The story of Poovani is presented using the third-person narration during the learning process. My decision was motivated by the fact that Poovani was an introvert and introvert persons do not generally open up to other persons.
Title: Effective but limited
Poovani was an eight-year-old girl. She lived in Green City and attended Sandy Government School, a primary school situated in the same area. She was in Grade 4. She was regular at school and always followed the class attentively.
She was well behaved and liked by both her teacher and friends.
Poovani’s class had remained unchanged over time; it was the typical traditional classroom set-up where students sat in pairs facing the whiteboard. In fact, it might have been the same set-up as her parents’ classroom with the same old furniture, chairs, and tables arranged in rows had it had not been for one element:
the recent inclusion of a projector in front of the classroom, next to the whiteboard. When switched on, the projector displayed images on the traditional whiteboard and turned the latter into an interactive one. This never failed to fascinate Poovani. The vivid and colourful images aroused and sustained her interest throughout the lesson as could be seen by her eyes that rarely left the display.
Poovani’s teacher, Mr. Samy, was middle-aged with many years of teaching experience in Grades 4, 5 and 6. He was very passionate about his profession
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and always strived to use innovative teaching approaches to meet the needs of his young students. Though the class had 32 students which is generally deemed a substantial number in the local context, Mr. Samy had a good rapport with all his learners and encouraged them to participate in the class discussions through different techniques. He was indeed a dedicated teacher, as all his pupils would testify.
That day was a very hot afternoon and all the students were tired. They were all happy after spending time with their peers during recess and their lack of enthusiasm to get back to the classroom was betrayed by their whispers as they lined up and walked reluctantly towards the main building.
In the classroom, Mr. Samy was completely absorbed setting up the laptop and the projector with the help of the ICT teacher, and getting ready to teach a science lesson. He called for silence and announced: ‘We’re going to have our science lesson on ‘Energy’, and we will use the interactive whiteboard.’ Instantly the morose faces lit up and all the students smiled exultantly. The class became noisier and students were impatient to get started. Sounds of chairs moving and children shouting could be heard. Few students were on the alert trying to help Mr. Samy install the equipment even though they knew nothing about it. Just a sudden announcement that the usual traditional classroom would be converted into a digital one had caused the atmosphere to change into a lively one! All the students were beaming. A smile could be seen on all students’ faces.
A brainstorming session was carried out by Mr. Samy to elicit prior knowledge from pupils about the topic and the students participated actively in the discussion.
‘Sir, I have lots of energy; that’s why I can run quickly!’ said Alan, standing near his chair.
‘Sir, the aeroplane needs energy to move!’ shouted Pinky, walking in front of the class to gain attention.
‘Sir, Sir… hmm energy is essential for anyone to do activities!’ said Ronnie in a loud voice, raising his hands impatiently.
165 ‘Well said, children!’ said Mr. Samy.
He then displayed a series of images, both static and animated to support his explanations. On showing an image of the sun shining brightly in the sky. Mr.
Samy asked the students, ‘What can you see in this image?’ In a loud voice, they replied, ‘The Sun.’
Then, Mr. Samy put another question to the class: ‘How is the sun useful to us?’
All the students became silent, pondering over the question. After a few minutes, Mr. Samy projected the images on ‘forms of energy’ on the IWB. The images showed the sun uses ‘heat energy’ to dry clothes and they were supported by written text. Mr. Samy then asked the students to provide more examples. The class grew very noisy, as many students were eager to answer. Mr. Samy therefore asked them to raise their hands if they wanted to answer. Some students were so eager to answer that they shouted out, ‘Me … Me!’ Almost all students were actively participating in the lesson with the exception of Poovani.
Unlike her friends, Poovani was very timid and did not volunteer to answer or go to the board to carry out an activity using the special pen. Her lack of confidence was puzzling: Why was she silent? Was she still reflecting on the concepts or was she hesitating to go to the board due to shyness? Did her silence influence the way she learnt or interacted in the class?
Poovani always followed the lesson attentively to understand better and obtain good results. Indeed, from time to time, she opened her copybook and wrote in few words related to the explanation.
As Mr. Samy carried on with his explanations, he asked, Poovani’s friend, Ronnie, to write what he could see in the animated images in the space provided on the digital resource. Ronnie managed to carry out the activity correctly and the teacher praised him.
Suddenly, Mr. Samy asked Poovani, ‘What is the form of energy from the sun?’
Poovani answered a very concise manner by saying that the heat energy is the form of energy from the sun.
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‘Well done,’ said Mr. Samy.
The example that follows indicates that Poovani rarely asked Mr. Samy questions to verify her understanding. For example, when Mr. Samy asked all the students whether they have understood the concepts, unlike her friends who voiced out, Poovani just stared at Mr. Samy and then at the visuals on the interactive whiteboard and did not answer.
After the class, Poovani told her friend, Katty,
‘I like it when Mr. Samy uses the IWB as the images and animations help me to understand better, but I am not used to participate in class.’
‘I wished Mr. Samy uses the IWB more often as he clearly matches what he is saying with the images and animations’
‘I can recall most of the concepts presented through visuals from the interactive whiteboard for a longer period of time.’
As a summative task, Mr. Samy asked the students to produce drawings of what they learnt from the lesson in order to evaluate their understanding. All the students including Poovani were eager to do so.
In the first grid, Poovani drew a very big sun just behind clothes drying on a line.
Mr. Samy was pleased to see that Poovani had understood the concept that heat
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energy from the sun is used to dry clothes. He noted that, interestingly, Poovani was creative and logical in her thinking, as she had drawn the cloth line tied to two trees. Upon his query, Poovani explained that her mother hangs clothes on a cloth line tied to trees.
In the second grid, Poovani drew a car moving. She inserted wavy lines at the rear end of the vehicle to indicate movement and wrote, ‘The car needs petrol to move.’ There was no doubt that she had understood the lesson and was able to explain that the car could not move without petrol, which provided energy.
In the third grid, Poovani showed how the wind energy provides electricity.
Poovani depicted the use of wind energy for the production of electricity. She drew a wind vane and wrote, ‘The wind provides electricity.’ However, the wind vane is an instrument used to measure the direction of the wind and Poovani could not clearly represent how the wind vane was used to provide electricity in her drawing. Her representation of her learning was effective despite being limited. When the teacher asked Poovani to elaborate on her drawings, she read what she wrote below the drawing.
All her three drawings were closely related to what she had seen in the digitised learning resource and what had been taught. In the first drawing, she was able to make the link with her experiences. In the second drawing, she reproduced only what she had seen from the resources. However, in the last drawing, she failed to provide sufficient details to show thorough understanding.
Even though Poovani was not very talkative in class, at home she liked to share what she has done at school. That day, she was so fascinated by the use of the interactive whiteboard that she told her parents about her experiences as soon as she reached home. She explained to how the classroom had changed with the interactive projector. Even though her parents did not know much about the interactive whiteboard, they were amazed by how their child was able to recall the concepts from the science lesson and explain these with such confidence.
It might be that Poovani was an introvert person as she rarely discussed with her teacher and her friends. However, her learning was effective but limited to what
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she saw in the resource. She was able to narrate to her parents her learning but could not totally represent her learning in her drawings.