Genesis

Hi all! This entry marks the beginning of our group assignment ICT for Meaningful Learning. So far, from the little discussions we have had in class, we have made certain agreements to certain aspects of the assignment.


Firstly, we have decided that since we are all passionate about the subject History, we will be preparing a lesson based on the secondary school History syllabus as stipulated by the MOE. We have also decided to narrow it down to the topic World War II and its impact on Singapore, in particular the political, social and economic impact of the Japanese Occupation on Singapore, under Unit 9 The Turbulent Years. This is a Secondary 2 Special/Express History topic as reflected in MOE's Lower Secondary History Syllabus.


Secondly, based on a recent trip to the National Museum as part of our Singapore History module in NIE, we realised potentially useful materials that the place could provide for the learning and teaching of Singapore History to students. Some of us have thus proposed the possibility of tapping on this opportunity for the purpose of our group assignment. Preliminary activities on lesson planning that incorporates meaningful use of ICT had us suggesting taking students on a fieldtrip to the National Museum. The ICT tool incorporated is the Companion provided by the National Museum. This tool acts as a personal tour guide explaining and giving details to all the exhitions presented in the museum. While this is a good starting point, more on it will have to be developed later for a more useful and concrete history lesson.


I think we have a good foundation laid down for this assignment. For our next meeting, please try to develop this idea into many different possibilites individually. We will share what we have and try to put them together into a cohesive lesson idea. When brainstorming individually, please bear some of these crucial pointers in mind:

- does it comply to the standards of meaningful learning as suggested in one of our previous sessions?
- does it involve self-directed and/or collaborative learning?
- what are the pedagogical approaches?


Please do take time to think about these carefully so that we could have a good round of discussion the next time we meet. Meanwhile, please post your ideas and suggestions here so that each of us is able to read and get a geist of your respective proposals for a speedy and effective collaboration next meeting. Till next time!