School Name: Raffles Institution
Class: Sec 2 ICT lesson (2001)
Specific Observations
For this one hour long lesson, our class (Special stream) were to be instructed to create a mini animated presentation using two programs, namely Macromedia Flash and Fireworks. Despite being generally good in terms of academics, our abilities were rather divided when it came to IT proficiency. During the previous lessons when the class was taught the basics of using the programs, some including myself did struggle with even the simpler animation tasks.
The ICT lesson was conducted in the computer lab equipped with 4 rows of desktops arranged perpendicularly to the teacher’s projector screen. For this module, the learning outcome was to learn how to incorporate better visuals and animations into PowerPoint presentations and webpages used for project work.
During the lesson, we were given a theme to do our animations on. For those who were more IT-savvy, they could finish the task in the session itself. However, for many of us who did not hone our skills well enough during the previous lessons, we had to consult our friends every now and then. Looking back, it would be more ideal if the ICT lesson had two supervising teachers for more effective coaching. Back then, our sole teacher-in-charge had to handle the countless questions from the inquisitive class of thirty odd students. That resulted long waiting times, in turn leading either to the students’ task coming to a standstill or students surfing the internet randomly to idle their time away.
At the end of it all, most of us finished the module equipped with the fundamental skills of using Macromedia Flash and Fireworks. The classroom sharing of the animated presentations also gave everyone an eye-opener to some creative works that were done up so impressively and professionally. Currently these two programs have come under Adobe, which we are all familiar with. I am sure some of my passionate IT friends who continue to use these programs till now have become experts in web design.
General Observations
In the school, the main subjects that teachers had used ICT for teaching were science and humanities. We were often shown videos in class depicting science experiment demonstrations, Singapore history or geographical phenomena. These never failed to refresh our attention whenever it had been expended by the numerous transparencies and PowerPoint slides.
The compulsory ICT lessons were something that we all looked forward to every week, as every session was never boring. To us (Secondary 2 students) back then, there seemed to be endless possibilities to what we can do with the computer, only limited by how much the teacher could teach and how fast we could pick up.
