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Ministry’s online learning portal for students to be ready by 2016

SINGAPORE — At Innova Junior College, complex physics concepts are sometimes taught by showing students YouTube videos of the theory in action.

SINGAPORE — At Innova Junior College, complex physics concepts are sometimes taught by showing students YouTube videos of the theory in action.

And instead of sourcing for such videos themselves, teachers can find them in a set of online teaching resources that were curated by 10 physics teachers from seven junior colleges in a prototype project started in January this year.

Since 2010, the number of secondary schools using articles and video clips on the “we-Learn” portal — to engage Normal (Technical) students in learning and using English — has increased from 15 to 59.

Following the success of such pilot projects, the use of common online resources among schools will be scaled up: By 2016, all primary and secondary schools nationwide can look forward to tapping “quality online resources” available on an online portal set up by the Ministry of Education (MOE). The resources, which will be aligned to the ministry’s curriculum, will be developed and selected by experienced educators in the MOE.

Announcing this initiative yesterday, Education Minister Heng Swee Keat said that the aim is to allow every student, regardless of which school he is in, to have greater access to “high quality and relevant” learning resources. There will also be collaborative tools on the “integrated online learning space” that allow classmates and teachers to hold discussions on the materials.

“This will help level up our students across schools,” said Mr Heng. “Teachers can also rapidly learn, acquire a range of teaching strategies around infocomm technologies, and spread good practices.”

The initiative builds on the ongoing efforts of the MOE and schools to harness infocomm technology in education, and to develop online resources to support students’ learning. From this year, an iMTL portal has been introduced for students to use in mother tongue lessons. Three other portals to support the learning of English, namely the EL Oracy for primary and secondary schools, and we-Learn and EN[a]BLER for secondary school students, have also been developed. These projects are currently being piloted in some schools and will be rolled out to all schools next year.

An MOE spokesperson said that, for example, the pilot for the we-Learn portal, which encourages students to use standard English in cyberspace and helps them develop the habit of using good English in their writing, showed that Normal (Technical) students found the online environment “more interactive and engaging”.

Mr Low Chun Wei, a Catholic Junior College teacher, pointed out that students will also benefit from learning via infocomm technology platforms because they can pick up concepts at their own pace, such as rewatching a video if they did not grasp the concept the first time round.

Mr Low is among nine teachers from five junior colleges who are in a pilot project to curate online resources of A-Level mathematics.

He noted that teachers also stand to benefit — through designing video lessons, for example — because “they need to think through and select the most effective way of presenting a concept, use correct and precise technical language in explanations, and design questions that can access students’ learning and provide feedback”.

The teaching fraternity will also benefit from the sharing of good pedagogical practices and “raise the level of instruction in all schools”, he added. Agreeing, Mr Ong Chee Wah, a Senior Teacher from Innova Junior College who is leading the physics online teaching portal pilot project, said identifying good resources and designing suitable worksheets to accompany these resources was one of the challenges the team faced. Amanda Lee

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