Microsoft Publisher

There's a wonder in Microsoft. The wonder that's called 'Publisher'. Well, actually we have to come up with different publications that can be used in the classroom. There are flyers, business cards, banners and calendars.

There are of course a few ideas that I can come up with when using the publications in the classroom. Calendars can be used to remind pupils of the due dates and exams (which is a bad thing for them). Banners can be made to tell the parents of special events. Business cards on the other hand, can be used to promote my tuition school in th future (yes!!).

But I feel that being required to do all the publications is a bit over. I mean, it's not that we want to use all the publications right. So, it would be necessary to do all the works which add(ed) up to our endless works.

That's all then.

Here comes Video. Erghhhh

Video as teaching aid. To me, all these while video is for entertainment and knowledge. It feels very nice looking at the foreign classrooms where pupils watch videos and learn out of it. For local contexts? I don't think so. Let me explain to you why.

First of all, we need specialized videos that are catered specifically according to our curriculum and pupils. Do we have that? NO. There are of course commercialized products that yo can buy from the shops. But, they do not cater specifically to our pupils.

Then, there's the problem of syllabus. Our country's education system is like changing every five years. Teachers are trained for a few years then they are deemed unfit for the current curriculum, like us. We are studying TESL. But, TESL is not going to be used by the time that we graduated from UM. Until this point, let's not talk about making videos anymore.

Then, there's teacher workloads. Which teacher on earth has all the time to produce videos to be used in the classroom? Frankly, the only enjoyment that I might give in the classroom would be games and treats etc. No videos. Even if there are videos, they will be taken from Youtube. A teacher has to make lesson plans, teaching aids, give tests, correct the test papers, do reports, conduct curriculum activities bla bla bla. Where do I find a slot to produce videos??

That's all.

Audio-editing

So, we will talk about Audacity today. Why only Audacity? Coz I've only used Audacity, and it's free.

Somehow, after doing all the audio editing works, I feel that the authenticity of songs is lost. Many artists I feel, came up with songs that are really nice to listen to. but, when they do life performances, it sounds like me singing in the shower. Come on. It's not real songs sung by real people with good voices. It's lousy songs sung by untalented crap and edited using technological stuff. Many times I prefer listening to Oldies like Abba, Credence Water Revival etc. Many you want to call me old. As you wish.

Then there's an album featuring singing chipmunks with their cute, high pitched voices. People buy their albums which cost almost RM45 per piece. Give me the original songs and I can edit them to sound just like the real albums for free. Come on.

'A' for Audacity!!

My Photoshop Result

I wanna show you the new skill that I've learned in Photoshop. There's this technique called 'tilt-shift' photography where a picture taken from a high vantage point which shows skycrappers and roads etc can be manipulated to show like miniature models of the real thing.

This is a picture taken of traffic condition in Bangkok.

After editing it, it shows:

Like miniature model like that. Hehe..

Well, that's all la.

E-book

Today, we will be talking about E-book. What is an E-book? E = electronic, so it's a digital book where one does not flip the pages to read something, but scrolling up and down like a laptop. Somehow, it was not that hard to come up with an e-book. Everyone can do one by using PowerPoint. Of course, the E-book that we did lacked content and proper materials for young readers.

Somehow, I feel that an E-book can never replace the authenticity of reading a real book. Just imagine the rough texture of the pages, the smell that's like bringing back memories and the fondness of sitting down somewhere just to read. With an e-book, it brings to my mind the sense of rush, doing many things at once and no sense of peace that a real book brings.

The only country as far as I know where the people read E-book diligently would be Japan. Even when we're talking about Japan, it already brings to mind of busy-ness.

Still, I expect e-book to be the future of reading. Which brings to my mind another issue: Malaysians read about 3 books (or 3 pages) per year. I think Malaysians prefer PSP and Nintendo Ds rather than E-book. Nobody wants to be seen as nerdy reading e book in the LRT, right?

So, I expect my kid will be like this:

"Dang. I need a PSP!!!"

Supposedly August First Post

I was supposed to update my blog every week and I didn't. Now I'm eating the fruit of procrastination. Well, now I shall update everything based on what I remember and read from other's blogs.

Okay. So what did we do? There's fire drill. Hahaha. To tell the truth, I've never seen someone using a fire extinguisher before. So it came as a surprise coz I thought we'll just be standing around counting the seconds before we're allowed to go back to the comfort of air-conditioned room.

"I hate Barbeque"- Fireman

"Now I need a volunteer to be lighted on fire. Anyone??"

Then, we went back to learn some photo editing skill. I've heard someone said that PhotoShop is god, meaning that u can basically do anything u want e.g. defame, destroy etc someone's reputation just by editing their pictures with them in compromising positions etc. But I also learned that as a photographer, minimal photo editing is sufficient as photos taken are supposed to convey the message behind it rather than it being beautiful all.

So that's it for this post.

Terrific Videos

Today, we watched home made videos-a task given to pairs alomost 2 weeks ago. Of course, doing a video without any particular theme would be easy and almost enjoyable to say the least. The bad thing is that the themes for all other videos would be almost the same, like friendship, university life and any others that pop into your mind right now.

My video was about friendship, a theme that has been recycled over and over again. What I felt most special about me and my lovely cutey partner's (Siang Shian) video was that we included all the photos since foundation years until last semester. All the photos when we just meet in the first weeks, going for camps and outings, doing assignments together-all made a wonderful montage of what we've experienced together as friends. Even when we were doing the video, we laughed when we opened all the photos and reminisce about the old days all over again. How we've grown and learnt. I still remembered when I wished that my course would be 2 years in Maktab and 4 years in UM. Now, my opinion totally changed. I gotta admit that I prefer Maktab much much more than UM. In Maktab, our relationship, our bonds were personal, close and not so academically oriented. We stayed together in the hostels and meeting each other was like meeting close friends. Now, we seldom meet each other as all of us are living so far away from each other. Sigh..the old days.

Then came the moment when we watched the video together in the computer lab. How the people cheered, laughed, 'Woooooooo' and 'Awwwww' while watching the video. It was clear that everyone thought about the old days too, and how the experience has shaped them into what they are now. Maybe they would think about things that we've gone thru together, and how the bonds that were built can never be replaced by new environment and friendships.

I like the video done by Hayat and Fafa. Of all the videos that I've watched today, their's was the only one with plot: starting with Hayat having bad habits and ending with him changing the habits after under threat of break-up with Fafa. It's pretty entertaining. The pictures were also personalised as they took the pictures specially to do the video.

Overall, I wanna laud everyone for doing an incredible job at the video. =)