REFLECTION WEEK 6

                                        

         

         If I were to choose which week is the most exhilarating week for me I will definitely choose this week because I had a lot of fun from some of the activities that I have participated such as choir and karaoke competition that were held in this institute. Our choir team was asked to perform two malay songs in conjunction with the Innovation Day which was held on the18th October 2011 which is “Malaysia Inovasi” and “Guru Pemangkin Transformasi Pendidikan Negara”. At the same time, our semester 6 Visual Art seniors organized the “Pesta Seni” and there were few competitions for all of the teacher trainees who would like to join such as karaoke competition, battle of the bands and dancing competitions. I decided to join the karaoke competition and luckily I managed to enter to the final together with my roommate, Christter Ritter Badon. I have gained a lot of experience of joining those activities for instance I learned how to increase my self-confidence whenever we perform in front of the public. I would never forget this memorable moment in my life.

        Now let us back to business where this week for mr. sarihan’s class we were so busy completing our assure lesson plan and also the video to be used in the teaching and learning process and our targeted students is form 3 students. In the process of completing this task, we decided to divide the task for each one of us so that it would be easier for us to focus on our own part and at the same the task is divided equally to each person. For our assure lesson plan, we decided to choose people as our theme, so we focused more on the famous people in the world. Inside our lesson plan, we put the subject, day/date, form, time, theme, topic, previous knowledge, moral values, pedagogical strategies, references, teaching aids, learning outcomes, objectives, set induction, activities and closure. Through the completion of the task, I have gained a lot of experience for example the techniques or skills in creating an effective lesson plan for the students, self-motivation, self-esteem, collaboration and cooperation skills.

       After we have finished doing our ASSURE lesson plan, Mr. Sarihan asked us to present our own ASSURE lesson plan in the classroom. Personally, I think each group has done their good job in creating their own lesson plan which shows that all of us have put a lot of effort in finishing the task. Accidentally, we have chosen the same theme with the fourth group which is ‘People’, but our lesson plan is different from their group. Our ASSURE lesson plan is one of the group works and there will be marks for that. Mr. Sarihan has evaluated all of our lesson plan presentations individually and I hope I will get a good mark for that presentation. Not only that, he has also commented on our respective lesson plans so that we will know the things that need to be improvised on. From the comments that he gave, I realized that there were a lot of things that need to be taken into considerations so that the teaching and learning process will become more successful. After knowing what the things that need to be improvised are, we decided to edit our lesson plan especially our PowerPoint presentation.

        All in all, the presentation has given a lot of benefits in terms of social skills, presentation skills and so on. Last but not least,

HAPPY HOLIDAY TO ALL MY CLASSMATES WHO WILL BE GOING BACK THIS DEEPAVALI HOLIDAY!!!
SEND MY REGARDS TO MY FAMILY!!

HAPPY LEARNING PEOPLE!!!

       

REFLECTION WEEK 5

      

      Days went so fast and this week is the 5^th week of lecture. For educational technology subject, each lecture that I have attended really helped me in improving my ICT skills through the completion of tasks that were given to us. Not only being able to build up knowledge on ICT skills but I also learned about social skills (communication skills), cooperation skills and so on. Even though attending lectures are extremely tiring for me but there were many benefits that I have gained through them.

        For educational technology lecture, this week our topic was on CASPER Model. Basically, from my own understanding, this model is a method or skills that can be applied in creating an interesting PowerPoint presentation. As we all know, we as teachers should be able to utilize all these skills because nowadays the education world has changed which require the teachers to incorporate ICT in their teaching. So, in order to become an effective English teacher, we have to comply all the requirements and start to build up knowledge on those areas. CASPER is an acronym as follow :-

C-Contrast  

A-Alignment

S-Simplicity

P-Proximity

E-Emphasis

R-Repetition

      After Mr. Norsarihan has explained to us about this model, I managed to have a good grasp about the ways or methods on how to make interesting PowerPoint presentations. All this while, I did not realize about all these things because we were not being exposed to these techniques. Based on this model, when we create a PowerPoint presentation, we should not put too many words in our slides as it will create a distraction to the readers for example they might get bored with our presentation since they might spend their time by reading the slides instead of listening to our presentation. Not only that, we should not also put too many pictures or graphics in one slide as it will look messy and the message or information would not be delivered effectively to the readers. Besides that, if we want to emphasize certain words or phrases, we should bold them so that the readers would get to know or understand the main ideas of our presentation.

Last but not least, I wish everyone happy weekend!!Happy Learning!! And happy working on your assignments!!

REFLECTION WEEK 4

                                          

       There were many interesting things that were going on in this week and one of them is we have attended for the Sarawak Chief Minister’s drama competition in our institute which was held from the 3^rd October – 5^th October 2011. Actually, our institute became the host for the drama competition this year and it was held in Dewan Muhibbah IPGKS. I was so excited to watch all the performances from every Teacher Training Institute in Sarawak such as Batu Lintang Teacher Training Institute, Rajang Teacher Training Institute and Tun Abdul Razak Teacher Training Institute and also our own beloved institute. The place was crowded with a lot people to watch the outstanding and wonderful performances from each Teacher Training Institute. I think every institute has done their very good job and I myself could not even guess which performance would become the winner, but finally Rajang Teacher Training Institute was announced as the winner of the drama competition, 2^nd  runner up is Batu Lintang Teacher Training Institute, 3^rd runner up is Tun Abdul Razak Teacher Training Institute followed by Sarawak Teacher Training Institute.  I gained a lot of experience from the drama competition especially in drama techniques which involve a lot of important aspects to create an outstanding drama.

        Back to business, in this week we have also presented our own blogs to Mr. Sarihan and he has given marks for that presentation. During the presentation, I have tried my best to explain every single thing that I put in my blog so that my lecturer and my friends would be able to notice the distinctions of my blog from the other people’s blog. This is because, there were certain marking criteria that we need to fulfill in order to get a high mark for our blog presentation where we need to put different features inside our blog such as flicker, picasa, audio, chatbox and so on. I have included those features inside my blog and for that reason I have chosen the best design for my blog which I uploaded the image from my computer. I chose to put the green background because for the fact that I like green and usually learning is often associated with green colour since green is the symbol for environmental protection. In other words, though education we will be aware about the importance of keeping our nature clean. So, each person has done their very good job during the blog presentation and I was so mesmerized to see their amazing and beautiful blogs.

     Besides that, this week, we were also asked to discuss in groups of 4 regarding about the topics that were given to us and we need to make a power point presentation based on our own topic. For this particular task, we decided to stay in the same group that we have already formed for the video presentation task. Our topic was on Audio in multimedia.

     Lastly, I have gained many experiences from the task that we have carried out but I still need to brush up more on my presentation skills in order to become a competent and proficient English speaker.

Happy Learning Everyone!!!!

Enjoy your weekend!!!:)

REFLECTION WEEK 3

         This is the third week we attended lectures for Educational Technology subject and I found that I developed myself more and more especially my knowledge and skills in ICT skills. This is because, we all have gone through many practices on it where it requires us to apply the knowledge that we have learned in the classroom such as video editing, creating blog and so on. In my opinion, these skills are very crucial for me as a future teacher who is going to teach my students about ICT and how to utilize in their learning process. Nevertheless, dedication is very needed in applying these skills not just getting to know about it but he or she also needs to internalize these skills so that it would become more meaningful.

       Besides that, we also learned about the ASSURE model and also something on instructions. ASSURE model is a model or lesson plan that helps us to see the progress of our students and make the teaching and learning process to be more systematic and effective. The ASSURE model is helpful for designing courses using different kinds of media. This model assumes that instruction will not be delivered using lecture/text book only. It allows for the possibility of incorporating out-of-class resources and technology into the course materials. This model will be especially helpful for instructors designing online courses. A stands for ‘Analyze Learners’, S stands for ‘State Objectives’, S also stands for ‘Select Methods, Media and Materials’, U stands for ‘Utilize Media and Materials’, R stands for ‘Require Learner Participation’ and E stands for ‘Evaluate and Revise’. 
         I am so happy for being able to learn all these things and to be equipped with this knowledge as I would be able to impart them to my students later on. Not only that, I also have to make sure that the students have a good grasp on how does the knowledge that they learned on ICT skills helps them to improve their learning skills. In addition to that, our lecturer also has told us that when we go for our practicum later on we need to have sound knowledge in ICT skills because it is important when we carry out lesson plan as the applications of ICT skills in the teaching is very needed but it has to be done successfully and flawlessly without any mistakes. This is because the marks will be deducted. I think that’s all for this week and more reflections will come soon and hopefully I manage to cope with every predicament that I face throughout this course easily.

REFLECTION ON VIDEO PRESENTATION

       We were assigned to work in groups of 5 to complete the task that was given by our Educational Technology lecturer, Mr. Norsarihan Ahmad. I worked with Nigel, Hilman, Josman and Vanessa as my group members. The task actually requires us to create a video used to teach students about certain topics based on the form 2 syllabuses.  I personally enjoy doing this task as it deals with animation and video editing which can make the learning process to be more fun and interesting. So, every group was given the opportunity to choose their own topic and our group decided to choose a topic which is adjectives.

      In order to complete this task, we have discussed with each other to come up with different ideas on how to make the videos to be more fantastic. So each and every one of us has contributed our own thoughts and ideas and they were all taken into consideration as long as they make sense and appropriate. From the discussion, we finally had rough ideas and we started doing the videos. Besides that, we also decided to record our own voices to be included in the videos so that it will be more authentic. Not only that, we also sang a song by Yuna “Dan Sebenarnya” which we translated the lyrics into English but too bad when we transfer the video from the camera into the laptop, we could not really hear our voices clearly. Nevertheless, Hilman and the other group members decided to put my singing video during the karaoke competition last Sunday at Bintang Megamall. We also put some pictures in our videos to make it nicer and cool.

     So, during the video presentation in the classroom, we became the third group to present our video. I think all the groups have done very well just like our own group. The first group was about on how to teach drama to the students with beautiful and nice background wallpaper and the second group’s topic was about natural disasters and the fourth group was doing the same with us which was on how to teach adjectives.

      Overall, every group has done very good job in completing the task and it shows that we all have applied the knowledge that we have learned in the classroom. I myself also learned more about cooperation skills, communication or social skills and many more.