ROW UR BOAT GENTLY DOWN D STREAM...

ROW, ROW, ROW ur boat,
Gently down d stream,
If U SEE A CROCODILE,
DON'T FORGET TO SCREAM: "AHHHHH!!!"

We didn't forget to try our hands on rowing a sampan while taking a ride across d Sarawak river- free of charge!No, not d boat ride but d posing for picture taking pretending we were aunties dat row sampans...

My frens gleefully had their pictures taken- nicely smiling while d uncle n d rest of d gang awaited 4 dis whole quite embarassing affair 2 b over as soon as possible.


Nevertheless, d uncle d professional sampan will look d best in d photos as he had years at experience of ang-mos (Caucasian tourists) taking his picture from d rear-end.


Kch city looked so awesome from d sampan, with d waters just few inches away from us.


N now it's my turn 2 row-well i'm faking it for d sake og photo-taking of course. But i never thought it could b dis scary, for me.

During my pose:
Me: Aiyo...d boat can move 1 leh...Pakcik kena pengang mana punya?(D whole sampan was rocking)
Uncle, d sampan rower: Pegang itulah...
Me: Ini kayu ah...Aiyo...kalau nanti sampan gerak sampai air sana macam mana oh?Takut eh...macam mana...pakcik jangan goyang sampan la!
Uncle: Memang sampan bergerak atas air bah...
Jiawen: Look here look here take photo...

Me: (Forcing a smile while beads of perspiration flowed down my forehead) Hehehe...I dun wan d la i scared la...Okok done done...
Jiawen: U din smile nicely in d photo juzt now la...
D rest of d sampan passengers: *thinking* wad la, take a photo oso so hard ah...Banyak lama oui!

REOPENIN~~KCH here i COME

After about a month staying away from blogging- coz i've other tonnes to do such as eat, sleep, get up, eat, sleep, tv time, watchin Korean drama, HongKong soap operas and go over the cycle reciprocately...i 've decided not to let la palace in becoming a palace infested wid cobwebs of ancient posts.

So here is d reopening of la palace, which its existence used 2 b 2 make up my assignment marks, n now here will b d platform 4 people 2 read bout matters swirling around my life. Dun worry, as u read along dis line, u r officially a member of d kepo club a.k.a: busybody-always-love-to-noe-bout-people's-life-but-dun-even-care-bout-d-life-o-death-of-
ur-pet-dog-o-siblings-alike club.

Somewhere in November 2006, I've finally talked my frens into visiting Kuching for d very 1st time.


Kuching is not a bored-u-to-death place after all, as i've always categorized it. Look at their happy faces: Yuan, Woon, Wen n Ju. Me d cutest 1 infront.


On the very 1st day in Kuching, we decided to visit one of the famous landmark in Kch, the Fort Magherita. We paid 30cent per person 2 get d sampan 2 go 2 d fort, which is unbelievably cheap. The way up to the fort from d jetty where we stopped was not as pleasant as we'd thought. Some sort of like jungle trekking all d way up to d hill where d fort was located. Most of us suffered from itchiness as a result of unknown insects bite.

I didn't have d chance 2 visit d fort during my primary 6 graduation trip though, which made dis my very 1st blunder journey here- was wearing my hot pants n red slippers dat day. My legs r very attractively accessorized wid red spots all over when i reached home.

Halfway up the hill...
Ju: Woi! Very gatai leh!

Woon: Got mosquito la!

Jiawen: Ya lo! Careful ah!

Yuan: -LOST IN TRANSLATION- a.k.a blur...

Me:@#$%&*...kanasai stupid mosquitoes...@#$&*@@#

Ju:GOT SHAKY BRIDGE IN FRONT!!!


Despite all the fuss n noise dat we'd caused, we reached d fort safely. 1st impression, d fort looked like some abandoned 18th century building, haunted. Not a soul was inside, but later on we'd found some kids playing in d fort who were stayin in d kampung just nearby.


We had some fun visiting d fort despite its scary aura- such as poking fun at d 'butt-naked' soldier n for god sakes we did not tear n rape d soldier.


Doing some weird poses at the reali kinda high outlook point.


From d fort, one can c d breath-taking scenery of d Kch city, rite across d Sarawak river.


N heyy, I can c PJ Section 17 from here...

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.

an EDGY daY...

at the EDGE of my SEAT...
ASSIGNMENTSsss due dates are nearing. TESTSsss are nearing. FINALSsss are nearing. No wonder I was really nervous, jumpy and even grumpy. Grey (or rather, I would call 'silver') hairs are popping on top of my head and I'm only 18++ years of age! Sadly speaking, I do have too much to worry.

CLass?
As we had a major PKEY3101 assignment at hands, we were working on our work in class this very day. I was again annoyed by the disconnection from the net at home. OMG!!! What's wrong with TMNet? Desperately in need of a drastic measures, my housemate, dear Sin Yuan called the TMNet hotline (which is not toll free) and the answering machine talked for almost about nothing except advertisements for almost 10 minutes which the talking time will be charged in our next phone bill(good idea of earning money from the innocents and poor university students).
Returning to the mainstream (which is CLASS), Mrs. Lim went into our class today, bringing in a new face with her, Sarah. Mrs. Lim told me that the three of us actually had a thing in common- me, Mrs. Lim and Sarah were all from lovely Sarawak. And in my head I thought of another commonality among us- Sarawakian ladies have beautiful smile and are gorgeous. AGREED.

About ASSIGNment3
I had taken the effort of planning out for my assignment 3 which I was working with Mei Ju, Sin Yuan and Yoy (Siti Nurul Janah- This was my very first time doing a collaboration with Yoy). The motivation for me was the due date for the assignment was like another 2 weeks and there were tonnes to do. Luckily, I had my cutie and sweety group members to help out and devise the burden. ALL FOR 1 AND 1 FOR ALL everyone!
We met up face to face in class and discussed the details of the assignment again. We found out there were some clarifications need to be made by the Prof. We were blessed as the Prof. was going around checking how much we had done on the assignment. I did felt guilty as to tell the truth, I had not worked much on the assignment yet, besides careful planning and researching on the net.
Upon mentioning this, I would like to send my greatest gratitudes to Mrs. Lim for helping our group to set up a 'previous posts' on our seedwiki page so that we could retrieve the files that were being over-written previously. The seedwiki was functioning properly too as she helped in posting messages to Ken to fix the problem that bugged the whole class last week. I never felt happier!!! Perhaps we could meet up and eat cha kueh tiao at Kenyalang Park if she ever go back to sweet-old Kuching (message me: 0123949598 :]). Now, all I need is get the assignment done. ASAP! By the end of this week.

EDGY...
There is 2 more weeks to go before we are off for the Rayas- which left me very 'kin tio' and 'kan chiong'= nervous in Hokkien and Cantonese; to finish up my unfinish business (4 major assignments in total; hou cham ar~). Just let me finish up my work, and I'll pick up pieces of my life and continue to non-stop writing ;P... Enjoy~~

A LiL cloSER to HOME...

conFESSION of A SEEDWIKI saboTAGER…
Very first thing before I continue on with this week’s entry: I think I had destroyed the help page on SeedWiki. I was trying to post the problems that the class (and I) were facing. I went on the help page, click on edit page and type in all the problems. All of the sudden the rest of the ‘Help’ messages had gone. I sat at the edge of my seat and sweat. Gosh! At the mean time the server was down and I lost connection to the SeedWiki. Wonder what I should do next. To Ken of SeedWiki, “HELLLLLP MEEEEE!!!”

Let’s Chill…
I thought I should take my mind off the SeedWiki problems for awhile. Therefore, during the last one hour class of PKEY3101, I resolved to reflecting on the Prof.’s teachings (more relaxing this way, I guess ). “From Sarawak with Love” was on the SmartBoard with the picture of cute Sarawakians children making ‘V’ signs and cheery smile. Kind of getting homesick for a minute. Although I’m not a pure Sarawakian: actually I’m a Sabahan but my parents and relatives all live in Kuching, Sarawak, I have been missing home for quite awhile. I miss home, I miss my daddy, mummy, brothery (even though he’s a pain in the neck for me, well, vice versa :p), my doggy Coco, my lovely Sarawak Laksa… To my dismay, my mom just called me few days before telling me that I don’t have to go back home as my family is planning to visit KL (for the don’t know how many times already, I have lost count) AGAIN. Why! Why! Nevermind, I plan to go back home no matter what, right after the finals, I will be back home! Yippie! But maybe I need to sponsor my own air ticket. Sponsors perhaps? Please mail me: kylin11@hotmail.com Hehehe…

To Sarawak with L.O.V.E
The land of the Hornbills. The city of cats. The land of vast greeneries and long-winding rivers. With crocodiles mostly. Sarawak.
And the Prof. was in peaceful Sarawak last week. Therefore, this week we were going to talk about SARAWAK! She shared with us the pictures that she had taken of the schools that she had gone to. Unfortunately, I had not been to any of the schools that she had mentioned. I thought that the schools were located ‘in the heart of Sarawak’. To tell the truth, I have never been to a ‘rumah panjang’ (is the museum of Sarawak counted as a rumah panjang? It looks like one…) and I have never been to the famous Sarawak river express boats (I boarded a sampan before at the WaterFront in Kuching…only 30cents!). So, if I were posted to the schools that the Prof. was talking about, I never did mind.
The Prof. was telling her experience visiting schools in Sarawak. Her stories sounded like great adventures: aboarding the weird-looking express boat, crusing on the wide and murky Rajang river (got Crocs or not…) some for about 3 hours and some even up to 7 hours ride, walking through the wobbly some-sort-like-London-bridge hanging bridge and so forth. There were places that I never knew were in Sarawak: Kuala Mani (crooked thought provoking name, now the name was changed into Pangkalan Manis), Selangau, Dalat, and Nan Kiang School. There was also a place that the Prof. adventure team dreaded and left out from their trip: Sungai Arau, as one need to travel up to 7 hours on speed boat and climb a hill in order to get there (sounds very much like Indiana Jones!).

Should Curriculum Drive the Technology or Should Technology Drive the Curriculum?
The Prof. threw a new question to us. The good thing was, I could add this enquiry in my writing. The bad thing was, my mind blurred again as I figure out what it actually meant (perhaps due to brain malfunction again~).

As I thought back, perhaps the idea of driving a car can best illustrate the question. Imagine a brand new BMW M5 sporty car fully equipped with iPod which has the technology of locating your position on a map through satellite transmition. Imagine that the car is yours. Of course as the driver, you would drive the car and travel to places you wish to go. You perhaps would not like the idea of letting the car take you to places that you do not want to go. The car does not have human intelligence. What the car needs is a person to operate and utilize it. Without the driver, the car would be nothing, not even if it is BMW with iPod. The same goes to educational technology. What are the significance of PPSMI, CDI, My-CD, E-bahan, LCD and even notebooks provided by the MOE (Ministry of Education) and schools if they are being treated as holy scripts that were supposed to be hidden and locked in the tower of a palace?

As I had noticed from the Prof., those teachers that got her praises for utilizing technology in the classroom (during her observations in schools in Sarawak) more or less had put much effort in previewing, preparing, presenting, practicing and post-testing (the 5 Ps) the integration of technology in a classroom. The ‘backstage’ preparation and planning for a teacher before ‘presenting an act’ of teaching for the pupils ‘on the stage’ of the classroom was essential.

anCORE...
As I talked about Sarawak this week, I tried eating Sarawakian food at Millenium Court in the evening. I was so joyful to see a stall selling what they claimed to be Sarawak Kolo Mee (Sarawakian Syaiful also knew what is Kolo Mee). Sadly to say, the mee was not even close to the taste of the real, authentic thing. Anyway, I'm looking forward to be back again in Kuching...in November, that is :)

HEADACHE...

Closer to life…
Got quite frustrated lately. It seems that there has been problem with the local area connections (which is TMnet) for the past 2 weeks. My frustration got very close to calling up the company and forwarding my dissatisfaction. With loads of work to do and assignments due, the disconnection does not help at all. At the moment I was working offline as well, composing my work on the very reliable Microsoft Work (I am not working under Bill Gates and am not involved in any of his promotional campaign).

Prof. was not around…LaLaLa
Relaxation was in mind as the Prof. was not in class today. She was off with official matters and I was waiting for her return next week anticipating what she would share with the class again that she got from her trip. Souvenirs maybe?

We carried on with our work on the Seedwiki while chirping away with my course mates. I heard from Ming Keat that there had been some trouble with Seedwiki for about a week already. He tried to upload his files to his group’s page. He then saved his work but the next day his files did not appear on the page.

I talked to Mrs. Lim in class about this matter. She suggested that we could post our problem to the Seedwiki administration. I tried to do it but unfortunately there was no connection at the moment.

Before I got any closer to banging my head to the window, I better take some time off my old companion, the trusty but quite heavy hp lap top.
CHILL...

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.

A BuilD-UP

Still under construction...

Before I started composing this week's blog, I had risked the possibility of destroying lapace's bluish-polka dotted webpage. Just because of my own curiosity wondering whether I could alter with the codes in the template by pasting a video CSS codes- could turn lapalace into a mess. However, it's a beautiful Friday morning and there would be no other things that I could do better than reflecting on my PKEY3101 class that I had two days ago. Therefore, with heartfelt apologies and regrets, I would announce that lapalace is still under construction of upgrading in order to add in some animations rather than having mere pictures all the time.

Speaking of the class...

Talking about the class, I was not behaving like my usual self. Negativity was dawning on me. I was passive and had not much words to say. Perhaps it was due to the holiday season (and the long list of celebrations- I kept quiet when the Prof. query about the plans for Merdeka Day and HOLIDAY...shy~). Now, I regretted that I did not went up to the Smartboard and try out the coursewares (so did the rest of the class) that were presented by the Prof. She got them from the UK and it would be difficult to get them in our local market. However, I was trying out the activities shown by the Prof. in my head and I personally thought that the Mathematics activity involving the triangles and fractions was interesting. Although I'm minoring in Science Education, I understand that creating a Mathematics activity that integrates the Smartboard could be quite hard. The other activities were actually very simple yet innovative. So, when I stared at the activities shown to us I actually thought that- Hey, I should have thought of that when I was doing my Smartboard assignment. That was what would happen if one thought too much when doing things. As the Chinese saying goes, everything starts from the simple.

Assignment wise...

The jovial Prof. explained to us the details of assigment 3 which would require us to go on seedwiki and jot down our findings and progress (which reminded me that our group's table on seedwiki was still a stunning -blank-). Therefore, I set aside my passiveness (another symptom I got from the holiday mood) and quickly started looking for useful readings on the learning principle's regarding the children's curiosity while the Prof. left us to do our own research. Again I was confused for awhile as the Prof. said that we could complain to the Head of the Department of any disagreement of she leaving the class in an instant - hey, she IS the Head of the Department! Anyways, we got loads of fun work (work suppose to be a positive idea therefore to reinforce there is the addition of "fun") and in my view I was glad she was off the class awhile so that I could end up with something by the end of the class.

I was about to put my hands on the tables of criterion for our group on seedwiki only to realise that I had numerous questions that needed to be cleared off my heads. As a group we discussed but to clarify certain things we asked the Prof. To contradict to my previous view, I was glad she was in class again.

After listening to the Prof.'s explanation and advise on having no fear in carrying on with our ideas, I continued my search on children's curiosity. While the cat's curiosity would kill itself, the children's curiosity would instead act as a springboard along the way in their learning. Thus, leading us to the basis of Assignment 3 - how to meaningfully address the children's curious nature and instill a love of learning. At the moment, my group was still researching on the first topic for the group that was regarding "Curiosity in Children". My group did posted some related articles and if you were also as curious as me do go find out: www.pkey3101.seedwiki.com and click on my group: Group 1.

Old granny's doings...

As I sat on a rocking chair in front of my beautiful lapalace, I reflected back on all these while writing and stating my thoughts lines after lines after lines of words. It had been half a semester since the my very first post and I slowly evolve from the mildly technology-resisting girl into a not-at-all technology-resisting girl (yes, I'm still a girl- not lady, not woman). However, I'm still the girl who is quite afraid of getting my hands to do assignments- scary~.

Many happy readings-doings-thinkings-writings-typings everyone.

Happy holidays!