The GANG of FOUR

This is the name I give to the four benchmarks that I’m going to discuss.
Let’s see, what to write about?

Provide a canvas and they'll create a masterpiece.
Last year I used the internet to try to interest my class of very weak students(Form 4 but level of English is K2- Form 2) to write. Normally, on paper, my success rate is about 4/18. However, when I took them to the computer lab to “write’, I could see that they were very excited. I asked them to identify a place/country that they would like to visit. Using power point, they are to google for pictures and write short descriptions of the place and why they want to visit the place/country. Prior to this, I had them read a description of places of interest in Hong Kong. When they actually settled down to the task, I could see that they were very excited. Normally the students who would talk or sleep when asked to do any free or guided writing are now participating! They actually tried to write something and when they do not know the English words, they asked either me or one of the more able students to help them translate. Every group produced a piece of work. Even the weakest student produced a few lines!

Recognize and understand the demographics of your students.
Before we ask our students to do a certain task, we have to study their background and understand the limitations and constraints that would affect their performance in the task assigned. When I set my students the task of preparing a power point presentation, I was very confident that it would be a breeze since every student in the 21st century knows how to do it, right? Wrong! Even though every student was supposed to have gone through ICTL classes in Forms 1 & 2, all of them did not know how to prepare a power point presentation. They did not even know the basic rudiments of preparing a power point presentation. 4/18 did not have any computers at home. Not knowing this set the class back a few periods while I try to teach them how to use MS Power Point.

Provide access on multiple platforms
Oh, no! After googling up the phrase ‘multiple platforms’ I realised that I can’t really relate it to my experience. Multiple platforms, was defined as :
If a software program is developed for mulitple operating systems, it is considered to be "multiplatform." Since Microsoft Word runs on both the Windows and Macintosh platform, it is a mutliplatform application.
In the consumer gaming market, mutliplatform games run on more than one gaming machine. For example, a sports game developed for Xbox, Playstation, GameCube, and PC would be a multiplatform game.
With my limited knowledge of the computer and its hardware, I am not able to give any feedback on this benchmark. Then I found this: (some sites say that multiple platforms has the same meaning as cross platform)
Refers to developing software for, or running software on, more than one type of hardware platform. The most universal cross platform application is the Web browser. Written for every desktop computer platform, Web browsers render Web pages "almost" the same no matter which computer they run on.
I asked my students to use google to find images and information and then write an email to their pen-pal regarding the place they visited and send a copy of the same email to me.

In regards to technology, be comfortable failing in front of your students.
In a world where teachers will always be Digital Immigrants to our students’ Digital Natives, we have to learn to accept the fact that we will never be sages. We have to learn to take a back seat and let our students take over when the technological tools we plan to use do not behave as they should in class. Always identify a student who is more technology savvy and have him/her on hand when you need help. Never be afraid to ask for help when you need it. Of course it also helps to set up the things you want to use like the computer, internet access, LCD projector ahead of class time and to test out everything before the class arrives at the computer lab or AVA room.