Sokyee’s Weblog

Here are my thoughts after viewing the sample critique slides:

• Slide 1: The main strengths in this slide are the colour scheme used, which effects harmony, as well as the large font size used. In addition, the slide is easy to read and understand, because firstly, the lettering has been contrasted with the background by the use of dark colours, thus making the words easy to see and read, and there is less than 8 lines of text. I also like the fact that narration and audio have been incorporated into this slide, and they are clear, pleasant and easy to understand.

However, improvements could be made to the layout of the slide, for there is a lack of balance in the organization of the graphic and text elements. Also, I feel that the instruction ”Click on the buttons to learn more” should be at the top of the slide, instead of being the last line which may be very confusing to the students. The audio elements used should be the same as well. Furthermore, there are more than 2 types of lettering styles used (Adept, Tempus Sans ITC and Times New Roman), which can be very distracting to the students.

• Slide 2: The strengths in this slide are the use of photgraphs to introduce the two types of frogs as students might not have seen these species before. The lettering size is also large enough for good visibility. There is a good balance in the layout of the slide as well.

However, though photographs have been used, they could be made bigger so that they are more visible to the students. Also, this slide is too cluttered with words, for there are more than 8 lines of text; this makes the slide difficult to read and understand. Furthermore, the transitional effect is too distracting; the sound effect is heard for each word of the text and it can be quite annoying.

• Slide 3: The strengths of this slide are the use of a flowchart to simplify the life cycle of a frog, which can be easily understood. However, I feel that too many directional arrows have been sued which can be quite distracting. Also, upper case lettering is being used in the instructional text and this can slow down the students’ reading speed considerably as well.

• Slide 4: The strengths in this slide are that only 2 lettering styles are used (Arial and Arial Black), the large lettering size and colour, and less than 8 lines of text.

However, the layout of the slide is imbalanced, and there is excessive use of the text animations which can divert the students’ attention. Also, there is picture (of a frog sticking out its tongue) at the bottom left corner which is too distracting. The spacing between the lines is also too close.

• Slide 5: The strengths in this slide are the layout of the slide, which is informally balanced, making the slide interesting and dynamice. Also, there is again an excellent use of only 2 lettering styles, lettering size and colour.

However, this slide is too cluttered with words, since there are more than 8 lines of text. This is further aggravated by the close spacing between the text, which makes it even more difficult to see and read the text. Also, this slide is inconsistent with the other slides in that the graphic elements (for “forward”, “home” and ”back”) are placed at the top of the slide instead of at the bottom right corner.

• Slide 6: The strengths in this slide are the use of only 2 types of lettering styles, lettering size and colour.  However, again, this slide is too cluttered with words in that there are more than 8 lines of text, and the spacing between the lines is too close. There is also a lack of balance in the layout of this slide.

Overall, this sample critique slide has its strengths such as the good use of lettering styles, size and colour, colour scheme, narration and sound effects, however, there is definitely room for improvement. Since IT-based presentations are becoming increasingly common in todays’ classrooms, it is imperative that teachers master the principles of creating an effective IT presentation for effective teaching.

a. Do you think the classroom environment chosen is appropriate for the learning activities? Explain why.

The classroom environment was appropriate because of the following points:

• as the activity required a demonstration by the teacher, the classroom was well-equipped with the necessary IT infrastructure such as visualizer for the demonstration; and
•  the seating arrangement (having the students to sit around the round tables) also facilitated the groupwork required in this lesson.

b. The students seem to be focused and on task. What strategies do you think the teacher has used to achieve this outcome?

 The teacher has used the following strategies:

• allowing the students to have hands-on activity, thus making it easier to engage the students;
• each student within each group was assigned a different role, hence getting everyone to be involved, and making each student feel ‘important’;
• giving a clear demonstration of how to set up the datalogger system and making sure the students are paying attention so that the students can follow;
• giving clear instructions to the students so that they know what they are supposed to do, such as setting up datalogger or discussing or collecting data, at different times of the activity; and
• breaking down the activity into smaller and more manageable parts so that the students will not feel daunted or overwhelmed by the whole lesson. 

c. What potential classroom management issues can possibly occur? What proposed solution(s) do you have?

Some issues could include:

• group discussions might get out of control, because the students might be too excited and all will be fighting to speak at the same time; and
• students are too fascinated with the datalogger system to pay attention to what the teacher is talking about.

I propose the following solutions:

• having the teacher going around to monitor the students’ discussions. This will not only help the teacher to control the noise level, but also to get an idea of the quality of the discussion, and to clarify any misconceptions or questions from the students;
• assigning a student in each group with the role of “noise-controller”, to control the noise level; and
• not starting with any instructions or discussions until the whole class is paying attention to the teacher, for example, all eyes on the teacher.

Here are my thoughts after watching the video (story 5 – Experiment Away):

• Teacher roles (score 9) – It is very obvious that in this story, the teacher was acting as a facilitator, allowing his students to explore on their own. For instance, the students were allowed to make their own discussion, form their own answers and set up their own datalogger. In addition, the teacher was also moving around the groups, thus providing him with the opportunity to check for the students’ prior knowledge (for example, starting the activity by asking students which material will be the best insulator) and their understanding of what is going on in each step of the activity.

The teacher also asked open-ended questions, and different views from the students were also encouraged. However, I feel that the teacher can do more to create a more student-centered learning environment. For instance, instead of just conducting a quick class discussionat the end of the activity, more time could be given to allow the students to form their own class discussion. For example, students could be asked to present their data, any results or observations they found puzzling or even any problems encountered. This is more enriching because through presentation and reflection by the students, they can put together their self-generated meanings and hence construct a shared meaning. 

• Student roles (score 10) – This lesson is indeed a student-centered activity, for students were given the opportunity to interact with each other, have hands-on experience as well as form their own understanding. Students were working in groups and many opportunites were given to them for discussions. Furthermore, each student was given a different role within the role so that they can take on different responsibility and hence, develop their own competence.

• Curriculum characteristics (score 2) – This is because the teacher was giving a step-by-step demonstration of how to set up the datalogger. Though the teacher tried to ask thinking questions such as “What do the four zeroes on the LCD represent?”, the skills were still being sequentially taught.

• Learning goals (score 9) – As evident from the video, there were different learning milestones throughout the whole activity, such as predicting the best insulator and setting up the datalogger. All these allow the teacher to ascertain students’ understanding.  

• Types of activities (score 8 ) – Students were allowed to have hands-on work, which gives them the freedom to explore and construct their own understanding, though some time was spent on demonstrating and explaining how to set up the datalogger. 

• Assessment strategies (score 1) -  I suppose the only assessment for this activity is the investigative worksheet if the students are required to submit. However, the assessment strategy was skewed towards teacher-centered because how the students would fill in their answers for the observations questions was based on the merged graph provided by the teacher. Though the merged graph did come from three different groups of students, it would be better if each group could merge their own graphs, analyze it, and then draw their conclusions, all using their own data. In this way, a better assessment could be made on the students’ learning and understanding, for instance, assessments could also be done on the quality of the data and merged graph, hence showing how well the students have acquired lab and IT skills, in addition to learning the concept of insulation.  

• Use of ICT(score 6) - In this case, the students are learning with the ICT tool (the datalogger system) by using it to test on different materials and collecting their data. However, I feel that more could be done with ICT tools to enhance a student-centered learning. As mentioned earlier, instead of presenting students with only one graph, students could be asked to create their own merged graph using their own data. This would allow students to have a hands-on expeience of generating an anlysis based on their own data, and allowing them the chance to construct their own conceptualizations.  

Overall, I felt that this lesson was planned with the aim of creating a student-centered learning environment in mind. However, some aspects such as curriculum characteristics and types of activities could be further improved to enhance the student-centered learning environment.  

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