teacher to the students. With me assisting with operating the online programme and seated out-of-view from the students, the teacher conducting the lesson could also concentrate on engaging the students even more as the visual aids to the lesson unfolded on-screen. The second part of the lesson using the second website was a useful online resource that allowed students to revise what they had just learnt in the first part of the lesson. As mentioned above, the second website allowed the user to customize the range of notes to be identified and in what key signature and clef. The programme was interactive and students could choose any of the seven notes from the C-major scale as their answer. The correct answer was revealed immediately after.

(II)         General Observation:

How do teachers in the school feel about the use of ICT for teaching and learning? (For this question, you may want to speak to the HOD/ICT and other teachers you know in the school.)

I think teachers in SMSS view ICT as a useful tool that enables a smooth delivery of a lesson. It is less cumbersome and time-consuming than carrying certain parts of the lesson out on a whiteboard or simply 

conveying the information to the students via speech only.

As seen in the lesson above, the world of ICT is also a treasure trove of useful resources that can streamline lesson preparation and allow the teacher to focus more on how s/he can deliver the lesson.