Week 7 Reflection

The seventh class began with the presentation of an e-book sample made by the lecturer’s past students, which in my opinion gave us a rough idea of what to be expected of our work and as a basic foundation for us to be even more creative in the completion of our very own version of the e-book. From the presentation, I could feel that there were important details that appear to have positive impacts on the betterment of learners learning in class. The first one was the use of colourful pictures which was present each time a sentence appeared on the screen, for instance when the sentence goes as ‘’Ali brush his teeth’’, with the accompaniment of a boy brushing his teeth. The second was the use of the fonts themselves, which I believe should be of ‘Comic Sans MS’ where the style of writing appears very much like the pupils writings and also must be in big font sizes. These are all important criteria for ensuring that learners get the best opportunity to academically benefit from the teaching and learning experience.

The pictures were wonderfully illustrated to complement for learners visual needs (as suggested by Jean Piaget) and all but I feel that there is a certain element that is missing which could make the presentation better in a way. The element was to have moving pictures like animation of what a picture is doing, for example a picture of a boy who is actually brushing his teeth by moving the tooth brush up and down in a repeating manner. I guess learners would be more interested if such addition were to be implemented. Luckily, the lecturer had already thought of a similar idea and introduced us with two new websites that offers free access to animated pictures like Bluementals and Gickr. We can actually make a picture look ‘alive’ or ‘move’ by placing different pictures in a successive order. Interesting... but I guess there is going to be another exploration job for me if I wish to successfully develop a creative and exciting e-book product at the end.

In addition, we were also burdened with assignment two which was accessing and manipulating videos for the ESL classroom. The idea was to download a video entitled Michael Jackson ‘Earth song’, divide it into separate parts like audios, pictures and so forth. Frankly, I am still quite confused with the lecturer’s explanation since it seemed to be mixed up with other tasks and other assignments as well... Fortunately, I have friends who have comprehended all the tasks and assignments and can help me get a clearer understanding as they have too. All in all, the learning situation in this subject has becoming ever more challenging and difficult to tackle, hence I have to get my work started A.S.A.P...! :O (as soon as possible)

Week 7 Reflection (Cont.)

During my inquiry and discovery learning, I stumbled upon an interesting article about the use of songs in helping to achieve better and more interesting learning. Sure, the use of songs was common and practiced by teachers over the country and some have already been scientifically proven. But what struck me most was the type of songs used which was hip hop! Initially, I would use the simple and traditional nursery rhymes like 'London Bridge Is Falling Down' or 'Old McDonald had a farm', and adopt their tunes into new educational lyrics. But I would never resolve into using hip hop as an alternative to nursery rhymes due to the loud and 'head-banging' effects it might pose to my future learners.

Even so, my perspective has somewhat changed as the article claims that someone has managed to make a difference by making use of the hip hop genre into the favor of teaching through literacy-based activities. What I read astounded me and made me realize the rationale of using such tune as from what I have observed in the past years, young learners are more prone than ever before to external influence, particularly by entertainment of modern songs from the television and radio, which is due to the national globalization programme; closing the technological barrier among humans. For such reason, hip hop has managed to blend in and make a foothold in the hearts of young learners, empowering their fondness towards the music even more. Therefore, I believe it is my task as future teachers, not to stop this musical manifestation, but to lead and nurture it to the ideals of a more improved teaching and learning experience. Hopefully, this will be another interesting element to be added to my e-book. J

For more information, please view the link:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/93461/teaching_kids_through_hip_hop.html?cat=33

Week 6 Reflection

Recently, I have encountered a websites which tells me about the importance of video editing for improving children’s learning abilities in the classroom. There is a video, a product of children themselves so I really hope viewers could watch it :D . Here is the link to the website I mentioned:

http://powayusd.sdcoe.k12.ca.us/projects/edtechcentral/DigitalStorytelling/default.htm

From the reading, there comes a realization to me that learners regardless of their age, are beginning to indulge themselves in the latest technological development as to the extend of being able to construct their own videos from scratch and set a course for it so that their reading skills are enhanced. Honestly, it made me feel kind of ashamed to know how much young learners of today have progressed compared to myself in the past and now in the future (I can’t even create my own video, but a child can do much better...I don’t even know how to operate a video camera...so sad...). Therefore, aside from being able to edit photos and audios, it is high time that I merge myself with another more complex skill which was the focus of the sixth class, video editing tasks.

As time flows, some things do change for example like what I have mentioned before, the unbelievable progression children nowadays have achieved. That is why teachers themselves have to step beyond the couch of laziness and divert more effort towards the understandings of the importance of learning and applying video editing in the classroom and its diverse effects towards children’s learning as a whole. Apparently, the internet is like a pregnant entity, always heavily laden with various forms of videos which may contain potential learning aspects. These videos may not be entirely prepared reliable or suitable for learners to view in its original form as they may possess inappropriate, irrelevant and lengthy information for instance adultery scenes. Therefore, as teachers, it is our duty to make careful adjustments and reshaped the original into our favour or create a new one to suit our learning objectives and criteria, provided we are fully equipped with necessary and crucial skills at the back of our fingertip.

Though I was expecting to directly craft a video intended for teaching in the classroom context, I was surprised to know that our lecturer wanted us to develop an uneducational one instead. A bit confused, I then realized that this was an opportunity to make myself accustomed with the basic skills first, before leaping ahead to the real task of creating a video for children. This was also a great chance for me to practice CCTS or creative and critical thinking skills which are essential for adding exciting and wonderful special effects, primarily intended to arouse learners’ interest.

The task set for us was to edit a video from the famous reality show ‘So do you think you can dance’ which I find rather challenging and unpredictable. The focus was the skill of joining and splitting. Luckily it was again a group work task, so I can discuss with friends, each with their very own fascinating ideas. I'm guessing that I could still use the Windows Movie Maker application but I would prefer the Cyberlink Power Director to get the job done as I found that there were more colourful and interesting special effects which can be added to a video. Thus, I hope to create a wonderful video in the future to come..! :D

Week 5 Reflection

The fifth class provided another treat for me as it was about editing but this time the scope of focus was on the modification of audio sounds in music. Honestly, the only group people I could think of is musical DJ’s who love to indulge themselves in manipulating high-tech gadgets to create a remix of any songs they could lay their hands on to. They are experts who really know how to create auditory wonders using the sophisticated skills where they have harness from years of continuous training and learning period. The fourth class gave me a glimpse of exciting expectations of what I could do if I mastered such skill. The applications I downloaded to achieve the purpose were FreeAudioEditor, Xilisoft Audio Editor and Audicity

But of course, in any learning situation, there will always be an underlying theory which revolves around it, which was intentionally made to enhance the understanding of why such editing skill is essential. Therefore, we were granted access to several notes which I found was beneficial to the effort of building a basic understanding of how I as future teachers can address problems occurred in the classroom and make critical adjustments for the benefit of all learners during the teaching and learning process.

We were also tasked to answer several questions pertaining to today’s issue and present them to the whole class after a brief period of discussion. Luckily, we worked in groups and managed to seek out relevant resources aside from the ones given to us and present it in front to our friends. The discussion of the fourth class was basically to imbue in depth understanding of what is expected of us as future teachers and how flexible we can be in dealing with unfamiliar situations and coming up with suitable solutions, especially when the need arises. At the end I believed that I have gained more confidence and is more prepared for the challenges ahead!

Week 4 Reflection

Browsing the internet was an interesting experience for me, especially when able to take a peek at countless of wonderful pictures of nature and the surroundings, particularly from Flickr.com and other similar websites. Some of the pictures can be clearly seen to have been modified like a picture of a cow flying or a guy lifting a house! One seem to wonder how people who have certain computer skills were able to construct from such ordinary pictures into mind-puzzling work of art and turn everything they see into their favor. I guess it would be great to have such ability and use it as much as I want. Suddenly, out of the blue, my prayers were answered and on the fourth class, I was introduced to the art of photo editing which I hoped was a first step towards another wonderful learning experience.

We were introduced with some basic photo editing applications like Paint to the more advance ones like CorelDraw and Adobe Photoshop CS3. Initially, I do some basic foundation of photo editing which I learnt from Paint after doodling with the software for several hours. Though it was a simple application with fairly limited options, I was able to make use of the learning experience and prepare myself for the more complex Adobe Photoshop. At first I was not really sure of what the lecturer intended to do with a blurry picture she had displayed in front, but later on I discovered she had modified it using some sort of ‘red-eye reduction’ effect and made the original one much clearer. There were also many other special qualities which can be set to improve the overall value of an image but I am not very familiar with them.

Of course learning about photo editing was fun and exciting but how is it related with the carrier of a teacher? Primarily, I considered such skill was more meant for technology-based students who are going to be computer programmers after they have graduated in UM. Then, my schemata of what I have learnt from IPIK triggered an inference. Previously, I learnt that young learners learn better when they are exposed to visual teaching aids that are both interesting and possess potential teaching qualities. So now it becomes clear that the purpose of learning such technological skill was crucial for enabling myself to create more reliable and accountable teaching aids.

I guess the only way I can learn is through enquiry-discovery learning which have started to adopt since coming to UM. I believe that it was better for me to navigate and be responsible for my own learning as it was important for me to keep track of it whether any progress over a period of time was made. I wish I could be both a better learner and teacher in the future to come.