Session 4 of ICT

I enjoyed this session of ICT very much as we had the opportunity of listening to two teachers share their experience of and expertise in using game-based teaching and information technology in education. I found the game-based talk by Mr. Daryl Koh especially interesting as I have to admit that I'm not very technically up-to-date myself so it was wonderful that I could learn about this new-fangled device called the Wii, which I had never encountered before.

It's great that more and more schools are keeping in tandem with technological advances that science is churning out everyday as society advances, as evidenced by the fact that now even classrooms are equipped with Wii devices to help students in their learning of different subjects. Game-based learning is indeed an area which deserves to be explored in greater depth and detail as to how it can help our students in the learning process and incite students' interest in what might appear as boring topics to them. It opens a whole new world of exploration and discovery to both the student and the teacher and gives the student a much more multifarious and varied way of learning about science subjects like chemistry and biology for example. No longer are lessons limited to the classroom and the traditional expounding of textbook concepts, now the lesson can actually come alive through say, a colourful 3-D rendering of the topic being taught. Arousing and engaging the students' kinaesthetic and sensory perceptions is a surefire way of getting students to pay attention in class and research has shown that such methods greatly aid in recall and recollection of subject matter. Pupils will also have a more solid understanding of the subject and be able to grasp concepts more effectively when it is presented interactively and through the use of motion and colour.

However, it remains to be seen whether such novel methods can be applied to the teaching of non-science subjects like mathematics and languages. For example, having a solid grasp of mathematics requires that a person spend much time doing repeated sets of mathematical exercises and practising his use of mathematical concepts on different problems. This entails hard and solid work on the part of the student and I don't know of any game-based programme that can substitute for that. The most appropriate approach would probably be to combine the best elements of both the traditional teaching method with the interactive nature of game-based learning to create a synergistic learning environment in which students would get to enjoy the use of both tools to aid their learning, each complementing the other's strengths and mitigating the other's weaknesses.