iCTLT '10 Conference Day 1 - The Excitement Begins...

Hi all,

Today marks the first day of the iCTLT conference. First we had a keynote session by David Warlick. Check out his sharing and handouts here.

Keynote by David Warlick

The main message he put across during his keynote session can be summarized in three points

1. We are teaching a new generation of learners,
2. living in a new information environment.
3. We are preparing them for an unpredictable future.

He mentioned that it is sad that while our pupils are 21st century citizens, yet they are stepping into a 19th century classroom everyday. We, as educators, have the responsibility to teach them how to teach themselves. We should not teach literacy but teach literacy habits. We should build in a learning lifestyle. Therefore, we should be master learners.

What does it mean to be literate in this day and aged? It means to:

• Read to expose what is true
• Express ideas compellingly
• Employ the right information

We really need to look at the way we teach our pupils in this day and age. What worked for us cannot work for them anymore.

Spotlight Session

I went for several concurrent sessions after that. The first was a spotlight session on Web 2.0. What is exciting is the fact that the speaker is compiling a list of Web 2.0 projects. I'll publish the URL of his e-book as soon as it is ready. Look out for it!!

Private Tutor for learning Maths for Foundation Pupils

myHomeTutor Maths CD was used to improve the grades of Foundation pupils. This was interesting and it can be something we can do for our Foundation pupils.

IPW (Huamin Pri)

Huamin Primary has their own IPW programme which cuts across all subjects. Each level would have its own theme and at the end of the project, there would be an end-product which they would showcase during their IT and Innovation Carnival. End-product would be something they create with ICT (e.g. animation, powerpoint, word document, etc) Different subject teachers would grade the relevant parts of the project.

The project would span 1 term where there would be 4 weeks of teaching the content and application. The next 4 weeks would be done on their own time after school. Pupils would be allowed to go into the labs after school to complete the work on their own. This promotes self-directed learning and for them to collaborate on their own.

Game for Grammar

Programme was done 1 hour each week for 6 weeks. Pupils used a literature text as the context of their game. The text gave them the story behind the game while they had to come up with the grammar questions on their own using grammar guidebooks and their textbook.

Game was created using Game Maker which is a freeware. According to the presenter, the software was quite easy to learn as they used only 2 sessions to teach it.

Pupils were very excited creating the game and it made learning grammar that much more interesting.



Had a great first day learning from the presenters as well as from the other delegates. Looking forward to Day 2!!