Post-test!!!

Phew!! My fingers almost numb!!! Writing very long essays… thank god I have what I feel a lot of ideas and I just wrote everything I can remembered and I feel I have done quite well. The topics I have focused on came out in the test, and I manage to answer everything although one of the questions I need to used my previous knowledge on the non-technological teaching aids but I am satisfied with the test. Now I can celebrate raya !! But I can’t relax; we still have our lesson plans and blogs assignment that we need to submit afrter Raya!! Better get going but being the person I am, last minute but quality job is my way. Chow!!

Pre- test!!!

Finally, we are going to have our test… our lecture approach was a bit unique, she did not give a lot of lecture about the theory or the contents parts of our class but she always give a hand-on tasks or guide us in the classroom on technical things. But, thankfully she did gave all the notes from her class and that is a big help. I studied diligently all the topics given and focused on the children behaviour and their psychology and everything on how to evaluate or choose material for them. I was quite hectic because I just spend the weekend reading the notes and at the same times we have science and technology class test.. wow!! What a week it will be, I am used to this situation.. When the going get tough, the tough get going!! Surely, I am a tough man.

finale!!!

The final week of our class, as usual we come a bit late for our class…. We have class before this so it quite a long journey to the lab…. Erm... What will the lecturer tell us today?? She was quite emotional when she made her goodbye speech. Yup!! She was different but this make the class interesting and she loves everything about Korean people. Anyway, just want to thanks for all the knowledge and skills that she taught us for the past 3 months. In the below postings, I have chronicles everything that I have learned from this class, and how to create resources using software and make it exciting for students. I think if not because of this class I might never know how to use software such as moviemaker, Microsoft publisher and even create online newspaper. I treasure the experiences… It much appreciated and has increased my expertise in the technology world. Adios…

non-tech

Pn. Foziah shows us what is a flannel board… we were a bit dumbfounded when she told about flannel board so she brought it to demonstrate how to use flannel board. Basically, it is a board that is use by sticking figurine one the board… can use it to tell story…. It kind of interesting, back in Maktab we always used the so-called non-technological teaching aids such as picture cards, puppets or realia. We have been exposed to the traditional type of teaching aids that is effective and reliable teaching aids compare to technology teaching aids that come with technical glitches. And it is hard for non-computer savvy teacher to create a instructional technology in classroom. I feel we can combine the technology and non-technology teaching aids to help teacher improve teaching and learning process.

– online newspapers

We got the chance to create our very own online newspaper using the Crayon.net website. Basically the website allows us to gather our resources from many online newspapers and combine it to make it our personal newspaper. The content is cater towards our interest and we can read just about everything from sports, world news, fashion and education. The resources here are very extensive because the online newspapers are from all over the world. The online newspapers mostly are in English but there are some newspapers in their native language such as Chinese and Tamil. The process of creating our newspapers was quite albeit some technical problem. We don’t know the product that we’ll produce as this is our first time and the first experience will always be challenging and in a way make us learn through trial and error as most of us never use this method to create online newspaper. However, after painstakingly include everything that is useful to us and ensure that our newspaper is legible and contain interesting contents it was quite an interesting product as we can just log in to our newspapers and read everything we have compile from many resources from all over the world. It was nice that we now can use newspaper as a way to ensure that our students will not lose interest in the learning process. Surely creating our own newspaper make us excited and this experience is enjoyable.

software evaluation

Software evaluation was probably an interesting task because we have to evaluate children’s game to ensure its suitability. My group got thinkin’ thing: the sky island. I never thought that it is quite hard to evaluate a game for primary school students because we have to ensure that it fulfil the criteria to ensure the appropriateness of the games itself for their learning. I just thinking that game is the best way to help students learning through their sub conscious mind. While they are playing the game, they also learn new knowledge that is useful for their education. However, I don’t think this method is widely in school around Malaysia, maybe because lack of locally produce software that would cater to Malaysian school context and follow our curriculum. Having said that, in my opinion, if a teacher knows how to utilize the game, it would be a big boost to improve student’s motivation.

magazine???

Magazine…

Wow!! It was an amazing experience publishing a magazine... we worked hard to ensure the quality of our article and the organization of the magazine. There were a lot of things we need to consider, for instance, the relevance of articles to women as our magazine focuses on women and whether it will raise their interest. We search for articles from internet and try to find the best article from our list of topic. As I went through many articles, I think it was a process of discovery because I have to read a lot and I found new knowledge that is very interesting, obviously about women. Some of the information was unthinkable. It was fun doing this as I got to learn using Microsoft publisher and I feel I have acquired a new skills and it is great that I have opportunity to grasp this skill. This experience will certainly help me using this tool in school.

websites evaluation

There are a lot of resources for teacher on the web!! I mean abundance of resources that need to be sifting through to find the gem in it. We can’t simply take anything from the websites because there will always the factor of credibility of the contents in the websites. As such, our assignment was to evaluate the websites that provides resources for Primary school teacher. The resources are free and teacher can use it as it is or adapt it to suit his students but the main problem here is whether the resources are correct and can be use in classroom. So, I learn how to evaluate each websites in detail and diligently as if the resources have mistakes it would lead to students’ misconception on the knowledge he will learn and it would be bad for teacher reputation as a responsible person. In a sense, teacher must be accountable to the teaching and learning process because the
students’ future is in our hand….

different group for every assignment!!

Our lecturer want us to create a new team every time have new assignment. This have cause furore among us because this is the first time a lecturer specifically told us to make sure that we must be I different group for our assignment. What more difficult was that she asked guys not to be in the same group. This was hard for me because obviously guys like to work with guy. You know why… Every one of us has their own cliques and people that we are familiar with. We know how our friends work and the dynamic of our group. However, when this law come into effect it just makes some of us incense with the lecturer. I was not one of them because I don’t really have my clique, I used to have different people in my group and I did not felt discomfort working with different kind of people. We must see the benefit of the lecturer direction because this has cause most of use to mixed with others from different races, religions and lifestyles. This is a unique way to foster our relationship. I applaud the lecturer way of doing this….

demanding lecturer??

I don’t feel like doing anything this week. It just weird that something our effort is not appreciated. We always heard that if you work hard, you will get what you want but sometimes in the real world that is not the case. Some people work hard but still they didn’t succeed but they are people that always done well with little effort. However, this class taught something to me, it is not easy to accomplish something if we did not give our best in it and surely our lecturer want the best from us and although some of us think she is very demanding, in a way it push us to our limit. You know, take the extra mile, work harder that we used to. Some of us may felt tension but this may be good for us. In the future, we may have a demanding headmaster… hehe. Who know??

e-book

Wow, an e-book!! Finally I published my own e-book!! It was a great achievement, and it was not only an e-book but an e-story book that will surely captivate young people. What made it interesting was that we have to find an interesting story that contain interesting plot that involved problem-solving and there are moral values that students can learn. First of all, we tried to ensure that every screen will not have too much text in it because students don’t like reading too much text. So, we included background pictures
That we found on the internet and made it colourful and appealing to primary school students. One of the most integral part of our e-book is the animation and sound effects that we included in the e-book that make it amazing and really appealing for students. Even our colleagues were excited when they read our e-book. I was a great achievement for us because teacher has a method to do storytelling for students a they can just flash it on the white screen that will ensure students will have clear view and everyone can be part of it. The experience of making the e-book also helped improve my skill in using Microsoft Power Point software.

Downloading, saving and encoding

I feel this is the greatest skill I learned from resources class. The skill of downloading from you tube, saving and then convert it. Maybe I have been downloading non-educational video from the net however recently I have found many video that can be use in class, for instance if I want to teach students about choral speaking I can just do my video search on the you tube and instantly I get many fairly good video that can be examples for students. In my opinion, when we are talking about internet, we don’t realise about the potential internet can give to us. There tons of resources on the net that can be adopt and adapt for Malaysia classroom. Nowadays, teacher has the option in their own hand to really take advantage of the net. It will lessen the burden on teacher to create or find resources to be use in classroom. Furthermore, the video surely will be an instant hit among students and raise their motivation to learn. I must say that I thought it was impossible to download video from video portal and now I found a new way to download video as I discover the cyber world….. hola!!!