Reflection: Workshop - GSP (Primary) 2007

On 14 & 28 Feb, 7 March @ Clementi Primary

Pre-Workshop Survey
This was sent out to the participants and 13 out of 20 responded. Among the respondents, more than 90% indicated ground zero knowledge/skill level. That helps to set the pace and coverage of the first session. It was also noted that a handful used GSP, however for lesson demonstration, and a second guess is most used existing resources.

A similar survey was carried out at the end of the 1st session. It showed a move towards the middle band. Will do a last round at the end of the 2nd session that we hope more than 75% of the participants indicate they are able to carry out the basic operations with confidence.

Knowing the participants more...
Realised that many participants have a common 'mission' - to find out what GSP does and share with the department how it can be used in T&L before the dept decides to purchase the software. As a result, more than 50% do not have GSP back in school > Have put up the link where participants could register an evaluation copy.

Workshop materials
There was a revamp to the materials we used last year. Some changes made to the approach:

• How the basic tools are introduced to the participants. An attempt was made to bridge participants' familiarity with microsoft applications to GSP - point out similarity to spreadsheet (in having multiple pages within the same file) and the difference in selecting objects and editing the objects (eg. copy, paste, delete).
• Knowing the what, when and why. Have included some components to set the participants to think - what kinds of 'lines' available, when to use which and why. This helps when they moved on to creating the figures with the relevant tools at the later stage. Also, setting them to explore changing the look and colour of the figures.
• Learning activities. Have modified some parts to integrate the "What-if" component. However, noticed that participants were more engrossed and interested to identify the kind of skills needed to create the sketch used in the learning activity.

Learning activities... what are we trying to drive at...

Pointed out to participants...

• Emphasize on pupil-centred activity - draw on the various initiatives - Engaged learning, TLLM, etc. where pupils are engaged in constructing their knowledge, to explore and discover.
• The kind of 'structure' needed to scaffold or lead pupils in the learning - when to use tables? when to loosen such structure? and the powerful 'what-if'.
• Also need to begin with an end in mind... what's the expected learning outcome? That decides what strategy to adopt and what resource (sketch) is suitable, and then, when necessary, adopt/adapt/customise/create... sometimes will require pupils to do simple 'enhancement' such as measuring the length and angles. That will mean equipping pupils with some basic skills - how to navigate and how to measure.