being realistic

For the presentation that i have mentioned earlier, my group had to present on the topic "being realistic". We have divided the task among our group members where everyone of us need to present our part so that the work will be less burden for everyone. in fact, i find it is one of the good way of reading, we call it jigsaw reading: we read our part and others read theirs and finally we can combine the things that we have read so that we can have a better understanding on the topic and have a better view about it..maybe this way can be applied in the primary classroom as primary pupils as we know should be given short passages to be read. if we as teachers plan to give them long passages, maybe jigsaw reading will be more suitable as pupils can have better communication at the same time. so reading and speaking skill can be integrated simultaneously.

Back to the presentation, i was quite scared because this is my first presentation after a long time in the college. so i feel quite uncomfortable when all the members in our cohort look at me when i'm presenting. but at last i feel relieved as i can now adjust to the situation again =) so after this, there should be more on presentation coz i find it's a good way of undersatnd the theory part. i mean, it's effective than the usual lecture that we normally have: at least to me.
plus, it's a good way of learning on our own: self learning, learning autonomously.

back again

i'ts been a long time i didn't update my blog..i admit it was my mistake for delaying things. at last i was burdened with bundles of assignments, tasks and other works to do. hopefully i can still recall what i have been doing in this course so far. In the previous post, i had mentioned about the two tasks that i have got. it was four language skill tasks and preparation for the presentation on the topic "being realistic". we had to do the task in groups of four which the members are: me, fadzli, fahmi and loi choi yee. each of us had to choose one particular skill in the language and prepare a lesson plan for that skill. i have chosen writing skill n select a particular stage that is the pre writing stage. i have prepared on the topic hobbies. so what basically i have done was an e book for the presentation stage. since e-book was the latest skill that i have learnt, so i think it was a good idea to start doing another e-book so that i can practice making good e-book for my primary kids soon.
i felt quite blurr at first because since i came to um, i have never done any lesson plan yet. so this task is going to be a good task to keep me alert about lesson planning. i think that's enough for now. read in next post =)

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

viDEo eDitiNg

mmm it seemed that the tasks of video editing give headache to everyone. First, the grouping. Yes, i agree that multicultural or mix group is good in a way that everyone will mix around with everybody in the cohort. However, i find that it has disadvantage too. there is few ways of getting everyone to gather to do the work as some of us take different el course. the only way was to contact through phone and ym. however, that was not an excuse i should give if i'm not completing the task. We start with the group task. it was quite difficult i should say.the downloading part was ok. but the process of converting it and to split it was quite challenging. some of my friends manage to sette it very easily while some of us not. maybe because we use different software i guess. worse come worse when the dateline is just on the day that everyone supposed to go back for mid sem break. imagine how everyone is struggling to settle everything before the dateline =). uploading was the toughest part. it takes hours to upload everything in adec. luckily we managed to finish it just few hours before we go back to hometown =) mmm? suddenly we heard that the video should be sent in a dvd??? gosh.. what to do? everyone is now in their hometown already.so, nothing we can do =( what about pairwork task? ya,it was quite easy compared to the group task. i manage to get it done very quickly but didn't have time to upoad it since the cc is quite far from my house. mm i heard everyone has problem in uploading in you tube. yes, i totally 200% agree. it was really a headache!!!! it's not easy to upload the video, plus with slow connection of internet in the cc, it ended up with 0. i didn't manage to upload it as well as my pair.what to do? to sent it through gmail?that's impossible, the file is too big to be attached. so we just hope that madam give just one more chance...it's not that we did't do it, but we just didn't manage to upload it. that's very unlucky...but still, the tutorial has been sent successfully before the dateline =)

Comes audio editing

this is quite a good exploration too. before this, i never have any experience of editing audio or song. So you can staright away know that any software of editing audio is new and alien to me. Luckily i manage to get 1 software from my friend through ym: audacity software. at first, i was quite blurred how to start to edit. So, i just began with exploring the effects and tools there. When i was quite ok in handling the software, then only i started to edit the audio that i have sent for the task. well, the experience was really great as it was something new to me. I was so excited to hear the new version of the song that i have edited =) .for information, i did on the song " Can't fight the moonlight" by Leaan Rimes. i changed the original song by changing the pitch so that it will looks like 2 singers: male and female sing the song.mmm what else? uploading the final work to internet storage was also something new to me. it was good in fact that everyone can view the file that we have stored just by clicking at the url. Now, i begin to explore more on the internet storage thing. Few new internet storage that i've discovered: savefile, mediafire, and file hosting. i guess it's enough for audio editing, just continue checking on the new post =)

Photo Editing????

Nothing much i know about photo editing. However, some experience with picasa2 and paint is useful ( although not much help with adobe photoshop).It's good as adobe photoshop is something new to me and i can learn a lot after this. Honestly, this is the topic that i always waiting for in this subject.Compared to Picasa and paint, photoshop is ways advance in terms of effect and tools in the software. Therefore, lots of things can be done with photoshop.I can't wait to see what i can do to my pictures to make them different from what they are now. hopefully my exploration will bring something creative and nice to see =)