Reflection (Last Entry)

1. What do you like about blogging?

What I like about blogging is that I can express my opinions honestly. I feel that a blog is one's personal space where he/she can say what he/she wants. Then, there's comments where I can see how people feel about a particular subject and not just being restricted by my own narrow views.

2, 3, 4 What have you gained from blogging? How?

Through blogging, I can organize my ideas and thoughts rather than letting my mind be cluttered and messy. It's a good thing to put down what you want to say in writing. As we look back to what we have written over the semester, we can see how much we learned and progressed. One context that is evident is the evidence of critical thinking. It makes me open my mind on what I think and how should perceive matters. I can also read other people's blog which serve as a guide for me to update mine. hehe..

5. What do you like about this course?

What I like is that I can really explore many avenues for resources, such as videos, and various publications that I can use in the future. Then, there's many opportunities where I can use the computer in the lab freely without restrictions.

6. What you do not like about this course?

the heavy and unnecessary workload. There's tutorials which cost us a lot of time and money.

7. What have you learnt from this course?

That there are many more resources to do teaching aids rather than just flashcards, flashcards and flashcards. There's video editing and audio editing which I don't usually do, but gave me opportunities to explore them more nevertheless.

8. What have you learnt from this course that you did not expect to?

Doing tutorials. As useless as I feel they are, it's my first time doing tutorials and it was enjoyable, in the beginning.

9. What have u expected but do not learn from this course?

As I read from the pro-forma, there's the text book selection and online newspapers that I have not learned from this course.

10. If you can change anything about this course, state what is and elaborate?

That there's more opportunities to learn on how to utilize the resources rather than producing a lot of them and putting them aside.

11. On a scale of 1 – 10, please rate your computing and technological skills for both before and after undergoing the course.

Before: 4

After: 7

The Last Lesson

For this post, I rather talk about the improvements that we have made over the weeks.

As this course is on using resources in the ESL classroom, I feel that this course has partially achieved its purpose. Yes. PARTIALLY. For week 3, it's about being realistic. But, I don't think the works that we have done all are realistic. There's the tutorials, publications and all sorts of things that have to be passed up. Somehow, I feel that doing all the publications in Microsoft Publisher is unrealistic as we don't use them.

Then, there's the tutorials of everything that we have to do. I mean, for photo editing, video making, audio editing and publications. Now, why do need to do all the tutorials? Is it necessary? Plus, we have to print out the tutorials which needs ink and the ink and papers aren't cheap. So, I personally feel that doing the tutorials is not beneficial to me.

Of course, I did learn a few things in this course. There's the print screen thingy that I really seldom used before. There's free softwares that I can use such as PhotoScape and Audacity. There's e-book which I can use in the future.

So, I would say that my knowledge in this area has improved by 40%.

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!!!"