Singapore: Student Council
A Student Council representative is meeting with the Edtech coaches to discuss setting up a GESS student page on Facebook.
A Student Council representative is meeting with the Edtech coaches to discuss setting up a GESS student page on Facebook.
Whether it’s at lunchtime, in free periods, or whenever there’s a moment to spare: the teachers make good use of the opportunity to ask the Edtech coaches for advice or tips on using digital media in the classroom.
The teacher is getting a year 6 class started with using digital textbooks: ‘So you don’t have to carry so many books around any more!’ Getting everyone through the complicated registration procedure required by the publisher Klett takes ages. But then the pupils are tremendously keen, showing admirable focus as they flick through the book […]
A group of students is doing internet research to create a ‘sway’ on the UK’s political system. It takes them a while to find useful websites and images, but there’s a lot of energetic discussion going on too.
The Edtech coaches are running a mini-workshop for teaching staff on the quiz software Socrative and how it can be used in class.
The students have the task of preparing a presentation on Napoleon. They’re doing research online, but I can see lots of open textbooks too. One student is looking for a diagram like the one in her textbook – finding one, she pastes it into her presentation, commenting: ‘This way I know it’s a good illustration.’
The teacher displays a pre-prepared worksheet, his own creation, on the interactive whiteboard and enters the answers given by the students using a digital pen.
Today’s topic is satire. The students are invited to google to find a definition. Then the teacher shows them an extract from the current edition of the German satirical TV show Neo Magazin Royale on the interactive whiteboard.
We’re taking a tour of the classrooms. A look into several of them reveals students working with laptops, other classes aren’t using IT and some are doing lo- and hi-tech learning at the same time. The impression I get is that the laptops are just another piece of school equipment, alongside the books, pens, paper, […]
Today’s the day my research at the GESS in Singapore gets underway. My first impression is one of calm confidence in the use of digital media. They’re simply part of school life.