achievements

3. Describe which achievements of the 3 Masterplans for ICT in education are evident in the school you are attached to for your ESE

The LMS in Cedar is quite well-established as a platform for information dissemination and lesson review, effectively extending the space of the classroom from school to home. Teachers also leverage on it in their classroom teaching to make lessons more interactive, for example by asking students to post their answers on the LMS and have it peer-edited during lessons. By allowing students to work first on their respective “virtual spaces” then that of their friends’, LMS allows them to make connections between their own learning and their friends’. It opens up spaces for communication and multi-directional collaborative learning, without the logistical hassle that usually ensues in a physical “gallery walk”.

I would say then that there are signs of ICT integrated into the curriculum, and also signs of students using ICT to develop their personal learning and interaction with others. However, this collaborative learning is always mediated by a machine, carried out via technology instead of allowing for more human-to-human interaction. In fact, the more we stress on using ICT as a tool to “enhance learning”, the more we make the machine a part of the human, and the less we allow the human-ness of the human to develop. Though a virtual “gallery walk” would expedite the feedback-gathering process and lessen the amount of disturbance in the class, it takes away the chance for students to debate on and defend their points in spontaneous, face-to-face situations, channels communication and expression along electronic paths, and most of all, lessens the amount of material, physical connection they have with each other. The students may gain head knowledge but they lose out on developing social skills, on learning to relate to another fellow human, and on learning how to speak, write and express themselves without relying on a keyboard on which they can type out their words.