The usage of ICT in different contexts : 1st entry

1^st entry

Search engine and human’s lifestyle

Due to the ever accelerated digital technology and advancement of the lifestyle, human beings are mostly surrounded by technology such as internet and computer or laptop, television and DVD player, and household electronic materials. As the innovation of the internet, we all can access it by using modem, broadband and wifi. This provide us an opportunity to search for the information we would like to know about by just one click on the keyboard and will be able to get the information we are looking for in just a minute. On top of that, it has also minimizes our distance between countries and people. Furthermore, by using the internet could also assist us to get the latest update from the company and the first hand data. 

The statistic below is about the percentage of Australian who accesses internet for basic use and the way they access internet in between the year 2006 and 2007: 

According to Australian Bureau of Statistics’ recent findings (2006-2007), 64% of Australian
homes had Internet access and about 73% of the residents had access to a home PC. As compared to the previous year, the proportion of households with Internet access jumped by four percentage points and the proportion of households with access to a PC increased by three percentage points.

Out of 5.1 million households with home Internet access about 31% had dial-up access and 68% had broadband access ; with broadband Internet connections increasing from 2.3 million to over 3.5 million households. About 72% of the people accessing the Internet at home used a broadband connection.

http://www.roi.com.au/index.php/internet_marketing/how_australians_use_the_internet_-_latest_market_data.html

The statistic below shows the percentage of level income and their access to the internet:

Rates of access continue to vary significantly with income. Based on equivalised household incomes, individuals living in households with equivalised income of $2000 or more per week are three times more likely to have Broadband access compared with persons with less than $600 per week income. The results are in line with recent related ABS surveys such as 2005-06 Household Use of Information Technology (HUIT), in which 22% of households in the bottom two equivalised income quintiles stated high cost as the main reason for not having Internet access, and only 34% of people in the bottom income quintile households had home Internet access, compared to 77% in the top income quintile.
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/8146.0.55.001

The statistic below shows the percentage of Australian access internet and their purpose of online:

61% of Australians now using the Internet to make purchases online.

Of the approximate 11.3 million people accessing Internet from any location, 61% used it to purchase or order goods of services for private purposes. Not surprisingly a higher percentage of people from more isolated locations such as Tasmania and the Northern Territory used the Internet to purchase / order goods or services for private purposes.

http://www.roi.com.au/index.php/internet_marketing/how_australians_use_the_internet_-_latest_market_data.html

According to these statistics, it shown that the percentage of Australian access to internet has significant increased compare to the year 2006. It is because in this modern society, people are encouraged to use computer for learning and even doing business. There are numerous internet resources which are very useful for learning such as Jstor, google scholar, and ena.com and normally people would like to search for general information via google or yahoo. On top of that, web 2.0 is the one provided people to get in touch with the social community through online such as facebook, live messenger, and skype whilst ebay is a site for trading purpose. Internet access also provided people to have a chance to discuss issues or to express their own feeling in their space such as blogger, wikispace, tumblr, and myspace. By using the internet, people not only can search for the information or share their points of view, but also can share their interest of music or mass media with others. It is very convenience for human being to access internet for education and doing business as it provided a high efficiency of searching tools and also reduce the waste of paper.

PPLE 2nd post

In the lecture, I have learnt 5 different models of classroom management and also some theories based on the Great Pioneer in Modern Discipline. I found that it is very useful for us to think about the theory which you have shared and provide us some mentally preparation before working as a teacher in the future. As a teacher, we have to allocate our students’ needs in front of us. We have to make sure that all of our students will feel comfortable and engaging in the classroom and they will be able to share their thoughts and ideas with others. If a teacher could make the students feel actively involved in the class even on the subject, this could be helpful for the students to develop a good learning behavior and motivation of self-learning. On top of that, the need of belonging is also very important for students. Different kind of student has their own characteristic. Perhaps most students are very outgoing and active, hence, it will not be a problem for them to join with other group of students. However, there are a small percentage of students who are shy and conservative. They are not really good at social communication but they also desire to feel belonging to the particular group. At this point, we have to think some ways to help students to feel engaging and belonging to the classroom/groups. By doing this, we could arrange some group discussion, gathering or camping in order to enhance the relationship between students and teacher. Sometimes, it would be a good idea to teach students outside the classroom so that students will have more opportunity to interactive with each other and get to know each other. This let me think about one of the provocations = is teaching a professional or a trade. In my opinion, if we treat it as professional first then trade, we will feel more enjoyable to teach and will be willingly to devote more time on the students and always try to think a better way that suits students. As what you have mentioned during the lecture “the better I teach the subject, the less I have with difficulty classroom management.” 

For the Krause’s article, I have read about the manager conflict and problem behavior. I will choose this article to read is because I feel that it is quite a serious issue that happening in school and I would like to learn deeper for this concern and how I could handle the problem if I were facing it. This chapter comprises a numerous ways of students’ misbehavior such as bullying and harassment, alcohol and drug abuse, racism, and sexism and it mainly focused on bullying. Krause had mentioned about the seriousness of bullying and pointed out that it is a worldwide problem. He also provided some case studies of how was it happened and how the teacher/school reacted to this issue. I found that this is very useful as he had given some ideas on how to avoid these kind of things happen and also how to react if we were facing on it. However, I have a question about bullying and not really know how I could do if I have to deal with the problem. Sometimes, the parents are the perpetrators for student’s misbehavior. If we found that there was a case that a group of students were trying to physically attack a victim and we inform the school principal and the school principal notified the ringleader’s parents. Before calling to the ringleader’s parents, we had no idea on his family background and soon we realized that actually the ringleader was living under the violent attack from his parents. Hence, this was the main reason for him to vent on other students. In this moment we could call the police and the related center who could handle this matter. However, the ringleader was still trying to protect his family and hopefully we would not call the police. What could I do with this if I were facing on this case?

For the five different models of classroom management, I would choose to study the interactivity area as I believe that it will be better to discuss with students instead of setting a lot of rules and require students to follow it. It will be better for the students to treat us as a friend and a tutor instead of just a tutor. Furthermore, if a student trying to disrupt classroom order, it will be better to talk to him after the class instead of yelling at him in front of other students. If we talk to him after the class, this will not only concern about his self-respect but also could understand his motive of disrupting the classroom order. 

When I was listening to the story of Nick, I thought about my secondary school life. I used to have a friend who is as intelligent as Nick. Every time during the class, she would not pay attention to what teacher teaching about but kept talking to the friend next to her instead. One day, when she was talking to the friend as usual, my secondary school teacher asked her to solve a question in front of us in a sudden otherwise she might get punishment because of not paying attention on that particular subject. We were all very worrying about her because she had never pay attention to that subject and the question she was asked to do was quite difficult. Nevertheless, she solved the question easily and my teacher was feeling impressed of her. I guess that every student has their own talent on the particular subject. The student might feel either the task was easy to be done or he/she wants to get attention from the teacher. If I have this kind of students, I would either do the same thing as what you did to Nick = ask them to do something related to the subject I teach or give them a small quiz every month in order to test if they pay attention to what I taught and find out their weakness of the particular part through the quiz. Once I find their weakness of the particular part, I would be able to help them to improve.

Ed Foundation Post 1

I have read through those 5 scenarios which based on different situations and I found that Tracy’s case was quite reflected on the new teacher’s expectation and the outcome. 

Before entering the school to teach as a proper teacher, I believed that all of us (including Tracy) have already thought about what kind of teacher do I want to be and how could I pass my knowledge to my students. We all would like to try to use the technique and the knowledge we have learned from the university and hopefully could apply those to our way of teaching. We would be very optimistic and have lots of plans for students and expected that our students could learn from us and have some contributions for the nation. Nevertheless, in the reality of the life we have to face on the pressure from the school, the society, the parents even the students. 

There are some hypotheses we might face on in our future which are as shown as below:

1.         1)  Pressure from the school:  Some of the schools might fight for the fame within the community area. In order to fight for the reputation, the principle might allocate more pressure on the teachers and set a target for teachers to reach. For example, students’ result has to get at least 85% distinction in a specific subject. Sometimes, there is also an award for the teacher who has reached the target. As a result, this might cause the tension between colleagues. Instead of enjoying teaching, they have to compete with each other and always find a way to reach the target.

2.             2)   Pressure from society: Some private schools in rural or remote area might suffer from inadequate fund resources. Hence, teachers have to lead the students to ask for donation from the neighbourhood. Some people might think that this is not professional and the responsibility for the teacher is teaching while student is studying but not raising fund for the school. People might feel less confidence by sending their child to the school as they think that the school might has less facilities and teaching resources. As a result, teachers have to do better in order to maintain the reputation of the particular school.

3.               3)  Pressure from parents: In this century, parents are very concerned about their child’s learning procedure. Sometimes, they would be interfere teacher’s teaching method and hopefully teacher could follow their instructions on how to teach their child. Other than that, if the students do something inappropriate and receive some punishment such as tidying up the classroom or copy the text for 5 times, their parents would come to the teacher and forbid the teacher for punishing their child. In this situation, students would become more and more disorganized as they could do whatever they like to but without receiving any punishment. 

4      Pressure from students: Students in a classroom could be divided into two categories: Students concentrate on their studies; students’ not engaging on what teacher teaches in class. They will do whatever they like to do such as chit-chatting with the students next to them or reading other subject’s material, and so on. In the latter case, teacher has to find more solutions to guide them and making sure they will back on track.

For my own philosophy in this case, I will always reminding myself the purpose for me to work as a teacher and I could not feel frustrated because of the reality I am facing on. Everything has its double edge sword: the pressure could make a people feeling fear and frustrated; on the other hand it could also motivate one to be optimistic and find a way to cope with the pressure. For the pressure of school and the society, it can help us to enhance our teaching skill and also improve our knowledge in order to reach the target which has been set up by the principle. It will be helpful if we could understand the difficulty that students might be facing on and the reasons for them to lure attention away from their studies. Start from this point, we could be able to find solutions and help them get through it. I believe that if a teacher is full of responsibilities, willingness to devote their time on students and really engaging on teaching, their students would be able to feel the passion and getting themselves on the right track. I believe that it does not really important to compete with others, but the only enemy is I myself. I have to keep telling myself that I would do better on the next day and always stay optimistic.