Frustration Leads To Success..

Some people might say that determination leads to our success. Yes, I totally agree with it. Through my experiences learning this course, I would say that frustration leads me to success.

I had experienced and faced a lot of obstacles and failures when learning this course. The main reason was I am not a computer literate. This was the first time for me having a serious learning about ICT. Learning all the technology terms, applications as well as exploring softwares through the net had enough made my heart beat very fast, had a sleepless night thinking about the projects and so on. When my lectures gave me a task, and I failed to do the based on my target, I felt very frustrated and that time I started to cry. Only by crying could rejuvenate me. Sometimes, I text (sms) my mum, sharing all of my failures. One day, she text me back “Can you recall what were your experiences of doing things for the first time?”

Then, I started to think about it. The first time I jumped into the sea and tried to swim, I sank. I had to bear the choking taste of salt water running into all the openings of my body. My eyes smarted, my nose felt awful and I was unable to hear properly. The first time I tried to ride a bicycle, I crashed into tree. Skinned knees were the testimony to this fact. Now, I got what my mum tried to tell me. She indirectly tried to motivate me. When we had painful failures for any first attempt, it did not mean we will fail forever. Success came only with practice-lots of it. It did not come easy.

After learning photo editing, audio editing and video editing, I manage to apply all the skills that I had learned during the first three tasks. I did not face too much problems doing this task. For example, I managed to edit the songs by cutting them down into parts using MP3 cutter, converting a file into another format using Total Video Converter Software, Uploading files into internet storage, Downloading video from the internet source etc. When it came to a thing that required skill, only time and effort will ensure success.

I felt overwhelmed with joy and relief that e-book task was finally over. I finished. It was a testament of my determination and perseverance. As a conclusion, “Success Is Surviving Failure and Learning From It”.

Video editing: Groupwork

Is life too hectic to enjoy fully? For most of us( B.ed Tesl Cohort 3 students) today, the answer to the above question would be a definite "Yes". First and foremost, we had to attend lectures. After spending five hours in class, we had to do group discussions. Finally when we arrived home, we had to have a bath, had our dinner and if we were lucky, got to watch television for awhile. Then, its back to the grind: finishing out assignments. Now, we had had abundance of tasks and assignments to be settled within a period of time, not only this course but the other courses.

For this week, our task was video editing that should be done in groups and pairs.
I had some painful experiences doing video editing for group work. We had to edit the video from one of the 8TV’s famous programmes- ‘So You Think You Can Dance’. Firstly, we had faced problem downloading the series of videos because it took very long in duration. If I was not mistaken, I took about one hour of each series. Unfortunately, while waiting for the downloading process, I could not do any task using my laptop because the downloading progress would be slower and of course I took longer time. Therefore, I had wasted my time gluing myself in front of the laptop and waiting for the downloading process to finish.

Secondly, we had to combine all the series of the videos and edit it to make a new video. Thanks to my group members, Zarne, Mukmin and Faizah for doing well for this part. Then, it was time to convert the video to avi format. There was no problem in converting to avi format. However, we had problems during uploading the files to the ADEC website. We had to upload raw materials of Episode 4 of the programme (4 series), the combined video (1 video) and labeled videos (14 parts). Therefore we had 19 things altogether that must be uploaded. However, each of us only could upload 3 files. Meaning that each person had to upload 3 files and there would be 4 files left. We failed to upload the 4 other labeled videos. We had posted this issue in the forum but sadly there was no reply.

I had tried to upload all the files from midnight until tomorrow morning but I was successfully uploaded only 1 file out of 3 files. Wai had a sleepless night waiting for the uploading process to finish. Therefore, I pushed myself to go to UM’s library and uploaded all the files there. Alhamdulillah, I managed to upload all the files. I felt so relief. I went back home with a sweet smile to show that all my works had finished before I went back to my hometown.
As I was on my way to my hometown, I sat comfortably on my seat in the bus, looking through the window to see the scenery of that evening. I could see a flock of birds flying freely and chirping happily. Sometimes, I got very jealous with them because they could go anywhere they like, flying freely like they have no problems to face off. As I wanted to sleep, my phone rang. Zarne called me and told me the latest news of our task. As many of us failed to upload the files, we had to combine all the works in DVD format. Oh my God! I still had works to do. Then I started to panic because I did not bring back any document of my project. Thanks to Zarne for doing all the latest tasks.

As a conclusion, such a hectic life is not for me. I prefer a slower pace of life where I can savour each moment as much as possible. It is crazy to rush and not see so many things around us. Maybe we can learn something from William Henry Davies’ immortal lines:
What is this life if full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?

Audio Editing

Music is an amazing tool for teaching languages, especially to children. If the teachers enable to choose good song, it will bounce around in a learner's head long after their lesson is over. Experts agree that music can strengthen children's minds and serve as a fundamental skill of learning. I simply agree with this statement because when children are listening to music, they will pick up vocabulary, grammatical structures and the rhythm of the language. How? They will simply do what they already love to do…s.i.n.g..

Some say music "nourishes children's brains". It is because, music can stimulate brain connections and can actually make children smarter. However, teacher must make sure that the music and songs should be appropriate to the children. It is irrelevant to give children to listen to the ‘rock’ music which contains inappropriate lyrics. If the teachers find that the lyrics of the song is good but the music is not good enough, teacher can make some modifications towards the music of that song.

For this week, I had given an assignment about audio editing. At first, I felt that it is not necessary for me to make some editing on a particular song because it is good enough and that is why it is allowed to be heard to the listeners. However, considering to the children’s level, it is necessary to make some editing on the particular song.

I had edited some songs like ‘Uptown Girl’ by Westlife, ‘Everytime’ by Britney Spears and ‘I’m Lonely’ by Akon using Goldwave Software. Among these 3 songs, I managed to edit ‘I’m Lonely’ song well. I had changed the pitching, add up some echo, made the beat slower and faster at the certain part. Compared to photo editing assignment, audio editing was much more difficult for me. It was becuase, I could not identify which part of the song I should edit. I was not sure whether the song would be nicer or the other way round. :).

At last, after 2 days having try and error, I successfully edited the song by Akon, ‘I’m Lonely’. It was my first time doing audio editing and I hope that I could do better audio editing next time.

Photo Editing

I feel better now. I can have a long sigh of relief. I can feel a sense of peacefulness. My breathing is easy and effortless, my body relax and my mind work easily and peacefully. I slowly begin to regain my emotional balance. I am getting more and more relaxed and calm inside. Why? I have finished doing my photo editing assignment. Oh, Thank God, it was all over!

It was my first time experiencing with photo editing. My eldest brother is very good in photo editing. He voluntarily wanted to teach me how to edit a photo before but I ignored it. Now, I suffered a lot. As I have no background knowledge about photo editing, I have to start from A to Z. Pity me,right?
I started with exploring as many photo editor softwares as possible. Based on my experience, my favourite photo editors are:

ACDSee Photo Editor
Adobe PhotoShop Extended cs3
Corel Paint Shop ProPicasa
Turbo Pro
ArcSoft Photo Impression 4
ZealSoft Funphotor

Among all these, I have chosen the best three softwares, that are ZealSoft FunPhotor, Photo Impression 4 and, Adobe Photoshop Extended cs3. ZealSoft FunPhotor is very fun and easy to be used especially for the beginners. With a few short steps, i can blend my portraits with well-known artwork to create comical images.

ArcSoft Photo Impression is another imaging software that are suitable to be used for the novices and skilled users alike. It contains a great series of creative contents, including frames, clip art, greetings and FunnyFace. At the same time, I used this software to adjust the size, colour and crop pictures.

Adobe Photoshop is good, I can’t disagree with that. Unfortunately, I spend most of my time trying to figure out how, rather than actually playing with the pictures.

As a conclusion, I would say thanks to technical advances, because one can produce high quality pictures and make the pictures look more professional.