Introducing ICT to Year 1 kids

30 minutes before my English lesson with Year 1 kids kick off. Hopefully my lesson goes smoothly as what I have planned. This less than 2 minutes video shows how I prepare my next English lesson at the computer lab.

Reflecting back my 3 months experience teaching via ICT in the school is not something normal for me to do. It takes a lot of time and discipline for me to start this first entry. This is because I have got poor sense of memory, and don’t dare to ask me how I score my history subject during my secondary school. Let me start off by talking about the video above. Pardon me for the quality of the video because I used my Dslr Nokia 6288 (chewah) to record it while waiting my Year 1 kids to come in. For about 3 months, I think I have used the computer lab at the school not more than 6 times. The distance between 1 Cempaka class to computer lab is something that I don’t like to talk about. It takes 15 minutes to bring the kids and settle down before the whole class say ‘Good morning’ to me. The distance is quite far and I wish got bathroom inside the computer lab, so that I can have a hot bathe and feel fresh before I start my lesson.

‘Sir Aaron, today we don’t go to computer lab?’ asked by one of my kids named Thiva. The reason that the kids like to have English class at computer lab I guess is the comfy environment. (ada air-con bah!) If my class were to take place at computer lab, usually that was how I try to integrate my ICT knowledge in the classroom. This is because everything has been properly set up at the computer lab. All you need to do is preparing PowerPoint and turn on the PC. ‘Wah, the picture is soooo beautiful!’ One of the girls shouted. Through PowerPoint presentation used in my English class, I could really captivate my kids’ attention through colourful and big pictures projected on the wall. I could not recall what was the topic that I taught that time, but it was under the theme, world of stories. Kids really like to hear stories. What more you could imagine teaching Year 1 kids, they can out of a sudden come into you and tell their own stories. Oh kids.

In order for me to come out with my lesson with the integration of ICT, I tried my best to apply what I have learnt from the course, Technology in ESL classroom. Software such as photoscape become my ‘helper’. For example, I was using one of the English CD  to be put in my PowerPoint. To do that, I first had to capture the image of stories in the CD, then pasted and edited using Microsoft Office Picture Manager. I had to crop in the way that the story sentences disappeared. The reason is because I have to come out with simplified version of the stories due to the level of my kids’ proficiency. The preparation part consumed lot of my time, and the presentation part was very short. Maybe it is irrelevant to say whether it was worth to prepare or not, but my hope was that the kids would enjoy and appreciate my lesson. That’s matter!

Now I suddenly want to talk about the condition of the PC in computer lab. This is something frustrated to talk about. Poor maintenance. Once I inserted my pen-drive into the desktop, I could hear sound like squeaky mouse. 40 plus trojan viruses ulat-ulats detected (hulamak!) Luckily there is no way virus could penetrate my personal computer. Thanks to Jacky Chan and Lee Chong Wei for flying kick all the viruses. Kapersky always your smartest choice. Waiting my pen-drive to be cleaned up took 5 minutes of my golden time. The problem can be solved if all the computers in the computer lab are formatted and installed with Kapersky Anti-virus. That was one of the reasons I prefer not to use computer lab. You might ask why not in the classroom. By setting up projector in the classroom is possible only at night because there is no curtain in Year 1 classroom. So pupils cannot see clearly as their eyes are small plus the lighting.

By now, you know that I was teaching Year 1 pupils. Oh boy, is all girls! Looking at their cute faces, I could still recall some of their names. I wonder why they showed ‘peace’ sign when I snapped their photos. Who taught them that? Why not ‘nike’ sign? Overall the enrolment of Year 1 kids are 30 pupils. For my past 3 months teaching them, I never got full attendance. There must 3 to 5 girls absent everyday, either they were sick or didn’t finish my homework. They liked to be praised. They liked to go to toilet. Their moods can be changed all the time. I scold them today. They smile at me back tomorrow. They forget things easily. That’s why I need to keep reminding them. Reminiscing the challenges of using ICT in the classroom I guess was the time itself. The challenge surfaced was good to mould and exercise my passion. Of course there are many persons I would like to thank and grateful with, but one particular person now I want to thank is Mr. Raj (not Arvind Raj). He was my mentor and I could say he was very resourceful person. Through his guidance and comment, I can stand still to teach Year 1 kids.