Wednesday, October 11, 2006

EVERYBODY getting tips…

HEAD wise…
As I was writing this post, a muscle on my neck connecting to the back of my head is constantly twitching. I was generously spreading the Indonesian “Balsam Gosok” on to my neck and now I smelt like my grandma: camphor-ish. Towards the end of the semester my health: body, soul and mind usually suffer due to heavy work load. My vitality and creative juices were running dry. I recalled back to my previous posts such as “Sounds kinda fishy in here” and I was surprised that the post actually had a lot of energy in there: wittiness and critical appraisal. I was desperately in need of long holidays and I could hang out at Sematan Beach swimming and jelly-fish kayaking (meaning one could kayak while watching jelly fish floating nearby…SWEET~) by the sea. I was looking forward to my dear friends’ visit to Kuching in November (Sin Yuan, Mei Ju, Jia Wen, Hooi Woon and her friend). Can’t wait! Woo-hoo!

With the coming holidays as motivation, writing this post seemed to be an ease. However, I lost my whole file half-way writing the post and this was my second draft re-writing the whole thing. No worries, I would still write no matter what. Never say die attitude (what a terrorist).

Like a superstar…
Ms. Sarah from the previous class called me while I was taking my evening nap. I was too exhausted trying to finish up my work and therefore fell asleep. I tried getting up earlier as there was too much to do but I just could not. Sarah’s call served as a wake up call for me and I appreciate it so much (and this evening I had my mum to give me a wake up call. I wonder who’s calling me tomorrow evening…hmm…). Sarah wished to interview me the next morning regarding the integration of blog into teaching and to tell the truth I was not used to people making appointments with me and interviewing me. I felt even greater that Sarah actually printed out the copy of my blog for the interview. Thanks for your support! She asked me a few questions that I had never thought of before like why did I put certain pictures in the particular parts and why did I include a smiley in the middle of the post. Erm…for decorations? To express myself better pictorially? Anyways, it had been a pleasure talking to her. Sarah was an ex-St. Theresan (famous all-girl school in Kuching) and she reminded me of my best mate who was also an ex-St. Theresan studying in Russia.

Sarah’s friend who was also a teacher doing post grad studies came up to me after class and giving me a hand-shake. She told me that she enjoyed reading lapalace. A gush of wind blew my face and I imagined myself having photo shoot for the November 2006 issue of Vogue magazine. Like a superstar…Or was I thinking too much? Hahaha…joking only lah…

SERIOUS business…
Perhaps for the PKEY3101 class, the major concern for students was regarding the up-coming test next week (well, besides the assignment). The Prof. was indirectly giving tips to us for the test during class. Her advice was answer straight to the questions and treats the test as fun (Quite hard for me. I would be shaking and sweating tremendously during the test. Can’t really focus on treating the test as fun).

I Will Try To Answer…
One of the hint for the test was the questions were mostly derived from our lecture and assignment completion experiences.

My very initial practice on the technological tools possible for teaching was on the creation of my blog: lapalace. In short, I would agree that my blogging experience was rather positive as I could reflect more on the day’s lecture, indirectly; this would imply that I would think more. When I engaged in thinking frequently, I would learn and acquire the knowledge in a faster pace. I could write more (or rather, type more), share my learning experiences, communicate and then ultimately, learn more. Due to the fact that I was actively involve in my own learning process when I explore on my own initiative on the blog, I would gain and develop various skills regarding blogging. My posts would be the best prove that there was actually a gradual development going on in my writing. However, the side effects of blogging perhaps would be plagiarism where students would blindly copy and paste information from other sites. Blogging turned out to be a mere burden to a few due to last minute work and bad time management. Some even looked at blog as time consuming. I disagree as the satisfaction of constantly writing the reflection, being able to actually look at my own’s progress through the posts and most importantly being well-known and having my blog read by the mass are the most rewarding of all.
Integrating blog into the primary classroom will not be impossible: teachers would need a specific aim for the teaching-learning activities to use blogging. For example, the purpose of the blog would be for pupils’ record keeping and laboratory report writing for a group Science project. Sharing of information, development in learning, creativity and freedom in the pupils’ self-learning would be promoted.

Next would be on Yahoo! Group. Briefly, on Yahoo! Group, one would be able to share information no matter night or day, enjoy the convenience of getting connected with others to share files and opinions, downloading useful online contents uploaded by the group members, have fast dissemination of information and experience bias free in acknowledgement of the latest news in the group. However, one should pay attention in the management of files on the Yahoo! Group as without a good management and arrangement of the files, the files and folders would get clustered and mixed up.
Yahoo! Group would very much contribute to active online learning. Anytime and anywhere, the teacher could synchronize learning with the whole class without needing to meet the pupils face-to-face. The possibility of integration to the teaching-learning in the classroom is just limitless.

We also tried our hands on the SeedWiki. Just like the two technological tools mentioned above: Blog and Yahoo! Group, Seedwiki is not developed as especially for teaching purposes. However, it is free to be manipulated into teaching-learning in the classroom. It provides prospects for pupils to personalize learning, to cooperate and collaborate while learning, to improve in many skills such as communicating with each other in the classroom and so on. A more visible skill that teacher could actually observe will be on their writing skill on the SeedWiki but there are also the abstract skills being developed such as intrapersonal skills and even psychomotor skills. Although the current SeedWiki do encountered instability and problems, for instance, flooding on the page, over-writing others’ files and many more, one should not disregard the power of the SeedWiki in aiding teaching.

The Prof. also mentioned about the SmartBoard. Besides amazed over the myriad collections of pictures and flash files available in the SmartBoard Gallery, one should use them in education. There is a latest version of SmartBoard available which is the 9.5 versions. Teachers are encouraged to look out for it and if possible to download it as this version has even more collections in the Gallery.

END oledi Lah…
With that said, I hope I could answer the exam questions. Fingers crossed.

1 Comments:

Blogger Maznah said...

You have summarized what u learned in the class well. I have enjoyed reading your blog and will be definitely be visiting it often. Hope you will get to view the jelly fish soon... take care and good luck in your exam. Please keep in touch.

8:02 PM  

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