self discovery

For this week, we didn’t have any lecture except for doing things on our own. However, it doesn’t mean that we are giving licence to do anything we like. We were given another 2 tasks to do: Designing materials for language skills as well as a presentation on the topic “Being realistic”. I think the first task, designing materials is good opportunity that I can use as this is where the skills and knowledge that I have learnt so far can be applied. Talking about skills and knowledge, I begin to realize that there are lots of things related to technology that I have learnt since the first time I enter the course ----------> photo editing, audio editing, video editing, downloading, storing, uploading, converting, and many more. All of this makes me realize that in order to be a good teacher, one must equipped with all the necessary skills to cope up with the technology era where technology matters everywhere. In addition, all the skills are important as global view about learning process has changed. Learning isn’t about chalk and talk method where children learn only from teachers and books, but it involves more than that. Therefore, I feel really thankful as I have the opportunity to learn all of this skill before I enter the real teaching world. Yes, if compared to those days, teachers were not required to learn all of these skills like nowadays. So, in order to cope up with the changes, they have to learn all of these skills so that they are not left out. Perhaps this shows that a teacher is also a lifelong learner. The process of learning will never stop as changes would always there in the teaching profession.
Relating this with the second task that we are supposed to do, “Being realistic”, I also begin to ask questions to myself, sometimes technology can help a lot but sometimes technology can hampered pupils to learn. It all depends to situation. Whether it can “stir” or “settle” the pupils, again, that’s the responsibility of a teacher to figure out themselves. Perhaps they can make a list or experiment it with the pupils.

e-book

This week, we have learnt about how to make a picture animated/ moving/flashing. I wasn’t sure about the name of the web. Perhaps it’s Glickr.com. Maybe I should explore more about this skill as before this, whenever I need animated/ flashing pictures, I just simply go to Google search and find “Animated GIF pictures”. The skill was interesting as the idea of flashing and animated can be used to attract pupils’ attention. As for examples, if a teacher wants to show that one word can be expanded to many words, this skill will do. Perhaps this can be used also in creating word cards that flashing. Mmm..sounds interesting right? Maybe we should have another round of learning this again =) Another thing we learnt today is e-book. This is another interesting idea too. With this e-book, pupils will not only learn through fun way, but also meaningfully. This is because, with e-book, we can include sounds, transition, effect, video, and songs as well. All of these you can simply get from e-book. It’s really effective way of making pupils reading if compared to the ordinary boring text book. In addition, pupils can learn more from the e-book and the knowledge can be expanded as well. For example, when they read a story about animals in a farm, teacher may provide the sounds of the animals so that the pupils can differentiate the sounds apart from just knowing the name of the animals