Final reflection

1. What I like about blogging? - I can write anything I like. I can share anything with others. 

2. What I do not like about blogging? - have to update every week. 

3. What have I gained from blogging? 4. How? - I have improved my language skills especially writing. Writing blog also has been a medium for my critical thinking since I have to think outside the box when writing on something. At the same time, I can improve my thought processes. Technology skills? Of course has developed since I never had a blog before. 

5. What I like about the course? - I like to learn so many skills using technology. 

6. What I do not like about the course? - I focused more on products and not the process. I do not like to do the tutorials. They distracted my thoughts and ideas in my process of completing my work.

7. What I have learnt from the course? - Producing varieties of teaching aids to be integrated in class. 

8. What I do not expect but have learnt from the course? - Audio editing & 'So You Think You Can Dance' 

9. What I expect but have not learnt from the course? - Creating traditional materials, smartboard.

10. If I can change anything about the course, state what it is and explain. - Grouping. I do not like to be in a same group with those who did not want to give cooperation to me. Mix gender and race is useless when they did not cooperate with me. I could develop better work with my old own group.

Exam..

This would be the last post for the blog. Finally we came to an end. For week 14, we did not learn any new topic or skill. We did have final exam. The exam was held in the Computer Lab. We were given two hours to answer all four essay questions which each of them carries 10 marks. The questions were not as hard as expected but I myself find difficulties to answer them. I hardly wrote what I was thinking because my hand wouldn't work as I wish. For this semester, today's was the first essay I wrote by hand and this had caused me troubles in writing. My handwriting was too bad to be read. It had spoiled my mood in writing and I could say that I did not do the exam well enough. Hope the marker will be able to read my writing and give marks which I deserve without being interrupted by my bad handwriting.

That's all for this time. Thanks.

Softwares for children

13th week was the day where we supposed to submit our assignment 3. Most of us did not sleep on the night before, finishing the assignment. If I alone did not sleep, all could blame myself but if most of us couldn't finish it earlier, what (or who) was to be blamed? Most of us found that the process of creating the materials (teaching aids) took a very long time. Usually it took not more than half an hour to create a teaching aid but for this task, we took longer time than usual. There were cases that took more than two hours to complete creating a particular material since we had to do two products in one time which were the aid itself and the extra task which was the tutorial for creating the material. We had struggled for days to finish the assignment and we managed to hand in the work in time. Thanks to God. Praises are always for Him. 

Then, during lecture hour, we did play educational games and manipulate some softwares which were designed for children. The softwares were developed long long time ago and it supported Windows 95. Windows XP could not process the softwares. Luckily there were 'techno-savvies' in our group and we managed to generate them after some adjustment processes been done. Maybe we should update the resources reliable in the store =P  

raya.!!

We were having our raya holidays for this 12th week of study but we had to post something in our blog. We had to say something here in order to send all our posts in our portfolio later.

So here, I did not want to say anything complex since I am still in the mood of raya. Maybe I could share my experience about my day in school last week. I entered two classes on that day. The 1st class, my friends did an experimnet on the pupils where they were given a set of questions and they had to complete them in a given time. My friends switched on their laptops and played songs (in intention to distract their attention) but it seemed like they were not distracted by the song and they managed to complete the questions in time.

Secondly, I went into a standard two class to observe a lesson carried out by an English teacher there. From our observation, teacher did not integrate any technology or any electrical appliances during the teaching and pupils still interested in their learning.

So what I am trying to say here is pupils do not care much about this technology things in class. They have their own styles and preferences in learning. We as future teachers have to know when to use technology in class. If we integrate technology all the time but the learning points are hardly understood by pupils, what is the use of it? It would be better if we just teach them using traditional method.

Lastly, friends, think of the use of technology everytime you want to use it in class. Be wise in making decision k.

Thanks.

absent..

For the 11th week, I didn't come to class for an inevitable matter. I had made an appoinment with a teacher from Sekolah Rendah Taman Segar for a lesson observation for my assignment. We had tried to adjust to have the session at other time but it semeed like we failed to do so. Both parties had our own businesses and that was the only time available.

Although I didn't attend the class, I asked my friends if there was any new task to be completed. Like I expected, we were given another task which was to search for a research paper or article about the use of technology in teaching English at school from the internet. Then, we had to send the link of the article to Pn Foziah in ADEC and she would have a look at it and reply if the article was acceptable. I had posted the link for my article before Raya and I didn't see any words mentioned if my article was acceptable. As the result, I ignored it and I did nothing about the article.

Microsoft Publisher

For this time round, we were asked to explore Microsoft Publisher. There were two tasks given. 1st, we have to explore the software in pairs and create a business card, pamplet, etc. 2nd task, in group, we were asked to create a newsletter. Haa... I'm almost forgot. On the same period, we were given 3rd task which was presentation. We need to present on something on the following week. So we need to manage our time carefully to finish all our work. Friends, please teach me how to manage my time.! I have lots more work to do and I also have my OWN LIFE which I HAVE to deal with. Please help me =(

Presentation..

For this week, we were asked to perform presentations. There were three topics to be presented. Two groups presented on "Being Realistic", three groups presented "Working with a Coursebook", and other three groups presented "Working without a Coursebook".

From the presentation of "Being Realistic", I learned that there are two types of activities to be integrated in class which are "Settle Activity" and "Involvement Activity". Both are important in having good class management. Teachers have to know what kind of activities to be conducted to settle down pupils, and what and when to involve pupils in meaningful activities for learning purposes.

"Working with a Coursebook" explains the importance of choosing the right coursebook for teachers. Teachers need a coursebook for the purpose of management since it is written there the syllabus, topics, and all important information to be taken into consideration while teaching. There were also comparisons between TEACHER and CORSEBOOK and I agreed that teachers are lots better than coursebook when talking about flexiblity. Good teachers are very flexible in adjusting themselves to suit the condition of the class best. To all of us, learn about FLEXIBILITY k.! It is very important.

In "Working Without a Coursebook", I learned about how important a teacher has to know about the key concepts and themes when teaching pupils. This is to make sure that pupils are on the right track in their learning. I also learned that teachers MAY involve pupils in planning activities in class instead of teachers plan all things for the class. By involving pupils in planning, teachers might conduct lessons which suit learner preferences thus have greater impact on pupils' learning.

In conlusion, we as future teachers need to consider all these things in order to conduct meaningful and successful teaching and learning processes. All the best to all =)

Language Skills

For this time round, we were given another task which is to be done in group. I grouped with Syazwan and Safura. We had to develop materials for all the four basic skills - writing, reading, listening, and speaking. This task also requires us to exploit all the skills we had learned before either downloading, photo editing, audio editing, video editing, or others. I myself did on writing skill. The topic was about keeping our body healthy. I had tried to download videos from youtube but I failed to find suitable video to be used for this task. Finally, I downloaded a poster concerning on health, and exploited it for my writing lesson. 

What I had learned here is, teachers nowadays are very lucky to have all these materials from the internet. These unlimited resources can be easily found and downloaded. Moreover, they are free.! We should be thankful to have all these things in this world. So teachers outside there, please grab this opportunity and let's lift our nation with knowledge.

e-book

For this time, our task was to create an e-book for primary school pupils. We were given freedom to choose either to work on it in pairs or individually. I myself decided to do it on my own. I did a very simple topic but rarely chosen by others. I planned to introduce animals and their babies in a very simple story. This is done to suit lower primary school children's ability. At first, I downloaded photos of animals from flickr.com to be used for my e-book. But when thinking of CHILDREN, I changed all the pictures to cartoon animal pictures. All of us know that children love cartoons and I did it due to this reason. I downloaded the cartoon pictures from clipartof.com and imported them into my presentation. The story is very direct without any complex events or conflicts. This is because, I want to provide them with 'leisure reading'. I hope that after they have been exposed to this kind of book, they will love reading books thus, spend their leisure time by reading books. I also hope that they learn something meaningful when reading my e-book.

Holidays..

I think there is nothing to be written here for this time since all of us were having our holiday. Actually, we had another task on video editing which we did in pairs. I paired with Hedayah Md Ali. We had decided to create a video under the theme of friendship.

The video was completed on Wednesday but due to Hedayah's business, she went to cyber cafe on Friday. We encountered problems in uploading the video in the youtube. Hedayah did everything she could to upload the video but we still couldn't upload the video. She tried to upload in 4Shared but failed to do so. Then, she tried to transfer the video via Yahoo Messanger. Once again she failed. Six hours in cyber cafe did not promise her a success. It's up to everyone to evaluate us but I myself was proud of her for her efforts in finishing the task.

What about me? I know that I did nothing to help her. I admit that. The material was with her and I could do nothing about it. I had asked her to transfer via 4Shared, via Yahoo Messanger but she still couldn't make it and I NEVER blame her for that. Thanks to the great invention called TECHNOLOGY 4 this failure. (I won't talk about my close uncle died on Tuesday during my holiday which make my family a little bit busy. It's ok.)

But then, Pn Foziah had given us another chance to upload our work and we managed to do it. Thanks to her for noble actions. We really appreciate her kindness. Feel free to watch the video on youtube under the tittle MILLION MILES =)

Video editing? Huh Finally....

First, photo editing then audio editing, and now, video editing. The challenge became harder and harder. When I first receive this task, I knew that this would be a tough task since it requires so many things to do. For the task, we were asked to be in group of five. The task was actually divided by three parts: 1st, download an episode of 'So You Think You Can Dance' from 8TV. 2nd, join all the parts (an episode contains some separated parts. ours have four parts) to form a video. 3rd, we had to extract performances from the whole episode, make them separated videos.

The task began with Husna downloaded the video. Alhamdulillah she managed to download them in a short time (one hour plus minus). Some of my friends spent about two hours to download all the parts of their episode. It was tiring.

Then, to join all the parts to form a single video, we need to convert them from FLV files to MPEG or VCD or WMV files so that they could be imported in Windows Movie Maker. All of us surfed the internet to find suitable converter to convert the video but none of us found any. It was diificult since most of the converters were trial and demo application. Using the trial version, the features were limited. We could only convert 50% of the video. Some converters advertise their product on my converted videos. There's so many problems in selecting useful converters. After 2 hours working on it, at last, I found a software which I could convert the video to MPEG file, and I did the converting for the group.

Then, move to the cutting process. At first, from what we understood, we had to extract all the performances, label all the performances, and join them in a single video. Then, we woke up early, met at the early of a morning, worked on it for several hours, but then, at night, we found that we were wrong. We did not have to label and join them in a video. The task just required us to cut and label them. That's all. The task for joining files was another task, not that one. Useless efforts. Huh =(

After finishing our work, we had to upload them in adec. Then came another problem when a person can only upload 3 files. We thought of it and I decided to zip all small size files (cut videos). I put them in respective folders, zipped them and upload them. Luckily at that time, there were three of us. We uploaded three files each and we managed to uploaded all the files after 5 hours. We did sleep at 4a.m.! Huh.. How tiring.

On that morning, all of us went back to home town, far from KL, far from each other, Kelantan, Johore, Kedah, Malacca, and Pahang. Then, I had a call saying that lecturer asked us to burn our work in DVD since most of the students could not upload their work in ADEC. The DVD was supposed to be submitted before Saturday but all of us were not in KL and we could do nothing about it. As the result, we did not manage to submit the DVD on time. Although we did not submit our DVD, we had successfully uploaded all the files in ADEC in time. After holidays, we met the lecturer and explained about it and ALHAMDULILLAH Pn Foziah accepted our work. Thanks for your kindness mam.

Audio Editing

After dealing with lots of photo editing softwares, we moved to harder task which was on audio editing. Frankly speaking, I never thought of doing anything on audio. It is not in my list of interest. Moreover, nothing much can be done on audio compared to photo which I could have mountains of ideas to adjust and edit a single photo.

For this week task, I had chosen a song entitled 'Underneath It All' to be edited. To do the editing, I had to download suitable and meaningful softwares and this had made me tired of selecting useful softwares. I had installed and tried some softwares but all of them seem to be almost the same. They offer the same features. Lastly, I found a software called Expstudio Audio Editor and by using the software, I managed to do some interesting editing.

For my audio editing task, I had chosen the song 'Underneath It All' by No Doubt to be edited. I made some adjustment to the song. I had changed the woman's voice to man's voice, then there was a part where I changed the voice into chipmunk's voice. I used the function of Vibrato to make it vibrate for some seconds. It also offers a feature to change the normal voice to the voice of Zeus, fade in and fade out, and many more.

While doing this editing, I thought about the use of this when teaching later. At first, I did not see any purpose but after thinking about it for another times, I guess I could exploit this when dealing with children later. Using this, I could produce interesting audios and musics, for them. I could play an audio where a chipmunk is reading a text or telling a story for them for my listening tasks maybe. By having this, teachers may attract their attention to focus on the recording thus, increase the learning effects in class. Feel free to try this out k.! Happy editing =)

Photo Editing

It was a great time for me to learn about photo editing. Actually, I have experienced some softwares on photo editing before. I like to play with photos. I add frames, add noise and effects, crop, resize, add texts, and many more. To do all those, I used Paint, Ulead PhotoImpact, and FrameFun.

After attended the class, I was able to know other softwares which could be used to edit photos like Adobe Photoshop, ACDSee, Turbo Photo, and many more. My friends also introduced some other interesting softwares to be used. Now, i can explore mnay softwares and I could improve my photo editing skills. I'm happy about that.

For the weekend, we were given a task to edit a photo and upload it in photobucket.com and I managed to do it on time. have a look at my picture =)


Actually, I spent not more than one hour to edit this picture. I copied other photo, pasted it on another photo, added vignette effect, and lastly added text. It was a simple editing. It just a warm up session for the future tasks which was said to be more difficult than this. Hope I manage to acquire required skills for the next tasks and be able to complete all my assignments successfully.

Working with Young Learners

For this week, we learned about some unique characteristics of children which everyone of us should know in order to be good teachers. Pn Foziah had given us her lecture notes and we were asked to present in front of the class after discussing about them in groups.

Working with Young Learners
1. Children's ability to grasp meaning
2. Children's creative use of limited language resources
3. Childrens' capacity for indirect learning
4. Children's instinct for play and fun
5. The role of imagination
6. The instinct for interaction and talk

Children have their own special abilities when dealing with language.

First, they are able to process what is said to them although they don't understand individual words. They interpret other's gestures, intonation and expression when interacting with others.

Second, their mother tongue help them a lot in interpreting messages. So teachers have to give some space for the use of mother tongue in their learning process.

Third, teachers have to know that children's learning process is divided by two which are conscious and unconscious. Conscious learning is about accuracy and unconscious learning is about fluency and spontaneity. When teachers know about this, teachers might be able to determine what kind of strategies to be used to achieve the intended goals as well as develop both accuracy and fluency in children.

Fourth, fun and play elements are important in children life. Teachers have to provide space for them to play while learning since it brings powerful contribution to their learning. When they are playing, unconsciously they use the language and this will improve their language proficiency.

Fifth, teachers may exploit their imagination to the maximum when they could be asked to make up their own stories about something they dream of, create their own pets, or any other things which require them to imagine. Using imagination, they could play with words creatively.

Sixth, we should know that children like are very talkative. So teachers should let them talk and interact with each other to maximize language use among them. They will acquire the language out of their conscious.

In conclusion, teachers have to be aware of these special characteristics of the children thus take this opportunity to develop their language as well as increase the effectiveness of strategies used in the teaching and learning process.

We had gone through our second lecture and we had been exposed to some new softwares and programs that we can use in processes of creating and producing effective teaching materials. We were introduced to useful downloading tools, encoders, movie editors@makers, sound editors and others. I admit that i am not good at using these technological 'things' and i know how important to learn all of them in order to be a good teacher in this era of technology. I should be very thankful to learn all this in this semester. Thanks to lecturer, and also my friends for your sincere support. Hope i would be a good teacher in the future.