Reflection on Class Survey

In the past, when we were the primary and secondary school students, computer technology is not common to be used in personal purpose, learning purpose as well as teaching purpose. In the classroom, the teachers mainly used textbook and blackboard to teach. In recent years, there are more and more people using computer. For personal purpose, people use internet to handle their financial issue through e-banking, purchase daily products through e-bay and search for the information that they need through some searching engines like yahoo or google web. In addition, many experts have also advocated that the use of technology in teaching practice can greatly enhance the learning and teaching efficiency.

In the course (EDUC7102), we have done the class survey about “The Experience with technology”. There are over 60 classmates from this year and last year doing this survey and we come from different background (different school, different subject and so forth). Even though we are quiet different, our answers are somehow very similar.

For the question “In what ways you use technology for your personal purpose?” The majority of us give the answer that we use the computer for communication purpose (email, facebook), entertainment purpose (computer game) or searching information purpose. The result shows that most of us are used to using technology to deal with our personal issue.

How about using technology in context of our own teaching, the common answer in the survey is that we used MS PowerPoint slides to do the presentation, MS word to make notes or test and searching information to prepare for the teaching materials (e.g. video, news article) and so forth. The interesting result is that most of us are using technology to prepare the lesson and the interaction of using technology between teachers and students is limited. For instance, when the teacher uses technology (MS Word) to make the notes, the students just receive and read it without any interaction. I believe that one of the greatest advantages of using technology in school is that students can actively involve in the learning process rather than passively receiving the message and getting the knowledge from the teachers. It is no doubt that the teaching efficiency can be greatly enhanced when teachers use technology to prepare the teaching materials, but it is the same important to think how can we take students to involve in the whole teaching and learning process. In the survey, some classmates have very good suggestions like “asking students to contribute to blogs and share their ideas or collected information” or “set up webpages for students to work”.

In New Senior Secondary Curriculum, Liberal study is a core subject that all senior secondary school must take. This subject is very different from the traditional subject, students are required to search newspaper article and a lot of information around the world. Therefore, the school and teachers must prepare to make good use of technology, so that the students can learn better and better.