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?

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.


from




and





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.