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.