SELAMAT HARI RAYA..MAAF ZAHIR BATIN

First of all, i would like to wish Selamat Hari Raya, Maaf Zahir & Batin to all my lecturers and friends..So, i would like to put my hands together and ask for forgiveness if I ever make any mistake or offended anyone in any of my postings.

Today, i'm leaving for my hometown..yeah!!! i am looking forward to meet my abah and ma, my sweet and naughty cousins, Athirah, Muahz, Ifah and Sumaiyyah.

After packing all my things, i have done a list of assignments to be done during this holidays.. oh my God! i have 7 assignments: Resources, Mathematics and Assessment. Huhuhuh.. it is too much for me..i don't know whether i manage to do and finish up all the assignments or not. i try to comfort myself telling everything is gonna be OK. Raya tetap raya..but with good time management and self-discipline, InsyaAllah, i try my best to finish them up..

Responsible for our own learning.

Studying in MPIK and UM has a very big difference for me. I felt very secured and comfortable learning in MPIK because most of the lecturers are friendly and love to ‘spoon feed’ us. Some people might say that it is not good to ‘spoon feed’ the students all the time. We must work on our own or be independent. When the lecturers gave all the important notes and fullest guidance, I knew that I was on the right track of learning. When the examination days, I felt well-equipped with all the information and ‘vomit’ them to score high marks in the exam J
Unfortunately, in UM, I have to be really independent and responsible for my own learning. No more PowerPoint slides, no more extra notes and no more spoon feeding. L. I have to have my own alternative routes or strategies for attaining the learning goals, correcting my errors and redirecting myself when my work plans do not work. At first, I felt very tension to face this new learning situation. Now, after 3 months in UM, I could say that I am able to adapt myself with this campus life which has no free time to enjoy and ‘honeymoon’ J. After experiencing 3 months of self-regulated learning, I could say that I am able to know my own strengths and weaknesses and know how to deal with them productively and constructively.
The second assignment challenges me a lot. I am required to design two lesson plans using any resources in the net and manipulate the resources to the maximum level. However, the lecturer had given a resource to be manipulated for the first assignment, that was a video of “Earth Song” sung by Michael Jackson. For the second one, I have to find out any appropriate resources on my own. Before this, the lecturers will suggest and recommend a list of websites which are suitable to get learning materials. It saved my time and energy. Not for this time, I had to sit in front of the laptop, browsing the best and appropriate video to be manipulated for my lesson. I should say thank you for those who have contributed useful videos in the net. They are all kind people who really help other people like me which I can download them for free! Hehehe.
Own, forget to say, this assignment has to be done in pairs. What I learn through this co-operative learning is about tolerance. I have to tolerate with my partners as we have our own ideas on how to use the resources well. Sometimes we argue when I think my ideas are good enough and my partner says no and vice versa. Here, tolerance takes place. What we do is we list down all the ideas and use all the ideas, if possible.
I think that I have to recharge my energy. I really-really hope that my lecturer would not give any task for next week, InsyaAllah. J

Teachers : Being realistic.

For the last week, we had to work in groups and prepare a presentation. Each group had been given a topic and my group had received a topic ‘Being Realistic’. First of all, let me define what ‘realistic’ is. Realistic means being sensible and understand what is possible to achieve in particular situation or showing things as they really are. Therefore, teacher should be realistic in bringing about success in English language learning among pupils.
There are many things that should be taken into considerations in order to be realistic in teaching. Firstly, in selecting activities, teachers should questions themselves when they want to select or design an activity to use with the pupils- e,g- “Will it be difficult for pupils to carry it out?”, “Is the language suitable for the level?”, “Which skills does it practise?”, “Does it create a good atmosphere?” and so on. By doing this, teacher will have specific, clear and explicit purposes in their mind and can deliver the learning successfully. On the pupils’ side, they will enjoy learning and process the learning more deeply.
Secondly, it is undisputable that motivation is an extremely an important factor in determining success in pupils’ learning. Therefore, teachers should be realistic in teaching in order to arouse pupils’ motivation. In this case, familiarity of the subject and their cultural background knowledge help to increase pupils’ motivation. When the pupils are familiar with the topic, they will eager to participate in the lesson to the maximum level. This is good in order to ‘settle down’ pupils who are restless or active and naturally pay attention during the lesson. For those who are weak in learning process, providing familiar topic and their cultural background knowledge enable them to ‘feel’ success and motivate them to further their learning to the fullest.
Teacher should also be realistic in term of providing support to the pupils. Pupils really need support or assistance in order to carry out the activities that they are not able to do unaided. When teachers provide support to the pupils, they will gain confidence and eventually able to function independently. For example, teachers can support pupils by giving pictures to comprehend text, gestures, related vocabulary and others. However, teacher should know how to adjust, reduce and match support to pupils’ understanding and experience. It is not appropriate to provide fully support the advance students. They might feel that teachers do not appreciate their own capability. Besides that, it might reduce the level of challenge and pupils might not experience learning progress.
Lastly, lesson planning is just a guide or reference to teachers for smooth and efficient teaching. Sometimes, what they have planned does not work at all depending on the pupils’ mood and classroom situation on that particular day. For instance, pupils might be passive in the morning lesson. If the teachers want to do reading activity, I am sure that they won’t give full participation. Teacher should be realistic by not continuing teaching according to the lesson planning, but being flexible by asking the pupils to sing songs or do physical movement activity. This will help to awaken the pupils. Therefore, teacher should be realistic and flexible in teaching in order to suit their mood and interests.

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.