Tan Kok Leong

Reflection on Session 8 (Second Life)

2008-09-26T23:59:00.000-07:00

In your course blog, reflect on what you experience with Second Life. Search for a Youtube (or other) video on the educational benefits of Second Life. Watch it, embed it in your blog, critique it.

Having heard so much about it before attending the lesson by Dr Ashley on Second Life. In the first place there was some resistant in me before I experience the Second Life, as I believe we should learn from the hard way. I feel it is a virtual environment for losers to live an unreal life that they can't live in their current one. Was wondering what has it got to do with education? In fact, we should be teaching our future generation to face the real world. Let them experience the real things in school environment in order to be toughen up and ready to contribute to the real world society.

During the session, my group tried to change the looks of our Avatar, and tried moving/flying in the environment, visit some other sites within the Second Life. The 3D images were stunning and awesomely real to us. Everyone was so excited and engaged within the virtual environment.

After the session, I view Second Life with more light, though I still feel most residents of Second Life are attracted within this virtual environment cause they can do wonders in it e.g. like flying and look pretty inside.

In order to engage and inspire the young to learn, traditional education model needs to dress up and talk the language of the next generation. It is only when the education community remain relevant to the learners then we are able to impart knowledge and values into learners.

Though it is still at infancy stage, education researchers are starting to use software like Second Life to experiment game like teaching. So long we are clear on the objective, and keep questioning ourselves on the purpose of using such tools. To me it is just re-package education to the next generation, the principle still remain unchanged, that is to impart knowledge and values.

Youtube Video (Educational uses of Second Life):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOFU9oUF2HA

(QED522, 27th Sept) Reflection on Session 5

2008-09-26T23:05:00.000-07:00

What were the games that you played?
Station 1 - "Dafur is dying" and"McDonald's game"
Station 2 - "Trauma Center"
Station 3 - "Energy Hog" and "Edheads- Simple Machines"
Station 4 - Wii Sports and Fit

What forms of learning might they promote?
"Dafur is dying", is trying to promote the awareness of the people in Dafur region of western Sudan, where genocide is occurring. Each day, civilians face prospects of mass killings, torture, rape and other human rights abuses.
"McDonald's game", is trying to highlight for industries to exist harmoniously with the society and its natural environment; it should maintain a balance throughout its supply chain. In this case from McDonald, its agricultural production to its business management.
"Trauma Center", is trying to promote gamer's hand-eye coordination, team work spirit, decision making. From the game, players learned some medical conditions and procedures to treat the problem. Under stressful condition, where time limitation due to patient's critical condition, players need to complete the task at each stage in the shortest time to correct the situation together.
"Energy Hog", is trying to promote energy-saving habit. Gamers will try to identify which of the item in different area of the house that is taking up the most energy. With this hopefully, gamers will cultivate good habits and do likewise at home, in return reduce wastage in energy to protect our natural environment.
"Edheads- Simple Machines", is trying to promote Physical Science knowledge when gamers going through different settings to identify simple machines in each environment.
"Wii Sports and Fit", I played the tennis and boxing games. It is trying to promote hand-eye coordination and team work spirit in the game.

What are some pros and cons of educational gaming?
Pros: It make learning fun and engaging, the learning points embedded in it can be transmitted to gamers so easily and lively.
Cons: If repeating the game just to get higher score, it will lose it purpose. Need to control the timing of each play, just to ensure it reach its educational objective.

How might you incorporate educational gaming in your curriculum?
I would serve this gaming session as a starter of the lesson, just to let the class understand the learning point in the game. Continue with further discussion or task to check whether the learning objective has been met.

(QED522, 26th Sept) Reflection on Session 5-7 Educational Gaming

2008-09-26T02:34:00.000-07:00

Educational Gaming

It is a wonderful experience in MxL studio, where we were exposed to educational gaming.
The message that I get from the experience is that the learning style of current generation children is different. They prefer receive materials, experiment with the materials, then ask question. This is very different compare to the traditional way of loading with information follow by testing.

With this kind of hand-on learning style they actually self discover certain knowledge at they own pace. Unlike traditional learning style, students are supposed to copy and duplicate what their teachers approach during testing.

K: What I already know
Current generation children have difficulty in traditional ways of learning.

W: What I want to learn
To understand more about educational gaming, in order to blend into the new generation learning style. Resulting able to infuse and experiment new teaching methods to better teach the next generation.

L: What I learned this week
Gaming is not necessary a barrier in education. In fact it open up new frontier with advance software tools to attract learning.

Q: What questions I still have
How to put in these new tools into my teaching style.

(QED522, 19th August) Reflection on Session 3, Continue

2008-08-25T01:12:00.000-07:00

Have you come across any of these approaches as a student?
Perhaps I did in tertiary education and some workshops organised by company, but didn't realised until I came into NIE. When going through group works and task in saminar, realised in the end of the session that the whole session seems to make some sense and learning seems to be so easy and natural. But Just done know how the speakers did it, just have a feeling there must be some kind of principle behind the designed tasks.

What is the relationship of these approaches?
They are all student centred engage learning. Through tasks and information research or provided, the teacher is more like a faciliator or guide towards learning.

What roles do the various ICT tools/interactive resources play in these approaches?
The various ICT tools/ interactive resources are used to engage learners, platform to enhance and support the learning. As the learners expectation and intellecture level rise to a new heights, traditional instructional methods no longer able to attract and challenge the thinking of the learners.

(QED522, 19th August) Reflection on Session 3

2008-08-22T02:58:00.000-07:00

In session 3, we were exposed to different types of pedagogical approaches to promote engaged learning from the given MOE website.

Dr Ashley used our prior experience with Wiki, reading materials from various web sites to support our learning, and instruction for session 3 to scaffold our learning.

My demo group 3, consist of Chee Tiong and Rabia, was assigned to look into two of these approaches:

Cognitive Apprenticeship
Goal Based scenario

This was followed by setting up our first wiki site and work on the subsequent group activities assigned:

Comparing ICT tools to MOE's Interactive Resources
Draft ICT lesson idea

We had some group discussion on who and how should we split our task. With our group wiki, we were able to contribute and complete our task at our own time.

K: What I already know
How to use wiki.

W: What I want to learn
Different pedagogical approaches in engaging learning.

L: What I learned this week
What is Cognitive Apprenticeship and Goal-Based Scenario approaches.
How to create my own wiki page.

Q: What questions I still have
Not too sure about other pedagogical approaches beside the two that we research on.

(QED522, 5th August) Reflection on Session 2

2008-08-05T21:14:00.000-07:00

2 session of the QED522, we discuss about concept for Engaging Learning with ICT.
We begin with an activity in groups to share our engage learning experience in school.
Through this the group members share and tap on each other experience and also identify what are the common features, things like types of activity we used, the Teacher's role, and the students' role in such activity. We begin to unfold our prior knowledge of the topic.

We continue further into 2nd group activity to visit a overseas website to map our prior case study on engaging learning in school. Which further show us where are the strength and weakness of our approach.

Lastly, we will be doing 3rd activity individually via a MOE web page on different case studies in engaging learning. This will make us further explore the topic in our own view and to apply what we were exposed.

K: What I already know
Through group activities we can engage learning of the learners, it is a two ways learning mode. Instead of teacher instructing or transferring knowledge.

W: What I want to learn
To find out the approach to engage learning.

L: What I learned this week
Teacher role is to design the boundary, and set students into thinking mode in group. This will create a shared learning environment of each student prior knowledge to affirm what they know.
From broad range of experiences, we narrow down and lead them into the next level of the topics that you like them to learn. As we know that in order to engage every learner in the group to understand the topic, individually have to set into the topic for us to assess the level of learning.

Q: What questions I still have
I am still worry about this approach, cause I feel it really depends on the learning attitude of the students. And also not all subjects can be done this way, some require more teach and drill or instructional. Perhaps, I need to experiment more on it.

(QED522, 29th July) Reflection on Session 1

2008-07-30T01:46:00.000-07:00

Had attended the first lecture on QED522 (ICT), and now publishing my first blog of my life. Dr Ashley given me an insight on how we could make use of modern technology to integrate our lesson. As he pointed out that our target "customers" are "cyber baby", this make me a "cyber dino".

K: Course Requirement and Expectation from the Wiki prior lesson.
W: I would like to learn more about the means of "Technology-Mediated Pedagogies".
L: How to create a personal blog.
Q: A lot a lot more I need to learn from the class.