My Observation Day 1

I am going to Burgmann Anglican School in Gungahlin for my observation. It is a private secondary school. All of the school staff members are very nice and good to me. When I arrived that school, I was so worrying that I might lose my way to find my supervisor because I was totally fresh at there. However, one of the staffs was willingly to lead my way to find my mentor and that let me felt warm and comfortable. 

My mentor is a very helpful and caring person. She was introducing me to the classroom and prepared a timetable for me so that I could know where the class were up to and what they are doing at the moment. She was encouraging me to join in her class for example giving some comments on students’ performances, teaching me how to use “garage band” (one of the softwares to compose music) gives me a chance to have a look at how other teachers work with kindergarten students and junior school students. She said that even though I am majoring in secondary school teaching, it will be good for giving me a chance to have a look at other areas.

I believe that Sandra is a teacher who is very care for their students and responsibility. When I entered her composition’s class, she was giving the advice on how to do the assignment. She described what she wanted in a clear and concise way and even did her own report and showed to her classroom. Actually, since I entered kindergarten until now, not many of my teachers would do the same thing – actually done his/her own report and showed to the classroom, might be no more than 5 of them did this thing. But Sandra and Steve are two of them who did this and showed their support to the classroom! It feels like we are on the same boat and could feel very encouraging from her.

Apart from that, I was so lucky that I had a chance to have a look for Questacon to perform in this school. Sandra was telling me that Questacon was coming to demonstrate how the instruments making the sound to the kindergarten students. That was fun and the young children are so cute! 

Sandra was also encouraging me to ask more questions and I did ask her quite a lot of questions! I am so grateful to have her as my mentor and I believe that I can learn more teaching methods on music from her!

The usage of ICT in different contexts: 5th entry

5^th entry

ICT and Sports

Nowadays, ICT has been widely used in sport’s area. Some people might think that the usage of ICT is more common in communication area or scientific area and feeling doubtful for the relationship between ICT and sports. Nevertheless, if we think about the purpose that lies behind the surface we will soon realize that ICT is very important for sport. There are some examples below showing the relationship between ICT and sports. 

• Sport clothing and design: Uniform that represents a group is very important because it shows the unity and co-operative of each members of the group. On top of that, when a group represents a community such as their class, school or country with uniform for any kind of competition, it will gives pressure on the component as every single members of the group are inseparable. Hence, a well-design of sport clothing is very important as it has to comprise symbols of the team and the school or national, lucky colours and etc. Each team members could design for their favourite uniform patterns by using computer, a template of the kit and a painting package. After they finished design the uniform they could print it out and choose one of the most suitable uniform patterns that could represent the team amongst all of the designs. If the team members were not designed by themselves, they could use internet to find a professional designer to design. 
• Testing tools for sport and fitness: Testing fitness machine by using computer is far more efficient than human being. It is because computer could provide the most accurate and most reliable information about the particular machine in just a second of time. By using the internet, we would be able to compare different machines all over the world and supply the most suitable machines for customers.
• ICT in sport could be also used as an investigation tool to evaluate the physical capacities of the athletics. It could be used as a recording to record athletics’ program training in short, medium and long period and also their performance during the practice. By doing the recording, they would know their weakness and try to improve for the next training.
• Wii and Xbox: Nowadays, even some video games consoles such as Wii and Xbox has provided some sports games such as yoga, aerobic, tennis, rolling boat and etc. On top of that, these games even added a webcam in order to give the player an opportunity to adjust their posture in a proper way. These video games consoles provide consumers a digital instructor and also make the sports funnier. Players can enjoy their favourite sports wherever has provided these video games consoles.

In a nutshell: 

ICT supports learner in their efforts to acquire skills in different sports branches. Thus it will be possible:

1. To increase the capacity of selecting and applying the acquired skills, tactics, solutions and choreography ideas;
2. To diversify subjects’ roles and responsibilities in physical education, sports and corporal expression activities.

http://bscw.ssai.valahia.ro/pub/nj_bscw.cgi/d257219/Paper10_V_Grigore_82_86.pdf

The usage of ICT in different contexts: 4th entry

4^th entry

ICT v.s. e-finance

Despite of the impact on social community, education, and human lifestyle, ICT has also shown massive influences for the financial sector and economic growth. By using ICT for business used, it helps to reduce the cost of the products and cover other expenses, provide a higher technology of advertisements, offer a more efficiency communication between buyers and sellers, gives more opportunities to introduce their goods all around the worlds, and easier payment methods for buyers. Furthermore, e-finance has also provided some services such as internet banking, insurance, registration, and other related services via internet or public networks. Anybody could access these e-financial services anytime as long as they are able to connecting to the internet via wifi, broadband, 3G or modem. 

Nowadays, many people using social network such as facebook or eBay to do business. They create a web-page and post picture of their goods to attract others and to promote themselves. All of the transactions from ordering to fulfill the payment will be done via internet. This kind of internet transaction has raised the desire of the consumers and leads the marketing into another stage as I called it e-stage. 

According to Allen et al. (2001), by the end of the 1990s, e-finance technologies had affected all aspects of business of banking and financial intermediation. Depository institutions have been using electronic information technologies, for example, to make credit decisions to consumers since 1980s. As a matter of fact, there is a substantial evidence to suggest that financial institutions in developed and emerging markets embrace e-banking. 

http://st.free-lance.ru/users/Sergserge/upload/f_494a46711c72e.pdf

Consistent with the statement above, it showed that e-finance technologies had been used since the end of the 1990s. I believe that the e-finance technologies will show more impact on social community in the future because of the high speed of technology, convenience used of internet, and the ICT that have been widely used by human beings nowadays.

The usage of ICT in different contexts: 3rd entry

3^rd entry

ICT v.s. social community

According to the excellent pace of new technology, ICT has shown its great impact on human society and the social community. In the social community, ICT not only used for personal usage such as sending email or paying the electronic bill but also used by corporation and even by the government. Below are some examples on how ICT used globally:

1)      Communication: By using the internet, human beings could be able to contact with their relatives, peers, and business partners all over the world without limited by the geographical factor. Internet provides the high speed data to allow people to discuss, searching information, and complete transactions. There are numerous social networks such as Facebook, MSN, and Skype that allow people to interact with family members or old school mates and most of the time these devices give us an opportunity to minimize the distances between each other. 

2)      Transaction: Nowadays, people could pay their electronic or phone bill via internet. Unlike the past, we had to apply leave and go all the way to post office just to pay the bill; now we could pay it through internet. On top of that, we could request to send the e-bill to our email address instead of receiving paper letter from the particular department. This could reduce the waste of paper and decrease the green house effect that is harness to our Earth. 

3)      Tourism: We could now book the bus/airline ticket, hotel, renting a car, find a travel agency via internet. Furthermore, we could also find the information of the cities or countries we would like to visit such as attracting places to visit in the particular country, amazing food that we have to try or some scenery we could not miss. These make our travel more pleasant and more convenient.

4)      Renting/buying a house: Searching information for houses via internet before going to the inspection could make people feel more convenience and confidence. People could search the site that containing pictures of the inner or outer side of the houses, buildings and the transportation that surrounded the area. We could then go for inspection for the houses we desire instead of inspect the houses one by one. 

5)      Library: Even the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) have provided the public access to do the research, gaining more knowledge in order to help country to improved social and economic outcomes. 

Trust in the use of ICT is built in public libraries with their clear internet usage policies, staff skills in training and technical support, and perception of being a 'safe' environment physically and virtually. At the organisational level there are physical and ICT resources, information resources, ICT expertise, recognised community services, and sustainability of people and technical resources.

http://www.alia.org.au/advocacy/submissions/ict.community.role.html

The paragraph above clearly stated the environment on how the ICT built in public libraries and how the libraries provide the resources for the public.

PPLE 3rd post

PPLE 3^rd Post

After listened to your story about the class revolt, my first thought was “it is not easy to be a good teacher as we couldn’t fulfil every student’s needs.” We have to be very flexible and tolerate every situation no matter the outcome is good or bad. If I really try my best to prepare and to lead students to the positive pathway but end up with “I was just not their type”, I think I will be very upset and frustrated in the beginning. However, I will try to think about my teaching method and also try to discuss with my peers to exchange ideas on how could I deal with these kinds of students. 

I believe that students are forming attachments to familiar leaders. If their leader has changed to a new teacher, some of them might feel uncomfortable and will always try to disrupt classroom order and interrupting teacher teaching. Students will feel more comfortable with the leaders they familiar with because they have already get used to the way how they used to be taught and also the pace of learning. On top of that, both leaders and students have already known each other’s behaviour and characteristic and they will feel easier to deal with any situations compare to the new leader. When the new teacher get in charge of the new classroom, they will feel awkward and hardly to gain understanding between each others in the beginning, however, I believe that time will change one’s thought. When they get along longer, they will build up more on trusting, supporting, encouraging and positive recognition. 

In my point of views, I think that the difference you have made between “freedom to do thing” and “freedom from all sorts of control” is quite useful. If we gave students freedom from all sorts of control, as a teacher, we will definitely hard to maintain classroom order. In this case, students will not listen to what we teach and choose not to come to the classroom. Not all the young teenagers will realize the importance of gaining knowledge. Most of them come to school because they have to instead of they want to. If we still giving them freedom from all sorts of control, I believe that those young teenagers who are not engaging to the classroom will definitely choose to do whatever they like to do instead of learning. The consequences of this will lead those students to the pathway of criminal as nobody could teach them what the differences between right and wrong are. 

I have chosen to read the article about “Lee and Marlene Canter: Discipline” for this week. I found that this article is very useful for me in my future and I think that it is very interesting and easily to understand as it is closer to real life experiences instead of lots of academic theories.  It teaches me about the student rights and the teacher rights. On top of that, it also clarified different teaching methods and the results of each of them. It suggested assertive discipline is the most popular among all of the other teaching methods. Furthermore, it gave some examples on setting the rules for students in the beginning of the semester and has to make sure all of the students understand all of the rules. By setting the rules could help the students know what they could and could not do during the lesson. 

Now is the end of Module C and Module D is coming soon. I am getting used to the system of UC and also have already figured out what is going on for this course. In the very beginning of the course, I admit that I was very frustrated, nervous and everything seems very confusing to me because UC system is totally different from what I used to know. Because I was a music student when I was in my degree and what I needed to do is to practice hard instead of study hard. However, I was almost “faint” (exaggerated) when I realized that I have to study hard and also lots of writing tasks for me to do within three months! Luckily I am quite well-organized for my work and I managed to plan my study timetable in order to finish them on time (hopefully) and get a chance to look back what I have already done before summit it. And now I am getting used to this life as I found that I am very happy to have a chance to learn something new other than just piano! Hopefully I would be able to merge my new knowledge and my piano skill and pass it to the next generation! In terms of my language development, actually English is my third language. I learnt it when I was in my high school. However, I didn’t put much effort on it as during that time I didn’t realize the importance of learning English and also my high school just provided 5 hours English classes per week. I started to focus on learning English when I realized that I had to master English in order to come to Australia for further studies and studied overseas was my dream when I was young. Hence, I was working very hard in order to improve my English skill. When I first arrived Australia, I seldom communicate with other people due to lack of confidence and always thought that I am not good enough to communicate. It was my family and my boyfriend who lead me out of that situation. They kept encouraged and supported me. Now is my fourth years in Australia and I believed that my English skill has improved compare to my first year. I will continue to learn and to speak and my philosophy of learning attitude is that tomorrow I have to do better than today. 

p/s: sorry I wrote too long… hope you don’t mind.

The usage of ICT in different contexts: 2nd entry

2^nd entry

ICT v.s. Pedagogy

ICT, which stands for information and communications technology. Due to the evolution of web 2.0, most teachers have introduced ICT in their classroom and hopefully their students would share their thoughts and exchange academic ideas with their peers by using blogger, wikispace or any other online tools.  Other than that, teachers also provide opportunity for students to access internet to collect data and information for their specific subject. In order to introduce ICT to the classroom and helping students to possess this new technology, teachers have to lead them step by step and give a brief description of their perspective on how and what could their students do when using internet.  By giving the depiction, it could reduce the chance of misleading to some sexual or violent webpage that are harmful to young children. On top of that, the benefit for teachers introduce ICT to their students is helping them to lay on their foundation base and hopefully via ICT could help them to get used to the new technology and gaining knowledge with the specific technique that request by their jobs in the future. The list below is the example which shows the most successful pedagogical practices in science from the selected countries:

Examples of most-satisfying pedagogical practices in science from countries participating in the international option.

Using ICT in teaching and learning about the digestive system. Students had to study diseases in the digestive system. They searched a variety of resources and did a survey among people in the community. They presented their finding via a website and produced a leaflet using PowerPoint.                                                                                                                   Science, Thailand

“Look into the past from the school laboratory” was an integrated project that combined history, chemistry and literature. Students used digital video cameras as well as the internet to collect data. As a result the motivation (interest) to study these subjects has increased.                                                                                                                   Science, Moscow, Russian Federation

With the use of “Crocodile” software it is possible to demonstrate chemical reactions using various substances which are not used during lessons or which are not available. We aim at solidifying the pupil’s knowledge about chemical ware and tools, metals and non-metals, changes in chemical reaction, etc.                                                                                            Science, Lithuania

A research project on climate change was carried out as a synthesis of the themes concerning atmosphere, hydrosphere, and the planet Earth. Students were organized in cooperative working groups to search and use internet data. Word processing and multimedia have been used.                                                                                                                     Science, Catalonia, Spain

Sex education project in science. Students searched for information on the internet about the consequences of sexual intercourse [and] made graphs with Excel about the probability of getting venereal diseases in genetics.                                                                                                                                                                                                          Science, Italy

The learners were asked to do research from the library or an internet café about the population of the country. The response was overwhelming. Learners did the research although some did not have money to use the internet café.                                                                                                                                                                                                       Science, South Africa

We participated in an environmental project “Baltic week”, which linked 7 countries around the Baltic sea. We used spreadsheets to gather and process data.                                                                                                                    Science, Estonia

Project work in science on diseases. The pupils used the internet to gather information, used PowerPoint for presentation, and word processing and digital photos for their written presentation.                                                                                                                    Science, Norway

Simulation software was used to show the diurnal motion of the sun and the stars on the screen in the class. It was more effective than showing still images.                                                                                                                      Science, Japan

Students prepared a project on a chosen topic (e.g., weather, air, a well-known physicist), they used internet to search for information and a text editor for writing the project.                                                                                                                      Science, Slovenia

Nancy Law, Willem J. Pelgrum, Tjeerd Plomp(2006), Pedagogy and ICT Use in Schools Around the World, Pg 228

http://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=urCHH10HK_0C&oi=fnd&pg=PR17&dq=ict+and+pedagogy&ots=m7NDRK7Esj&sig=jMQY3e6Mrnu_2rtXc3suMyn_ZSs#v=onepage&q&f=false

Comments 1

Dear Phil,

Hi, I have commented on Zach and Ty's post. Thanks.

Winnie