The use of ICT in learning has been widely promoted in the current world of tech saavys individuals, and here’s 3 different resources that serves as a suitable reference to enhance the whole teaching experience.
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| Animation on Digestion and Metabolism |
This is an online learning centre specially catered to students taking nutrition science. The navigation of the website is user-friendly, and covers course-wide contents besides the chapters on nutrition that is covered by Wendy J. Schiff, the textbook author of “Nutrition for Healthy Living”. The section on ‘course-wide content’ included useful information and tools such as the food composition table, pocket portion size guide and nutrition links for further research and referencing.
Pros:
Comes with good and clear animation beneficial for visual learners
Equipped with pre-test and post-test to engage prior knowledge before building on to learning new content
Navigation in the website is simple and easy to use, makes it possible for self-directed learning with minimal instructions from teachers.
Cons:
The content covered in the website is based on American context chapters, that includes the materials offered under the ‘course-wide content’ section. E.g., Foods listed in the food composition table are foods that are commonly found in America. Foods of Asian culture may not be available in the resources in the website.
The names or outlines of the chapters were not listed out in the drop down box, and that leads to an issue of clicking onto each individual chapters to find out what is the chapter covering on
Likewise, not all chapters are relevant to Singapore’s syllabus of Food and Nutrition.
→ It is recommended to utilise this website as a resource to teach topics such as Digestion and Metabolism where students often finds it difficult to understand the concept through verbal delivery or regurgitation. The animations that are provided could help them to visualise and better understand how food is broken down and metabolised to yield nutrients for energy and health.
A resource page that offers a vast content knowledge on the reactions that occurs in cooking, science of food and taste, the different cooking techniques, food science experiments, recipes and discussion on health risks. Layout of the information on the site is easy to understand and navigate around.
Pros:
Wide coverage of information covered
Coherent and concise explanations supported with images
Offers exploration in food science experiments that associates to real life context
Attractive images to show step by step procedures in a selected cooking method
Cons:
Display of information is too wordy, and some topics have no images at all to assist in understanding.
Lack of animations and packed with words, reduces the possibility of engaging students.
The unit of measurement in recipes has to be converted as it is in pounds and cups.
Recipes looks decent but will still has to be tried and tested to make sure that it works
→ This resource can be used in the teaching of reactions in cooking or the food science investigative component of their coursework. It can be introduced to students starting from Sec 3 level to explore about the different reactions taking place in cooking. For instance, they can learn new skill such as how to roast tomatoes through a step by step procedure displayed in photos. There is also a wide variety of recipes shared on the web, from mains to desserts for them to utilise as a resource for selection of recipes. However, recipes has to be tried and tested prior to final selection for coursework to make sure that it works.
This is a community that shares information about maintaining a healthy lifestyle. The focus is on the introduction of several different tools or apps that helps to monitor their weight, exercise regime, and the calorie counter for their diet. Nutritional information is shared under the ‘blog’ tab, by the administrator of the site. There are also additional materials such as recipes and weight monitoring shared by the members of the community.
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| Apps and tools page |
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| Information presented in poster format |
Pros:
Content knowledge on nutrients covered in the ‘blog’ section in an interesting poster-like presentation, a novel way of presenting facts in a way that engages readers.
A variety of apps and tools to track food and exercise activities for healthy living.
Cons:
Some apps require the usage of a smartphone to function
Content knowledge was signed off as ‘ staff of myfitnesspal’, there was no endorsement from certified nutritionist. Teacher will have to read through the content in the materials and verify facts.
→ This website can be recommended for the use in the developmental and decision making phase of the upper secondary coursework. The calorie counter, BMI and BMR calculation tools can be used to help students in the analysis and understanding of their selected ‘subjects’ (if they have a specific subject for study). The ‘recipe nutrition facts calculator’ is another important tool where students get to carry out a nutritional content analysis and make decisions on whether the recipe meets the requirements that are expected from the task question.
Sharon Goh
