The Future of Education

This project looks at the use of a technological innovation for the teaching and learning of poetry. The technological innovation is an iPad app (developed by River Valley High School, Singapore) that allows students to create poems through manipulating images and text in an interactive and collaborative environment. The app is named PoGO and is already available for download from the Apple iTunes store.

The aim of developing the app is two­fold. Firstly, we hope to make use of the app to share knowledge with students about poetry, in particular, the structure and form of poetry. Secondly, we hope to encourage creative writing among students by providing a safe space that they can explore, express and experiment with poetry.

The project seeks to study whether students’ learning is enhanced through the use of this particular iPad app with respect to certain designed learning goals such as encouraging their interest in poetry and the art of poetry-writing, motivating their spirit of exploration and experimentation with words, building their knowledge of grade-appropriate poetic forms and developing their capacity to write poetry creatively and collaboratively.

Design­based research methodology is adopted as the app is being actively incorporated into the curriculum for the teaching of Poetry iteratively. A mix of both qualitative and quantitative data is collected for analysis. For example, a pre/post­ questionnaire survey will also help us gauge student's attitudes towards poetry and their experience of the app. Data (based on the methods described above) include comparative assessment scores, as well as interviews, observations, focus group discussions and survey data for analysis.

The study is conducted over two academic years with two different batches of students of the same grade level (7^th Grade). The first study in 2013 served as a pilot study for both testing out the execution of lessons for using the app in class, while also providing valuable data to refine our research purpose. A second study conducted in 2014 (on-going) serves to verify our earlier findings and widen the scope of our study.

Our paper will report on the findings of our project and propose recommendations on how the app might be used in other school contexts, as well as to propose a viable model for the scaling of the app to other schools and other contexts in education.