sPongeBob SquarE PanTs vs. PaTrick THE StarFish

THE PRE...
VIRUS ATTACK!!!Literally, I mean, or biologically, on my low-immunity body. Have been coughing all the while as I write this week's entry. Gosh, and I have lost my appetite! Observe, in class, that all I can eat is this packet of sweet-sour orange peels which I share with my friends (and Mr. Sam!).
Throughout the past few weeks, I have been trying to discover whether there is any possible way to upload a video clip here itself, on lapalace. Answer is, not possible, unless one knows and understands CSS coding or even html or java scripting, and perhaps there will be still some degree of possibility to have video clips on the blogs. My next plan? Maybe trying to find a coding expert. I know my limitations, just got a headache after reading some java related scripting. I need the professionals!
I would like to dedicate this week's post to all the readers of lapalace, some maybe by a fluke happen to click on lapalace and also to some who have always been keeping up with my writings. Much gratitude to the Prof. who has never failed to mention lapalace and blissful life @ emily_chim.blogspot.com in the class for giving credits on these constant and with updated reflections blogs. I am just doing my work wholeheartedly and never willingly to compromise with procastination. I never wish to return to my lazy self.

THE WHILE...
It was a Wednesday. I have always loved Wednesday since the start of the semester as I feel Wednesday always ended so fast. Perhaps it is because I have PKEY 3101 class. And this week's Wednesday Mr. Sam had to hurry me out of MK2 as I was still glued to my seat in front of my flat-screen computer.
For those of you who have watched the popular (and my favourite, and also Justin Timberlake of ex-NSYNC member) Spongebob Square Pants, have you ever wonder why Patrick the starfish (who is also Spongebob's best pal) is always so silly or even brainless? Well, as one of my friend pointed out, real-life starfish are brainless. They have no brains! Perhaps there is some truth in this but I do not think sponges have brains, too. So, why does Spongebob always the more sensible and creative one? Again, I wonder...

With that, let's lead into today's class. Intelligence vs. creativity. To the extreme, Patrick the starfish would be the best example of a zero-intelligence entity. The squishy starfish (I have one of him hanging and dangling in my car) and his frequent blank stare to the sea floor and stupidity often generates laughter from the young to the old, though. On the other hand, Spongebob would demonstrate the creativity, most obviously, by creating his under the sea house out of a pineapple (I never would have thought of that!). A kid would say:"Spongebob is definitely smarter than Patrick! Patrick lives under a big semi-sphere rock!"

Indubitably, one would need a certain extent of wisdom to have creativity. What knowledge that one would be creative with if one have nil intelligence? The Prof. asked each person in the class to rate ourselves on the scale of 10 of how intelligent or creative we are. Affected by my sense of modesty, I rated myself as 5 on the intelligence and 6 on the creativity. Quite reasonably, as this put me twice as more intlligent than Patrick the starfish, if he was the example of zero intelligence. I do admit that sometimes I may not be that bright, especially on things related to numbers. You may tell me that this number plus this number and minus this number and then divide by two would be the amount that I owe you on lunch, but I would stare at you blankly and go: "Huh? What's the last amount again?" Guess that's my weak point, logical and mathematical intelligence.
Gardner (1989: found in Mok Soon Sang, 2006) explained that every human inherits eight different types of intelligence. He was the guy behind the famous multiple intelligence theory. We tend to focus on the cognitive intelligences such as linguistic intelligence and logical-mathematical intelligence, especially in education nowadays. Non-cognitive intelligences tends to loss emphasis, such as music and kinaesthetic. Thus, teachers should pay attention to the different intelligences of pupils so as to promote an overall development, as being highlighted in the Malaysian National Educational Philosophy (NPE).

David Copperfield? David Blaine? No, it's the Prof.
The Prof. unexpectedly showed us an 'abracadabra' and we were in few minutes bewitched by her few seconds of magic show. She took a book, first flip, and all we saw was blank pages. Second flip, and all we saw was pictures and on the third, we saw all words. How did she do that? The wise Guru Melwindar to the rescue. She revealed the trick that with just the correct cut at the sides of the paper, for instance, by cutting on the top edge of the papers one would be able to flip the pages that show the desired pages, such as only the picture pages. The 'abracadabra' hit me with an idea: to make lessons fun, teachers can learn some trick which in return, the teacher would gain pupils' precious attention in class, as being done by the Prof. Before this the class was in a near chaos and during the magic everyone was intensely watching her in action.
The lecture continued with the class being marketing officers. We need to promote our magical trick book by coming out with an attractive title, one-liner, and a jingle. During the process, each of us indirectly was demonstrating our own unique intelligence. Fatihah was evidently good in her musical aptitude while I could never imagine winning the laughter and applause from the class by standing at the front, miming. That's said, I never would mind any Hollywood directors and producers signing me up for their Hollywood blockbusters. Do email me at kylin11@hotmail.com or even kylinkho@gmail.com just in case my hotmail add got overcrowded (who knows one day I would be that popular!). At the mean time, I think I am going to stick to my future, more prominent prospect as a primary school teacher (and I am proud of it!).

The POST that relates back to THE PRE...
"Xue Ru Ni Shui Xing Zhou, Bu Jing Zhe Tui." (Sorry for not typing this in Chinese, I don't have the Chinese Star Software at the moment.) That's a famous sayings in Chinese that the Prof. flashed on the SmartBoard at the beginning of the lecture. Learning is like rowing a boat upstream, if you don't keep up with learning, you will fall back. Just two days ago, I and my partner Sin Yuan were trying to find related article on our EL subject on Korean culture in the library. For some reasons, we could not find useful resources from the main library and we ended up at the Peringatan Za'ba library. Being first timers to the library, we firstly got lost at the Pengajian Asia library (which we thought quite odd at first why the books are all in Chinese and Tamil not knowing we are not at the right place). Then, when we finally found our way to Za'ba, the librarians at first asked us to go up to first floor while the materials that we needed were actually at the lower ground floor. Once at the correct place, we could not find the correct shelves to where our references were. A thought of giving up flash through my mind. I was so tired and I had a terrible fever few nights before and I was still sick. I clenched my fists and said to myself never was I going to give up! One of the reason was we were very desperate for more information to write the research paper for our EL subject. That was when miracle happened. I saw there were more shelves on the right corner of the library and miraculously I walked to the exact shelf where the book that I was looking was there.

In my own dictionary, the phrase "giving up" shall no more exist.

References:
Mok, Soon Sang, (2006). Education Studies for KPLI (Theme 1): Educational Psychology. Multimedia-ES Resources Sdn Bhd:Selangor.