week 10

Hi!!! As I promised, here is the story entitled ‘Triple Filter’. It is moral story founded on the theme on friendship. This is the way we would like to present our story.

Scene 1
"Sam, do you know what I just heard about your friend?"
(A static photo flashback)

Scene 2.
"Hold on a minute," Sam replied. "Before telling me anything I'd
like you to pass a little test.
It's called the Triple Filter Test."
"Triple filter?"
(A static image of big question mark)

Scene 3.
"That's right," Sam continued. "Before you talk to me about my
friend, it might be a good idea to take a moment and filter what you're
going to say. The first filter is Truth. Have you made absolutely sure
that what you are about to tell me is true?"
"No," the man said, "actually I just heard about it and..."
"All right," said Sam. "So you don't really know if it's true or
not.
(A slide with the word “truth”)

Scene 4.
Now let's try the second filter, the filter of Goodness. Is what
you are about to tell me about my friend something good?"
"No, on the contrary..."
"So," Sam continued, "you want to tell me something bad about him,
but you're not certain it's true.
(A slide with the word “goodness”)


Scene 5.
You may still pass the test though,
because there's one filter left: the filter of Usefulness. Is what you
want to tell me about my friend going to be useful to me?"
(A slide with the word “usefulness”)

Scene 6
"No, not really."
"Well," concluded Sam, "if what you want to tell me is neither
true nor good nor even useful, why tell it to me at all?"
(A slide on moral of the story)
This is the story we have chosen and the way we have planned it to be recorded.

“Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.”

Jack Welch quotes



Since we wanted to become a good video maker in UMLand, we have followed the first two steps in the quote, which we embrace as our guide for this ‘project’. Hopefully, we can go through the next two successfully especially the video shooting stage which consists of choosing the casts, finding the props and editing the recording.

week 9

One of the topic which captured my eyes’ attention when I first saw Proforma was video editing. At last, today we arrived at the “Land of UMwood”.
The lecture started with an exposure to different types of videos and suggestions on software that can be used for this topic. After a review on senior’s assignments, we were asked to come up with a 5 minutes video proposal. After squeezing our brain, we came up with the idea of producing an animated video. The story line...


Scene 1: A five years old girl called the operator

Scene 2: The girl asks for heaven’s number
Operator gets shocked and asks why
Girl answers that her grandmother told her that her mother went to heaven
and she wants to talk to her mother because she is having a terrible
stomach ache
Scene 3: Operator asks for apology and tells that she does not have

Scene 4: The girl walks to her father’s room and tells the father
The father reflects upon his act that not only leads to HIV transmission to
him, his wife and child but also his wife’s death


Scene 5: The father ask for apology from the girl and give her medicine

Scene 6: Question the audience

After checking the availability of setting and characters in Goanimate website, with full of confidence, we presented our proposal.:( It was rejected due to several factors. Firstly, the use of heaven concept is not appropriate. Secondly, negative matters should not be exemplified to children although the moral message is there. Lastly, the mood of the video is too gloomy for children. This incident, personally have taught me to be more careful in my planning of content of video as my target audience are children.

Then, we started working on a new story which we called ‘Triple filter’. Want to know what is it about? Wait for my next blog...Till then, take care.

week 8

Yesterday, I was looking at my Proforma and I realised that I have sailed through more than half a semester. When I was registering for this course a few months ago (I was in my beloved IPIK when I was doing that), I was cursing myself for not mastering ICT skills. (This is because when I was doing my assignments in IPIK, I pushed all the ICT works which required me to use more than Microsoft Word, Microsoft Power Point Presentation and Microsoft Publisher to Haziq because he is better in it and because of my fear for ICT).I was aware of the content of this subject and I had a great fear that I might fail the course. But, after entering the class, my beliefs changed. I felt that although I am a late bloomer in term of ICT, I still can learn.
Where there is a will, there is a way. Pauline Kael
True enough. When I am evaluating what my learning in this course holistically now, I realise that it has moved me miles away from my past state. I have learnt to upload
, encode and convert
via internet skills tutorials, to edit pictures and photos through photo editing skills tutorials
and to edit audio recordings and songs through audio editing tutorials. Although I am having a great deal learning and exploring on the same time, I believe all these knowledge I have gained, will enhance my credibility to I become a teacher in future.

Hopefully, i would become one.

week 7

Have to edit a song and some recordings in a week time? ‘That’s a lot!’. This was the first thought which flushed together with blood into my brain. While taking a deep breath, I told myself.
Convert bad news to good news.
Bill Gates
After changing my mind set, I started working on them.

For the individual task, I was very confused on which song to edit because i hardly have any English songs in my collection. After thinking for an hour, I finally got the idea. I planned to edit the song which annoyed me very much a year ago with its chorus, the song sung by AKON by the title ‘Lonely’. Then, went to a website which I found when I was doing my tutorials for internet skills and downloaded the song before I started editing it. I would say that I had a great time editing it especially when I was exploring the software and when I was in my ‘trial and error’ stage. I tried to insert a few numbers into the ‘percentage change’ but the pitch went higher and higher until at one point I felt like giving up.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turnJust as the quote says, an idea struck my mind and I managed to accomplish my attempt. I tried using a ‘–‘ sign before the number and it worked. Success!!!


On Monday, I started working on my group task. It took hours for me to download all the three videos assigned on my shoulder and that really put me into boredom. Once I got all the recording downloaded, I started working on them. I managed to enhance the clarity of the recording by boosting the bass but even though I tried hard, I did not manage to remove some of the noise which existed in the recording. Until now, I could not find the solution for that problem.

While I was waiting for the recording to be downloaded, I spent a few minutes pondering on the usefulness of learning this skill to my future career as a teacher. I realised that learning this skill will empower me with the knowledge to edit the audio teaching materials which I might want to use in class. I may want to add some learning points into, throw some irrelevant and unsuitable content from and enhance the clarity of my audio. Besides that, this skill also will help me to bring in more authentic materials into classroom which will be very helpful for children in learning their oral communication skills and are of children’s interest. Therefore, I strongly believe that every teacher especially who is teaching the 21st century kids should be exposed to this

BE ETHICAL`

I went to a restaurant yesterday and ordered my food. When the waiter came and served my food, I thanked him. When I was paying for my food,
Waiter: Abang ni cikgu ke?
Me: Ye. Mana adik tahu?
Waiter: Ada gaya ckigu

That incident made me think. What have made him say so? Was it the way I talk? Or the way I behaved? Well, after pondering on it, I think it is my ethic or way of conduct/behaving. Then, it strokes my mind to write on this topic so here am I to share some knowledge I have gained through my knowledge.

The teaching profession, as many others, has its own code of ethics, which describes the process of grading students and teacher's behaviour in the classroom as well as outside the premises of the institution. It is one of few professions which evaluate the totality of behaviour of an individual and its potential influence on others, in this case – students. When discussing teacher's ethics, one must consider it on two separate plateaus. Firstly, the legal one, or so to say, administrative, where all aspects of teacher's behaviour, teaching procedures, and assessment of students are framed into a set of regulations drawn up by the Ministry of Education and by individual schools. And secondly, at the personal level, which includes a teacher's own attitude and conduct that is not otherwise prescribed by law or whose breach might never be detected or pursued in a grievance process. The teacher's code of ethics comprises his/her duties, responsibilities, attitude, honesty, and most of all - fairness.
What are the potential breaches of the teacher's code of ethics?
This is a list of a few in no particular order.
• Having inappropriate relationships with students (sexual, business partnership, “after school buddies”, drinking binges, etc)
• Violation of clearly stated school rules and educational procedures
• Failing to perform duties (no teaching, chaos, wrong attitude toward the teaching profession, etc)
• Imposing on students personal views unrelated to the subject of a lesson or promoting such, especially some that do not represent the main stream (extreme political or religious views, views on controversial social issues, interest of a particular social group, etc).
• Improper grading, partiality, and lack of fairness (based on who is liked, who is not; race, past performance, background, etc)
• Exposing students to embarrassment or disparagement (emotional or psychological harassment)
• Invading students' privacy
• Engaging students in unethical behaviour
• Accepting gifts and favours, quid pro quo (“for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and twists the words of the righteous")
• Deceiving students and their parents.
This list can go on, from violations of criminal laws, through commonly-accepted standards of good and evil, violation of public trust, to unprofessional job performance.
Among all these, I think most of us, no matter who we are, how old we are and how educated we are, are in risk of committing this particular ‘Crime’
- Failing to perform duties-
(no teaching, chaos, wrong attitude toward the teaching profession, etc)
because
Mistakes are a part of being human. Appreciate your mistakes for what they are: precious life lessons that can only be learned the hard way. Unless it's a fatal mistake, which, at least, others can learn from.
Al Franken, "Oh, the Things I Know", 2002
Therefore, I have told myself that I should monitor my deeds constantly so that I won’t those fatal crimes listed above. How about you all teachers out there?