Reflection on the Teaching of ICT as a Subject

 

In this digital era, ICT use in classroom is important for giving students opportunities to learn and apply the required 21^st century skills. It is an important part of most organizations these days. ICT improves the effectiveness of education as everything we teach using ICT is hands on experience.

When ICT came into existence as a subject, I found students’ interest in learning ICT growing everyday and to everyone’s surprise we found our students rushing towards the IT lab to explore and learn something from the resources available online. ICT is such a subject where students can explore and learn by their own; so it happens in my class too. I just provided them with the clear directions and they learn by their own. Whenever they come across problem they seek my help and I make them understand the concept. The nature of subject itself demands more of practical, so they learn ICT by doing.

Since ICT provides more creative solutions to different types of learning inquiries or the subject demand hands on experience and exploration they keep coming to the lab looking for ways and means to learn by their own. It also improves engagement and knowledge retention and keeps each individual students more engaged in their work, as technology provides different opportunities to make learning more fun and enjoyable in terms of teaching the same thing in different ways. As compared to the teaching of other subjects I found teaching of ICT to be most effective because everything is hands on experience which makes the students to better understand and apply the learnt knowledge in the real scenario.

Code Monkey

With  the introduction of Code Monkey into school curriculum PP to VIII and IX and at least for this year, the number of students visiting ICT lab during recess hour has gradually increased. My grade four student's interest in learning ICT has now become 100 percent with the coming of coding through game. Although they do not have prior knowledge on coding, but they do it so well they already have some basics in coding.

Drawing in MS Paint

In the beginning of ICT session; to make my students better in handling with the mouse and keyboard (mouse and keyboard balancing), I asked them to open MS Paint and told them to draw any image of their interest. And to my surprise I found my class IV students drawing a wonderful image in paint.

Challenges

Overall, the key issues and challenges found to be significant in teaching ICT are; limited accessibility and network connection, limited technical support, and lack of effective training. Moreover the teaching of ICT in a classroom setting is little less effective in terms gaining students attention, since when the lesson (theory) is taking place in the ICT lab, it is found that most of the students attention are grasped by the equipment's as they are sometimes taken away by the mouse and the keyboards. In the same time there are always few students who would go online and watch movies that don’t really match the curriculum despite teacher’s constant reminder. Moreover it is the first phase of introducing ICT into the school curriculum and therefore students are not well skilled in using ICT as planned in the lesson.

 

Reflection on ICT Integration in Teaching

 

Learning is an experiential and practical through ICT integration. ICT integration in teaching different shapes stimulated children’s interest and enthusiasm in learning through self-exploration. They tried themselves with all their ability and trial for the success in learning and development.

The lesson was taught theoretically about the 3 D shapes and nets. I showed a video clip about how the different nets form different 3 D shapes. After that I assigned a classroom activity to identify the nets of 3 D shapes through designing a game by sharing a link. Students were instructed to click the given link: https://turtledairy.com. (Nets of 3D shapes- Geometry Game) and started playing game in pair.

The 3D Nets are wonderful game for young students to learn about 3D shapes and their nets. Nets of a 3D shapes is two-dimensional shape that can make a given 3Dshape.In this game, students have to recognize the shape a given net can make, and the nets that can make a given 3D shapes. The game has superb animations to show how a 3 D shape can be made by its net, and other way round. The game will help students to understand 3D shapes, their nets and the interchange between them very clearly while having a lot of fun. Through game, I could assess immediately and was a quick way of providing compliment on time and feedback timely to improve their level of understanding about the nets and the 3 D shapes.

Integration of ICT in teaching enables students to practically learn about different shapes and nets. Learning was positively effective as they could learn perfectly with the help of internet and ICT facilitation. Thus, students could explore and learn all ideas and implement theoretical teaching into practice.

ICT integration in teaching and learning enhance students’ enthusiasm as they actively participated in learning. Students drew their interest and activated their striving to learn and explore for the betterment. The ICT integrated teaching process stimulates students’ attention for learning and could learn better than normal classroom teaching. They become skillful and mastery over the topic as it provides an opportunity for learners to practice and explore themselves.

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Students are from the remote areas and they are facing difficulties in exploring different digital learning system. Moreover, it is the first phase of introducing ICT teaching to students and therefore they are not well skilled in using ICT as planned in the lesson. However, with the constant practice and occasionally incorporating in the lesson step students into the tract of ICT integrated teaching and learning process.

Though ICT integration in teaching enhance students’ better learning and development, lacking of required facilities hindered to incorporate it in the daily lesson. In my school, it doesn’t have sufficient internet connection, projector, and computer desktop. In addition, students are prohibited to use mobile phone and thus it is hard to integrate ICT in teaching learning process. In order to achieve better teaching and learning, school need to have available of desktop, and every classroom need to have a projector each. Internet accession is the most important for learning through self-exploration. Internet plays a vital role in the school to access the students into new learning experiences. Therefore, every school need to have well furnish with digital gadgets with functioning internet connection.