week 6

Photo editing is something completely new to me. Even in using Paint in my laptop, I used ask hundred and one question to my friends especially Haziq and Gowrey.
Hence, I have been struggling in exploring the software especially Adobe Photoshop CS3 and juggling in learning the skills. After many trials and errors, I think I managed to get hold of it. Here is a work of mine using Adobe Photoshop CS3 and FxFoto softwares.


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I enjoyed doing these but I would prefer to be given more time to explore the software and a brief lecture on what the functions are in and how to use the software.
Until we are told to make a power-point presentation for our E-Book, I did not see the importance of me learning the photo editing skills. When we were asked for a storyboard, ambitiously i came up with a story rooted on the theme of patriotism. Only when started to think about putting the pictures on slides after I got back home, I realised my ‘mistake’. As the saying goes, ‘there is no point crying over the split milk’ so I continued thinking of means to make my presentation a success. When I was about to give up, an idea stroked my mind. That is to design animation on Goanimate webpage and to use Photoscape software to print screen slides. After doing that, I cropped the pictures using Adobe Photoshop CS3 and make many other amendments using pen tool, brush tool, blush tool and eraser tool before I came up with those fine pictures on my slides. Only after that, I realised how useful these skills would be for me as a future teacher to teach. this is because I have experienced situations whereby I dropped some of my teaching points and ideas because I could not get the visual aids I wanted from the net. After learning these skills, I do not think I will face such situations anymore because I can edit what I got to be what I want. As people always say, "I have learn from my 'mistake'". Thank you for teaching this, ma'am.

week 5

In most of the classrooms in schools in Malaysia, we have average of 35-45 pupils. As teachers, we need to know how to control our pupils so that we can impart the knowledge we intend to successfully. One of the strategies you can use is by knowing your pupils respond to various kinds of teaching and learning activities. As teachers, we need to identify activities which stir and settle our pupils. The best way to identify is by trying and making a list. We also can categorise the activities into stir and settle by looking at form of responds it requires, either written or spoken. Identifying the types of involvement each activity requires would be the third mean. An activity may require mental engagement or actual occupation. Mental engagement activity requires thinking and involves emotion. An example would be guessing. Actual occupation activities are those which require concentration and involve physical. Once a teacher managed to identify the effect of each activity, the teacher should adapt the activities he/she has planned according to the pupils’ emotional state. For an example, pupils will be highly active after Physical Education. Therefore, if a teacher has planned an activity which has a stir effect, he/she should adapt it to a settle activity in order to control the class and get the kids into learning. On contrast, teachers should choose an activity that encourages pupils in a dull class. As teachers, we should not have the guilt of breaking our plans because no activity or particular sequence of activities is good if it is in the wrong place in terms of human reaction to the lesson.
Here are several tips for good classroom management:
1 Combine stir and settle activities
2. Combine mental engagement and actual occupation activity
3. Vary your activities for the same topics move systematically according to
skills
4. Take into account ‘fun’
5. Keep the lesson simple
6. Reuse material
7. Reuse ideas.

week 4

I entered for the fourth week lecture with full of expectations t learn something new but ‘Kwang! Kwang! Kwang!’ the server was down and we could not assess internet. So, we were asked to read chapter 2, 3 and 4 and do PowerPoint presentations on them. Hurmmm!
Chapter 2 is about identifying priorities and their implication. The writer suggests that primary schooling should place more importance on achieving primary goals rather than on content goals.
She identifies pleasures and confidence in using language, willingness to have ‘a go’ and daringness to communicate as attitude goals which are different from usual language teaching goals which are content goals such and structure, topics and functions. The writer also emphasises on authenticity and interactive of task whereby she believes that language teaching should provide room for children to observe, analyse and fit into language use. Therefore, she proposes that language should be used for real communication and for genuinely giving and receiving real messages. Pupils in most second language seem to uphold a wrong conception that they need to understand every word used in order to learn the language because of teachers’ emphases on it. In reality, children only need to understand the gist as we are dealing more on whole message. Therefore, teachers should stop emphasizing on discrete language teaching. Instead they should check the overall idea and pupils’ facial expression to judge pupils’ understanding. Teachers also should know how to treat pupils’ mistake without causing any humiliation to pupils. This is because young learners are vulnerable to criticism and it might kill their positive self concept and confidence to learn and use the language. Language teaching can be done in two ways namely language exercises into real exchange and language lessons through the medium of the target language itself. For the first mean, a teacher need to combine real communication and restricted materials to teach language whereas in the second mean, teacher need to use simple language, facial expression, translating method and demonstration strategy. As a whole, this chapter talks about teaching objective and methods, assessment strategies and correct error correcting ways.

week 3

Realisation!!!

“PrtSc”

Though I have been using computers for the past four years, I have never realised that such key exist on my laptop keyboard. The third class of resources served as an eye-opener for me to become aware of the existence of the key and its use. Thanks, ma’am.

The task of the day was to download the last song of Michael Jackson. Frankly typing, I have never downloaded any English song before and I was completely lost when the lecturer asked to download search the song in the Google search engine and download the song. Luckily, there were some good-hearted people who shared their suggestion of the webpage aloud. TQ buddies. From that, I learnt how much peers would be helpful in me exploring and conquering the ICT skills.

After sometime searching, I got the webpage my friends suggested and proceeded with the downloading process. “That’s a shortcut!” The sentence moved via the air and entered my ears before rang an alarm in my brain.

What does the lecturer mean by that???

Go and check!!!


A simple monologue started to take place in my heart and the fear of making mistake urged me to approach the friend who got the comments. OMG!!! All these while, I have been doing that and it is not the correct way of downloading. I should not press on the song before left click and ‘Save target as’. Luckily, my intuition forced me and again thanks for that enlightenment ma’am.

After saving the steps on word document, we were asked to put it on PowerPoint presentation. I like the idea of saving it on PowerPoint and uploading it on space. But, I feel that we will be merely adding to the global warming by wasting papers to print out the assignment later. I may sound like a real Mother Earth lover but actually I am not. Just that, I feel that it is a pure waste to print and throw them later. Hurm....

The class then continued with presentation on last week’s topic. Some of the presentation brought up issues, examples and theories which never strike my mind when I read the chapter in the alone in the book. So, thanks guys for sharing your knowledge and ideas.

week 2 leaners characteristics and office work

The excitement to learn ICT created by the lecturer in the previous lesson drove me to the second class on time. We were informed that we got some ‘office job’ to do but before that, we are asked to read and comprehend Chapter 1.

Chapter 1 addressed six characteristics, skills and instincts, pupils bring with them to language classroom. The first characteristic is children’s ability to grasp learning. According to Susan Halliwell, children start to learn to understand non-verbal cues much earlier before they learn language. They learn how to interpret message or instruction by adults to them by non-verbal cues and develop language ability later. Therefore, she suggested second language teachers to expose children to the language so that they will learn the second language as they learn their first language. In my opinion, I believe children will pick up language if they are constantly exposed to it because all language shares some common features. But, the pupils may need some help from teachers to correct their misconceptions.

Second features of young language learners are they are creative in using limited language resources. They may make-up their own vocabulary and rules. We, as teachers, should understand their journey of exploring language and guide them. We also need to create the urge to communicate in them and ensure that their learning environment is safe because humanists believes that success in learning only occurs when learners have positive attitude to learning.

The third quality that pupils bring to their classroom is their capacity for indirect learning. Susan believes that language learning need not only takes place through direct learning but also indirect learning. I agree with Susan because as Krashen suggested in Acquisition-Learning Hypothesis (monitor Model 1982) pupils can learn and acquire the language. Acquisition will take place with no conscious attention on learning whereas learning occurs through conscious attention to form and rule of learning. Therefore, real work should be set so that learning and acquisition take place.

The fourth trait of young language learners are their instinct for play and fun. We, teachers should understand their nature of liking play and fun and manipulate it so that learning tales place in the best condition. We can use games to teach language.

The fifth attribute of pupils is their imagination. Children are rich in their imagination and creativeness. Therefore, we as teachers should design activities which promote their imagination and ask them to share their ideas so that they develop their language white communicating their thoughts.

The last characteristic pupils bring with them into language classroom is their instinct for interaction and talk. Since we are aware that children love to talk, we should vary the mode of interaction in the classroom so that we encourage them to use the language and would not have a hard time managing them.

Then, the office work started. We were asked to segregate our seniors’ assignments according to the topics we are going to learn starting from next week. There are all together five topics namely internet skills, video editing, audio editing, picture editing and software. Out of these five topics, I would say that I have only mastered half of the internet skills. Therefore, I have a lot more to learn and I am eagerly waiting to conquer ICT so that I can utilize the knowledge in preparing my teaching aids later.

week 1

Just to get started
Firstly, thank you ma'am. You are giving me time to explore and learn, not like the other subject in which the lecturer moved like bullet train. Before this, I just hate ICT but now i'm slowly liking it. I wish the lectures will be paced at this rate so that I can cope with it. I have no idea of what a blog is before this but now I think i have a rough idea of it. Hope to learn more new stuffs which will equip me to become a better teacher in future.