FINAL REFLECTION

1. What I like about blogging?

Blogging gives me the opportunity to share information and knowledge with other friends. We can share opinion and give comments to other people. Besides, it enables us to reflect the things learned in class and indirectly, it reflects my understanding about the content of the lesson taught in class earlier. Plus, by blogging, the teacher will be able to know the weaknesses of his or her lesson from the pupils' comments and reflection about the lesson. Thus, this enables teachers to evaluate his or her teaching and learning approach in order to suit pupils' needs.

2. What I do not like about blogging?

Since blogging is a medium where pupils can write anything that they like, sometimes, the content might offend other people and they might give the wrong interpretation about information to other people as it is only opinion. So, the content in blogging is not 100% true as it is only opinion given by the blog writer.

3. What have I gained from blogging eg. Language skills, improved fluency, critical thinking, improved thought processes, technology skills etc.

Blogging has improved my critical thinking as I need to think critically to reflect on the lesson. Besides, blogging improves my language skills and fluency. Plus, it improves my technology skills a lot. I never had any experience of creating and writing a blog before. Doing it for this course allowed me to be an independent learner as I managed to explore blogging on my own =)

4. How?

Reflecting and thinking of the doubts about the content of the lesson had improved my critical thinking skills and thought processes. I needed to question the areas that I did not understand and maybe search for the answer on my own. This, again, had developed me to be an independent learner. Plus, it indirectly, enhanced my technology skills as I had to search for information in the internet and designing my own blog creatively.

5. What I like about the course?

I like this course as it introduced me with the wonderful and creative way of using and developing resources for ESL primary classroom that I had never think of before. I admitted that this course have developed me to be a more technology literate person compared to the way I was before. I enjoyed learning new knowledge and explore new skills such as photo editing, audio editing, video editing, designing e-book and web publisher.
It was a life long learning and it meant a lot to me.

6. What I do not like about the course?

Honestly, the only thing that I am not happy about this course is that we were given too many tasks to be done.

7. What I have learnt from the course?

I have learned technology skills especially in photo editing, audio editing and video editing from this course. Besides, I have learnt downloading, converting, encoding and others.

8. What I do not expect but have learnt from the course?

Animation, Web Publisher.

9. What I expect but have not learnt from the course?

Nothing, I guess..

10.If I can change anything about the course, state what it is and explain.

a) Reduce the amount of tasks given to us. There were too many tasks given to us. They were quite difficult to complete and time-consuming especially when uploading our product. It took us a lot of time and even some of us did not manage to upload their work.
b) No last minute changes in instruction for the task and assignments. This is important to avoid confusion and frustration (maybe).

EDUCATIONAL SOFTWARE

What is educational software?

Educational software is software designed for use in school classrooms. It also includes computer games with learning values such as
SimCity series, Freddie Fish and others.

It can increase children's knowledge while creating a positive experience that encourages them to learn. This is because children love to play and learn indirectly in a joyful way. Besides that, educational software encourages active participation among the pupils as they need to engage with the activity while using the software. Thus, it creates a non-threatening environment for the pupils and lowers their affective filter during the teaching and learning activity in the classroom. This is important in order to build confidence and a sense of success among the pupils while learning the language. This is when the pupils manage to get the correct answer and obtain high marks while playing the game.

Moreover, educational software is dynamic and mobile as children can use it at home, in their own time. It can embed learning specific elements through repeated exposure and practice, and very importantly, provide instant feedback on performance. Furthermore, the learning value in good educational software resides in developing both the child's patience and ability to understand and follow instruction, developing problem solving skills, and gaining confidence in navigating software on a computer.

In order to use it in classroom, teachers should choose the right software that suits pupils’ level of challenge for the learner so that it is not too tricky and too easy for them. This is crucial so that the learning objectives of the lesson can be achieved successfully.

All the best!

Since we are still in the mood of Raya, we basically do our own work and continue doing the lesson plan assignment. I actually did halfway through the assignment except that I haven't done the teaching aids.

Unluckily, only two of my group members for this assignment were present today,Hafizah and I. The other three (Sakina, Mukmin and Kasturi) were absent. So, we decided to do our own work, searching for the materials and continue doing the lesson plan.

I guess I need to start doing my teaching aids now..

All the best!

NEW TASK..

23rd September 2008

Today, we received another new task which was ‘Analyzing Research Papers’. I believe this task is quite tough and it is like an assignment, not just a task. We need to search for the research materials and it must not be similar with someone else’s. That’s make it even tougher, I think. There are 78 of us and is it possible for all of us to get different research materials? I wonder..

This task was to be done in pairs and we need to search for two research materials that discuss or report on the research in using teaching aids in the classroom. We were required to fill in the table that was prepared by the lecturer regarding the research materials that we have found. There are five main aspects to be given emphasis from the research material which are:

1. Introduction to the research
2. Research quotation
3. Research methodology
4. Analysis of the data
5. Findings

Today’s class was quite boring since we have to listen to 8 group’s presentations. That was enough to make all of us lose attention and started to chat. We were just being normal..can’t stand listening to presentations for hours.

My group had presented on the topic of ‘Selecting and Developing Teaching/Learning Materials’ and I had to present my part on the subtopic of ‘Why do we use materials/ What are materials for?’
Based on the article, it is mentioned that “textbooks are too inflexible to be used directly as instructional material” (Allwright, 1990). However, O’Neill (1990) argued that textbooks enable pupils to review and prepare their lessons, efficient in terms of time and money and allow for adaptation and improvisation.

In my opinion, teachers need to be innovative and know when and how to use textbooks or other materials effectively in their teaching.

Web Publisher

We managed to submit our Assignment 2: Assessing and Manipulating videos for the ESL classroom this week.

Ma'am Foziah had introduced us another skill in using Microsoft Publisher. Honestly, I do not have any experience of using it and I'm not familiar with it. However, after exploring it myself, I found that MIcrosoft Publisher is very useful. We can design many things using the software. For example, business card, flyers, invitation card, newsletter, posters, etc.

For this week's task, we were required to work in pairs and design business card, flyers, invitation card, newsletter and posters to be included in our portfolio.

HOwever, I was wondering the importance of learning this skills. Why do we need to study this skill? Does it help us in teaching English later?

9th September 2008

I had a better view of our assignments and tasks for this course in this week's class. Mdm Foziah had shown us the content to be included in our portfolio.
The criteria to be highlighted in the portfolio are quality or quantity, creativity, extensiveness, updates and presentation. The portfolio must be colour-coded. Blue is for the tasks or products done in class while Red is for the extra products that we produced other than the tasks set by the lecturer. It the skills that we had learnt throuhout the course that includes photo editing, audio editing, video editing and downloading or internet skills.

Now, I realized that this course has reallly given me the opportunity to gain and develop new knowledge and skills every week. Starting from internet skills until designing e-book for teaching and learning activities. I love this course even though it was quite difficult for me at the beginning (because I'm not a so-called techno savvy persn)but it I enjoyed it. I love gaining and share new knowledge with others. That's what learning means. 'Sharing is caring'.

Our class for this week was basically the presentation by groups on topics of:
--> being realistic
--> working with a coursebook
--> working without a coursebook

Unluckily, I need to present my part on the topic of 'Being realistic'for my group. I admit that I am not good at delivering presentation in front of the classroom, what more that I had not done any presentations for months!But I had a little faith in me and managed to present it smoothly to class. I hope my friends can undertsand what I was presenting that day.=)

Be realistic

Be realistic. It was the topic that I had learnt this week. Actually, each group was given different topic and my group need to summarize on the topic of 'Be realistic'.

To make things easier, we had divided the subtopics to be read among ourselves and my friend, Sakina and I need to summarize on this subtopic.

Based on the article given, it was mentioned that teachers should be realistic in choosing activities to suit the pupils' mood. They need to consider pupils' emotion while conducting the teaching and learning activities so that learning can take place effectively as they are enjoying and participating actively during the lesson.

Besides that, teachers need to adjust the middle of the lesson to fit the class mood. For example, if the pupils are restless and bored, the teacher ought to conduct some fun listening practices or games like 'Simon Says' to rejuvenate the pupils towards the lesson. Yes, I agree that teachers have to be creative and inovative while conducting a lesson to ensure full participation and focus among the pupils towards the lesson. As we already know, children have short attention span, so, teachers need to be realistic enough to attract pupils' attention from beginning until the end of the lesson.

Moreover, teachers have to be flexible in teaching. They need to adjust the time allocation while conducting certain teaching and learning activities in the classroom. For instance, they can shorten the time allotted for an activity if the pupils have lost their interest in doing the activity. This is to avoid pupils from being boring and start to make noise in the classroom.

Furthermore, teachers ought to change a pair work activity into a whole class activity to enable full participation among the pupils and to avoid some pupils from being bored since they are not participating.

In addition, teachers need to keep the lesson simple, reuse materials and idea to suit with the pupils' interest.

New task

We were given another new task this week. It was designing activities for four language skill tasks which are listening, reading, writing and speaking. We were required to work in group of fours and each group member needs to decide on their topic. My group members, who are Nurul Huda Pauzi, Azliza Ramlee and Kamarul Hafizan had decided to choose the topic of "Parts of Body". Luckily, each group member only need to choose one skill and design one stage of the lesson. I decided to design listening skill while Liza is doing reading skill,Huda is doing writing and Kamarul is doing speaking skill.

Luckily, I've done with my materials for this task. I chose pre-listening stage where the teacher basically introduce vocabulary for parts of body, namely; 'eye', 'ear', 'nose', 'mouth', 'hand', 'arm', 'shoulder' and 'leg'. I have designed an e-book to be used in this stage and I hope I can upload it in ADEC successfully.

To all my group members..wish you all the best!!

E-BOOK

E-book? Another new knowledge that I will be learning in this course. Honestly, I did not really familiar with e-book before and I did not know how to do it.

What is e-book? That was the big question lingering in my mind before I entered the class that day. Well, "an e-book (for electronic book: also ebook: also ecobook) is the digital media equivalent of a conventional printed book. Such documents are usually read on personal computers, or on dedicated hardware devices known as e-book readers or e-book devices." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-book)

After I knew the meaning of e-book, I personally think that it might bring positive points in developing and using resources in primary classroom. It integrates with the use of technology, user-friendly, creative and practical to be used as teaching aids for teaching and learning in primary classroom.

Thank God Mdm Foziah had shown us some examples of e-book that her students did for their assignments because I did not manage to find examples of e-book from the internet. At first, I thought it was very complicated to design or create an e-book. However, after viewing examples of e-book shown by the lecturer, I found that it was actually not that difficult to create an e-book. They only used Microsoft Power Point to design their e-book. So simple. In my opinion, their e-books are very practical and suitable to be used in primary classrooms. We need to consider some factors in designing an e-book. For example, use colourful pictures to attract pupils’ attention, use simple language that suits pupils’ level of proficiency, repetition as the reinforcement of learning to pupils and fun.

However, I was wondering how far it can help pupils in their learning? Is it an effective tool in teaching and learning after all? And how can a teacher ensure that?

Uploading Pair Work Video

Unfortunately, the problem of uploading video in ADEC happened again. It happened to my partner and I. I had spent two days to send the video to my partner, Mu’min and another two days to upload it in Youtube. It made my holiday not a ‘holiday’ anymore. Yes, that’s what we call this as sacrifice as a student. It’s okay, Faizah. Let’s think positive about this.


Throughout publishing the video entitled “LIVE LIFE TO THE FULLEST!”, I had gained a very meaningful lesson of friendship, faith, cooperation and most importantly, PASSION. Thankfully, my friends were always there for me when I need help and they even recommended my partner and I some options to overcome our problem. Thank you Hafiz, Iman, Fikri, Yana and Komathi. You’ve been really helpful.


Our first problem was that I couldn’t send the video to my partner, Mu’min, through Yahoo Messenger or E-mail. This is because the size of the video was too big, which was 824mb in AVi format! After being advised by my friend, Yana, I managed to save the video in a smaller size in mpg format that made it into only 39.9mb from Power Director (the software that I used to make the video). Lucklily, the video had been sent successfully to my partner and he managed to upload it in Youtube that Thursday night. However, another problem occurred when the video that we had uploaded can only be played for 8 seconds!


Both of us did not know what else we should do to overcome this problem. Thank God Hafiz was there to help us. He suggested me to save the video into wmv format since it will make the video size even smaller. Then, I need to upload the video in 4shared.com for Mu’min to download it in his laptop so that he can upload the video in Youtube since the internet connection at my house was so slow (dial-up).


I wished for a better day on the following day, which was Friday. The day of the pair work video submission! I decided to go to the cyber café to upload the video in Youtube. Both of us had tried many times to upload our video in Youtube and finally at 4.10 p.m, the awaited moment of all, we managed to upload it in Youtube successfully! Phew! What a relief! I was so grateful that we managed to upload it before midnight..

VIDEO EDITING

Our task for this week was 'VIDEO EDITING'. I was quite relieved when our lecturer, Mdm Foziah said that video editing was easier than audio editing.

However, the task for this topic was quite different from before since we were given two tasks on 'Video Editing'. The first task must be done in group of fives. Each group was given different episode of 'SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE' that need to be edited. My group, (Wai, Dila,Zarne and Mu'min) had to edit episode 7 of 'SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE'. The episode contains 4 parts and we need to join the parts and make it as one video. Sounds interesting, right?

On the other hand,the second task must be done in pairs (a lady and a gentleman). We were required to make a 4-minutes video that can arouse 'happiness' among the viewers. The video will be published in Youtube. I found that this task is more interesting than the first task because it is simpler and we can do anything that we like using our own creativity to publish a great video. I'm doing the task with my friend, Mu'min. After discussion, we decided to make a video with the theme of 'PEACE'. However, our ideas had been rejected by our lecturer because the theme was common and it talks about something that people already knew. So, she suggested us to do a video based on the theme of happiness. Finally, we agreed to do a video with the theme of 'LIVE LIFE TO THE FULLEST! which is basically on happiness.

Luckily, Mdm Foziah showed us two examples of video editing done by our senior Cohort 1 (miss them). It gave us some ideas of making a nice video. Their videos were simple but they managed to arouse my interest to watch them from the beginning till the end. Congratulations seniors for the great job!
I wish I can do that for my video!

To all my friends. good luck for your video editing and enjoy yourselves doing it!

AUDIO EDITING..another new knowledge that I am going to learn in this course.
It sounds very interesting to me as I am a music lover, but I have zero knowledge about audio editing. Never mind, it’s ok. This is the time for me to gain as much knowledge as I can to learn something that is very new for me. Besides, it is beneficial for me, as future teacher to learn this skill, as teachers should be creative, flexible and versatile.

However, I was wondering how audio editing can help teachers in their teaching and learning. Is it really important for teachers to do audio editing since there are many children songs that are already suitable for children and do not need to be edited. After having a deep thought over it, I believe that teachers should do audio editing only if the song that they choose for teaching and learning is not suitable enough for children. For example, a song with some rapping in it. So, teachers should do some audio editing on it.

What do you think?

My problem in doing audio editing is that I do not know which software that I can use to edit songs. Thank you, Ma’am Foziah for providing us notes in ADEC about audio editing. At least it gives me some ideas about this audio editing.

This is the free sound editor website:
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

This is the link to audio editing software : http://audacity.sourceforge.net/


Actually, we can do many things by audio editing. We can edit voice, consonant, background music (for example, drums), audio recording and others. Sounds interesting, right?

There is also shareware software designed to record streaming audio from online web based radio stations and audio sources. For instance,

AudioSpin Streaming Media Recorder

WMA/MP3 Recorder Professional

and Easy Hi-Q Recorder

So, to all my friends good luck for your audio editing.

FINALLY...

This is my very first attempt in doing photo editing. At first, I found it difficult to do photo editing using Adobe Photoshop as I had never explored it before. But as I was learning and exploring the software, I realized that we can actually do loads of things using Adobe Photoshop. Thanks Khairil for teaching me the basic functions and application in Adobe Photoshop.

Actually, doing this photo editing took me hours and it requires PASSION. Lot of PASSION, especially using the magnetic lassoo tool. I tried many times to crop the photos using magnetic lasso tool and I mostly spend my photo editing doing that! That was quite tiring..but towards the end of it, I began to love doing the photo editing. It was actually fun.

After doing the photo editing, I was excited to do more photo editing and start to search for photos that I can edit and create a new story behind it. I bet it's going to be fun!

Hope I can edit more photos and make my own collection of photo editing..but most importantly, I need to really explore Adobe Photoshop so that I can do wonderful touch on the photos.

Adobe Photoshop Tutorial Links

I came across these websites that I found very useful to learn more adobe photoshop:

-->http://www.adobephotoshoptutorials.com/free/index.php?cat=14

-->http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/01/10/adobe-photoshop-tutorials-best-of/

-->http://www.photoshopsupport.com/tutorials/jennifer/tips-cs2-type-tools.html

-->http://www.tutorialized.com/tutorials/Photoshop/Effects/1

>http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/photoshopcs2lessons/Photoshop_CS2_Basics_Online_Course_Index_of_Lessons.htm

Photo Editing

Photo editing..it is something new for me as I had never experienced doing it before. I knew about it before but I haven't really tried to explore the software especially Adobe Photoshop and I regretted now. However, after listening to Puan Foziah's lecture today, I realized that I need to learn lots of things especially in editing photos. That's what I love about this course..gaining new knowledge and developing myself to be a more technology-literate person. Thank you, ma'am for delivering the knowledge to us.

I love the examples shown to us on photo editing. It was creative and had really caught my eyes. I was wondering how they could do such a wonderful touch on the photos. It can influence the perspectives of people about the photos. So, that is what photo editing can do! As a saying goes "A picture is worth a thousand words". I wish I could master doing photo editing at the end of this course.

Before this, I was wondering the importance of learning photo editing in this course. I feel like taking a technology course, not TESL course since most of the courses offerred here are mainly related with technology. But now, I realized that this is actually really important for us, as future teachers since we are living in modern era. So, teachers in future are expected to make full use of the technology in their teaching and learning process to expose students with the technology and create a condusive learning environment for learning. There might be less use of traditional display sheet, flashcards and others in future teaching and learning. Photo editing will be the main instrument to design modern and meaningful resources in future teaching.

Finally, the task for this week is photo editing. It is something new for me but I will take this as a challenge. Hope that I can make a good beginning in photo editing.

'A Picture is Worth a Thousand Word'

‘A Picture is Worth a Thousand Word’. That was what we basically learned in today’s class, which was PHOTO EDITING. Based on my previous knowledge, photo editing is a process where we edit the brightness, sharpness, redeye and blemishes on the photo using a software such as ACDSee Pro and Adobe Photoshop CS2. Our resourceful lecturer, Puan Foziah had advised us to use software that is easy and user-friendly in editing photos. Actually, I am not really good in editing photos but I just learned and explored using the photo editing software last night. It was fun and I enjoyed it. After all, we can do many wonderful things using the software. Then I realized that I began to love this course as it introduced me with new knowledge especially in using technology which I had superficial knowledge on =)

Unfortunately, we received another group assignment which was Assignment 3. For this assignment, we need work with new group members which were selected by draw lots. I love this idea of grouping instead of we, doing it online (that was a bit chaotic). Then, we need to prepare teaching aids for teaching primary classroom,i.e:

· E-book
· Interactive storybook
· Windows movie maker and power point videoclips
· Dialogue using bubbles in pictures, cartoons
· Photo viewer


Here are the steps that we need to do for this assignment:
1. choose a group
2. choose a topic
3. prepare a storyboard
4. search for pictures
5. prepare the materials

The other part of today’s lecture was conducted with presentations by every group on different subtopics after a lecture delivered by our lecturer earlier. Each group had to simplify their topic and present it to class. I love this kind of learning as it makes things easier and simple for us to absorb.

Overall, from today’s class, I had learned that children are concrete learners, imaginative and they love learning through exploration and demonstration. So, teachers need to be creative to design interesting and interactive teaching aids to be used in classroom so that conducive and meaningful learning environment can be established.

Here are some websites that I would recommend for photo editing:

>>www.webshots.com
>>www.pdictionary.com
>>http://wigflip.com/saywhat

Another 'Lucky' Day

Today’s class was not as interesting as before. The lecture was good but registering group for our assignment was quite chaotic. This was because we did not have enough computers for all of us to assess the internet. Plus, some of the computers were not in a good condition. In my opinion, it would be a good idea if wireless internet with router is used in the computer laboratory so that those who did not manage to get a computer in the laboratory can bring their own laptop and assess the internet easily. Another suggestion is that, the class should be divided into two classes that will be held at MK1 and MK2. This enables all of us to assess the internet on our own without sharing computers with others. As for me, sharing computers for doing practical activities is not effective in learning. This is because we need to have hands-on experience of operating the computers in learning this course that mainly requires us to ‘play’ with the technology. It would be difficult for some of us who are not really good in using the technology as they do not have the opportunity to use the computer. However, I did learn something new from today’s class such as storing, encoding, saving and downloading.

1) downloading- keepvid, save2pc, video downloader, real player II, limewire,
flashget, orbit downloader, ares, download accelerator plus,
internet download manager.
2) encoding - viva encoder, flv converter, super converter, transcoding tool,
daemon tool, alcohol 120%
3) saving - hard disk, thumb drive and external disk
4) storing - CD, DVD.

Unluckily, the sad part of today’s class was when I was being yelled by someone. I wrongly joined the particular group that the person wanted to join for our group assignment. I believed that it was quite rude to yell at someone like that for the mistake I have done. Plus, we already knew each other for four years and the person should talk to me personally for the mistake that I have done…Moreover, I am a tolerate person and I can accept if the person talked to me personally about the problem. Luckily, I managed to join the other group and I was grateful that my group members were very supportive and most importantly, accepting me as their group member =) I hope my group can produce a good product for our assignment later =) Wish me luck.

Colour up Your Teaching with Own Designed Resources

PBEY 3101. Using and Developing Resources for the ESL Classroom. At first, I thought this course is about using and developing resources such as story books, songs, posters, brochure, etc for the ESL classroom. Using technology to design own resources has never came across my mind before I entered this class for the first time. I gained a lot of knowledge about technology in this class. For instance, websites that can be used to download movie, songs and converting files which some of them I don’t know before.

After listening to the lecture delivered by our lecturer, Puan Foziah Mahmood about using technology to design our own resources for ESL classroom, I realized that we can do many things by using technology. We can be creative to design our own resources which I find very interesting ; for example, audio editing to create a minus one, using movie maker, editing picture and others as our teaching aids for ESL classroom. I love it and began to think that this course is really exciting. Even though I am not so-called ‘techno savvy’, I bet I will learn many practical things in this course especially in using technology.

I agree that teachers need to be inovative, proactive and creative enough to colour up their teaching and learning activities in ESL classroom in order to make learning more fun and attractive.

Our lecturer, Puan Foziah Mahmood is simple, straightforward and she is very technology literate. Even I, myself does not know the largest composition of the latest pendrive in the market compared to her. That was quite embarrassing.
I can’t wait to attend the next class and hope to learn and gain more valuable knowledge all along the way.