Pre-session Blog Entry 3

From my Enhanced School Experience at Pioneer Junior College (PJC), several achievements of the three MOE-developed Masterplans for ICT in education are evident. The first and probably the most important one is the widespread acceptance by teachers of ICT as a pedagogical tool in the classroom and also their comfort in using ICT tools and resources to support classroom teaching. PJC teachers generally perceive the use of ICT tools as an indispensable component of their classroom teaching and are in fact excited about the various possibilities that the arise from integrating ICT in education. This can be seen in the effort by many PJC teachers to make use of non-traditional presentation formats (e.g. prezi) together with easily digestible resources like short video clips to enhance students’ interest in the lessons.

The second achievement is the highly impressive physical and ICT infrastructure for ICT-based teaching and learning in PJC, which is crucial in ensuring the successful implementation of the three Masterplans. This could be seen in the smooth and easy access by teachers to MOE’s Intranet and the Internet, which facilitates teachers’ use of Internet resources (e.g. online videos) to conduct their lessons. In addition, teachers can easily make use of the well-equipped computer labs as alternative venues for their classroom teaching as part of their effort to inject some creativity into their lessons. The key point is that the school is able to provide the necessary technological infrastructure for the teachers to integrate the use of ICT tools into education, which in itself showcases the concrete success of the first two Masterplans.

Finally, the successful implementation of the Masterplans can be seen in the increasing use of ICT by students as well. Although the traditional teacher-student consultation sessions continue to be the norm at PJC, students are increasingly willing to seek answers to their queries via emails and online discussion forums. Since teachers may not always have the time to meet the students to address academic queries, such ICT tools allow the teachers to flexibly and effectively handle these queries and perhaps even help more students than what is possible under the conventional consultation system. As such, meeting the targets of Masterplan 3 would hopefully further encourage and entrench the use of ICT in facilitating greater communication between teachers and students.