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Student-Oriented Content Creation for Science
by Yip Chi Kiong
29 Jun 2003
Introduction
The teaching of Science as a subject to arts-oriented students in this school has been an arduous task, as the students are not oriented towards the scientific way of thinking. To these students, the study of Science is irrelevant, and they have difficulty in grasping many of the easiest concepts of this discpline.
The equipment for the conduct of experiments are out-moded, and it is difficult to maintain a set of working apparatus, both in terms of cost and availability. The choice of experiments in the textbooks have often been trivial, or difficult to perform to satifaction.
Many attempts have been made to introduce ICT content to replace or supplement the teaching of Science. They have often been unsuccessful because they are media-oriented, teacher-oriented, or producer-oriented. The lessons created on Compact Disks and Video Compact Disks have often been unresponsive, trivial, or simply does not catch the attention of the students.
Today, attempts to teach computer knowledge to students have been met with lackadaisical acceptance. Such attempts have met with declining membership and class attendance.This is largely due the the user-friendly interfaces of today's powerful Windows Desktop Applications, where the students do not feel a need to attend a course to learn.
However, the students show a keen interest in the use of computers. We can combine this interest in ICT with the study of science, in such a manner that they use a media that they are interested in using, yet the content that they use will coerce them towards the learning of science.
We need a new approach to the appropriate use of technology, combined with the innate creativity within the students' mind and soul, towards the teaching and learning of science.
In this paper, we present the Student-Oriented Content Creation (SOCC) Method of teaching Science in SMJK Chan Wa, Seremban, Malaysia.
Objectives
•Encourage students to create their own study content
•Encourage the active participation of students in the use of ICT to study Science
•Elicit the creative thinking of students in content creation
•Utilize the ICT resources for the teaching and learning of Science
•Students create content that appeals to them, where they can derive their own enjoyment and pleasure
•Learning of Science should be fun and exciting
Strategies
•There are Five periods allocated for Science, one of which is a single period. This single period will be conducted in the Computer Room.
•Students will use the computers to create notes for selected topics. The content can be obtained from various sources, such as
•scanning textbooks, photographs, magazines, newspapers and revision books
•typing in content by hand
•browsing the Internet
•digital camera
•Video Camera (if available)
•Students are taught the use of the necessary software for content creation, such as
•Tables creation
•Spreadsheet, Graph and Chart creation (OpenOffice and MS Office)
•Paint programs
•Vector graphics packages
•Photographic enhancements packages(Ulead PhotoExpress)
•Animation packages(Animation Shop)
•Video production packages
•Internet Applets
•Internet Graphics and Animation
•Students create content in the form of text, graphics, animation and video
•Students who create the best content will be awarded, such as free Internet Access.
Logistics
•The Computer Room is fully utilized in this project.
•As a Pilot Project, 4 Jujur and 4 Setia are chosen to participate in this project for this year.
•Each student join the Computer Club with a half-annual fee of RM5.
•A network is set up to link all the computers.
•A Web Server is installed to form the backbone of the School Intranet System
•An Internet link is available to obtain Internet content
•All available computers are used
•Two scanners are available for scanning text and graphics
•A Printer is available for printing
•A Digital Camera is used to snap pictures of scientific interest.
Foreseeable Problems
•We DO NOT have sufficient computers to conduct this project fully.
•We have 12 computers available to the students.
•Two more computers can be added by replacing TWO faulty hard disks, making 14 computers.
•The current computer room necessitates the sharing of each computer by THREE students, for a class of 40 students.
•The students have to be divided into groups of THREE each.
•Some of the mouse pointers are not working
Conclusions
We can start this project as a pilot project in July 2003. Hopefully the school will approve the replacement of 2 hard disks and 5 mouse pointers.
Mailto : smjkchanwa@po.jaring.my
Officially Launched on April 1999
Last Updated
05/30/05