Fifth.. You can design a poster using PowerPoint!

And so, the class began with Ms. Chin introducing the five programs implemented into our education, which are Smart School, ETeMS, School.net, Makmal Komputer and TV/Radio Pendidikan. Here’s what I know about the programs:

Smart School (Sekolah Bestari): The schools integrate ICTs into their teaching and learning, using ICTs to administrate the school’s system and the teachers have the knowledge and skills to integrate ICTs into their teaching and learning activities.

ETeMS: Teaching of Mathematics and Science in English language.

School.net: Schools have access to Internet through this program.

Makmal Komputer: Every school must have computer lab(s); based on the number of students in that particular school to cater their needs to learn.

TV/Radio Pendidikan: Education television program. To date, this program is also shown on Channel 9 – shows various programmes that relate to the various school subjects.

As for me, these programs launched by the government are good in a sense that they can help to improve our education system. In order to ensure the success of these programs, teachers play fundamental roles in contributing their skills and knowledge as well as take every opportunity for professional intellectual growth (lifelong learning). And also, how well the teachers carry out their lesson to ensure that the lesson will cater for all level of students. Availability of latest inventions should help teachers to equip themselves with necessary skills and knowledge; build understanding and ability over time, and also use the advantages of technology to further develop their students.

Poster design using Microsoft PowerPoint? That’s what we have been introduced on that day and the lecture were conducted by Ms. Nazirah, former students of Prof. Maznah, currently studying in Multimedia University. With the Merdeka Day celebration is around the corner, she asked us to design a poster that relate to Merdeka Celebration with this year’s theme “Malaysiaku Gemilang”.

In group, we need to design the poster with our own interpretation of this year Merdeka celebration and later present it. For me, my group did not face any problem as we all clear with the instructions given by Ms. Nazirah. She gave lectures on what should be included into the poster, and how to effectively design a poster (taking into consideration of font, font size, background colour, organization of the poster and so on). We have been guided on how to create a poster using PowerPoint and it’s a matter of product, whether my group (Undecided - me, Soddiq and Khairi. Caroline was absent on that day) able to create a poster as required.

One of the problem that we had during the poster design process was that there are only the three of us.. meaning that we lack of ideas. ‘The more, the merrier’ as you can say.. with only the three of us, we had no idea on what we should put into our poster; what message we want to present. “The background colour should be yellow”, “why don’t we rotate the picture a little bit”, “the font looks ugly”, and many more you could hear in our discussion. Everyone being critical. But, don’t make early judgment on our group. There are differences in ideas, but we have a special bond. In the end, we finished our task and satisfied with it. I’m proud with my group’s unity.

When designing the poster, we were provided with set of pictures and we need to carefully choose the picture(s) that are relevant to the message that we want to deliver. Personally, I think that some of the pictures are not suitable and during the activity, I was wondering, if I choose this one picture (Orang Utan’s picture for example), how does that picture relate to our Merdeka celebration? After all, it’s not like we can only see Orang Utan in Malaysia. From what I know, a lot of Orang Utan can be found in Indonesia. So, in my opinion, we should be given more freedom to choose our own pictures to be included into our poster. Perhaps we can surf the Net and find images from Yahoo or Google Search Engine. This is because, when my group comes up some with idea, we were unable to include the messages that we want to present because there were no suitable pictures. Therefore, I think it is more appropriate that the choices of pictures are not restricted.

Based on that day’s activity, I can see that designing a poster using PowerPoint can benefit the students. If I were to conduct this activity in the primary classroom, I would give brief instruction on the criteria of a poster so that primary students can get better idea on what they need to do because some of them may not be familiar with posters. Additionally, when we want to conduct this kind of activity, I think we need to explain to the children the purposes of designing a poster. Sometimes, teachers just instruct the students to do the tasks and in the end, the students might question why they have to design a poster and how that designing the poster can gives benefit to them. Because of that uncertainty, they will not feel motivated and uninterested to participate in the activity. Designing a poster in conjunction with Merdeka Day Celebration, for example, can generate the students’ creativity and also integrate patriotism spirit in them. If I were to conduct this activity, I will ask the students to create a poster based on their own creativity and the student that come up with the most creative poster will be rewarded and also notify them that their posters will be pasted around the school in conjunction with the Merdeka Day so that they will feel that their teacher appreciate their piece of works. This is somehow can motivate the students, encourage them to work hard in designing their posters and generate their creative and critical thinking skills.

At the end of the lesson, Ms. Nazirah asked for our generosity to give feedbacks on the activity and post it on our Blog. There are certain questions that we need to answer and post our answers on the Blog.

Did you face any problem during the session? Why?

What do you think of the instruction?

What improvements can you suggest?

How would you carry out this design session with primary level students?

Well.. you have read my answers..

p/s: I'm sorry I can't display our poster here because I've formatted my pen-drive and forgot to transfer the files into the laptop. Luckily we saved the document in the PC in MK2. Perhaps later I will edit this post.

Happy Independence Day!

Fourth, and more about ICT

SMJK Datuk Ahmad Badawi (Penang): this school, according to Prof. Maznah, is one of the schools that have been chosen to introduce the pilot test on 1:1 computer lab. Under this project, the entire lesson will be conducted by using the ICT and all students are provided with the laptop like computers (it is not a laptop as far as I’m concerned). And also one Smartboard provided to cater for the teaching and learning process. This is a new advancement in our educational system. It is not fully implemented, but from 10 years from now, it is not possible that all schools in Malaysia will adopt this project to assist the teaching and learning activities. But technology must be integrated effectively if it is to make a difference in the way teachers teach and students learn. Of course there were problems occurred in this project, as this is a new approach to teachings. In order to overcome this, Teachers should start to learn on how to use ICT. Every teacher should be open to new ways of doing things. That is so important today! Almost on a weekly basis, technologies become available that can change, and sometimes utterly transform the way teachers teach and children learn. From my point of view, good teachers maintain an avid interest in new technologies with a view toward improving the effectiveness of their teaching.

Later, Ms. Chin took over the class and does presentation regarding Chapter 1 by Brennan on ICT and the learning principles of primary school curriculum. Learning through ICT, learning with ICT and learning about ICT are what we were exposed. In short, that article emphasizing on how ICT can assist students in learning. This article is really good; especially to be read by future teachers. All initial teacher education courses encourage and promote the use of ICT as a means of facilitating learning and teaching. Students learn about ICT and how to use ICT to advantage within the primary and secondary curricula. Learning about ICT and learning with ICT occurs in all areas of their courses and not only within discrete ICT modules. Using computers in classroom, for example, is one of the implementation recently introduced to ensure integration of ICT so that it may be better understood as a tool for learning.

And then, the question about what is E-Portfolio is being raised. Prof. Maznah explained about that issue but I can’t remember… however, from what I know, an e-portfolio is a collection of work that demonstrates what an individual has done or learned over a period of time. For teachers, portfolio is also a way to store and document what students are learning in their classes, and it can show student academic achievement. And with the advancement of ICT, students can submit their works or assignments through Internet and easily retrieve by teacher later on. That’s how teacher create e-portfolio (it is only my opinion, correct me if I’m wrong).

As educators, we need to create instructional materials and procedures consistent with not only the curriculum, but also with individual learning needs and behaviors. Teachers should maintain a student's attention by presenting material in a fun and exciting way. For a quality-learning environment to occur there needs to be a comfortable and happy setting that supports the learning of the students. Sometimes, I think students nowadays are advance students and using ICT can somehow attract their attention towards learning, instead of using conservative way of teaching and learning activities…

Third.. Insight into PowerPoint Presentation

It was 25^th of July 2007. Ms. Ng was talking about the how to effectively use PowerPoint presentation in a lesson during her ‘debut’ to our class. She talked about the crucial thing that we need to apply in our presentation in order to successfully deliver our points and some of the taboos that should be avoided when doing PowerPoint presentation. I was listening and I would say…Ms. Ng indeed have changed my perception on designing slideshows for presentation.

What I’ve learnt on that day is that, SIMPLICITY is the main principle if you are thinking of making slideshows. Simplicity here means that you don’t put too much info on one slideshow. Just put the main point just fine, unless your slides will look cluttered. Nothing interesting with cluttered slides..you will end up making your audiences feel annoyed with you. Get the idea? Just practice simplicity, do not put too many words into 1 slide and organize your slides well. From my previous piece of works of PowerPoint presentation, I tend to choose animated pictures to my slides (although the animation was not related to the point) because of the perception of designing the slides that “more than meets the eye” which is nothing but a total misconception of ideas I created. According to Ms Ng, pictures displayed in slides should be relevant to the topic or issues we are discussing. It’s true…if the picture is not relevant to the topic, then why must the picture be there? Please..be more considerate..although it’s only a picture, but sometimes picture can help deliver our meaning. Thanks to Ms. Ng, these new information did help me to change my view about PowerPoint presentation. Another interesting point that was mentioned by Ms. Ng is the main title/topic should be included in each slides so that the audiences will be clear with the purpose of that particular presentation. Other important principles that we need to consider are the choice of background colour, types, size and colour of the font chosen and which is more preferable, 2D or 3D charts (2D is more appropriate since it can show the portions more clearly).

From what I’ve been taught, I make a conclusion that when we are designing PowerPoint slideshows, we do not need to put everything that we want to deliver on slides. It won’t help our presentation. Instead, only important points need to be displayed. That way, our audiences can get what we meant to deliver. If we put everything on the slides, and we are presenting just by reading the whole text we put in the slides, they just can’t see what we are trying to deliver. In the end, our presentation would be pointless. Therefore, organization of our slides is important in attracting the attention of our listeners. The most important thing is, we MUST know what we are presenting, and elaborate on the points that we include. The best thing to successfully deliver our presentation is we are well-prepare before we carry out our presentation. Of course you don’t want to go ‘numb’ in front of the audience. I really like this one video shown to us, where a man doing a presentation. Each of his slides contained ‘a very limited word or picture’ and he delivered his speech in face pace. It was hilarious, but his intention was not being hilarious, but to introduce his topic. That kind of approach indeed can attract the audience. And only well-prepared man can do that kind of presentation…

Second Story

I had a busy day today..too much to do. too much burden. surfeit of work.. but of course i'm not going to talk about that. in fact, on this second post, i'm going to write about my experience on the second day of technology class. i'm back, people.
on that day, prof asked us to form a group. this is because we had a task to do. it was time to make use of the technology, by preparing a presentation using Microsoft PowerPoint. Me, Soddiq, Khairi and Caroline are in one group. oh yes. caroline is an exchange student from Switzerland. Yes, my friend, she came from the country that introduced Swatch. Ok. From our serious discussion, we decided to give soddiq special responsibility; responsibility that gives absolute power and authority. He’s our group leader. But our group is special. We are practicing democracy. Everyone can give ideas (after all, that was what we are always meant to do). Therefore, being a group leader is not that powerful..hahhaha. but soddiq, you are an important element in our group. Thank you soddiq. Hail soddiq!
And then, we need to decide a name for our group. We generated our creativity by suggesting lots of name. Such as? Ramsis, Swiss Rock, Noktah Cinta (Khairi’s idea..). too many, I can’t remember.. but later, we decided to name our group as ‘Undecided’.. Sounds charming isn’t it? Simple, yet pleasant to the ears. Basically, our task is to create a PowerPoint presentation based on the usage of different technology. for example, one group did Google Talk, another group did MSN Messenger, the other group did Hotmail, Digital Camera etc2… our group need to present about Video Camera.. so, we were given the time to search for information through the Internet. Soddiq took advantage of his role as a group leader by willingly accepting the task to design our slideshows. Soddiq is a natural-born leader..i envy him.. but doesn’t mean the rest of us did nothing. We assisted our leader by providing him with necessary information to include in our slideshows. How did we do that? Again, creativity is a must in our daily life. We used Yahoo! Messenger to share the information we got as everybody were using different PCs to search the Net. Indeed, modern technology make our life easier.
Later on, each group must present their masterpiece. If I’m not mistaken, only 4 groups managed to do the presentation as time constraint. However, from my opinion, they did a wonderful job. They designed their slideshows beautifully, especially Jia Rong’s group. Well, my friends are all very creative. And I did gained a lot of knowledge from those groups’ presentations. Learning this course really open my mind. sometimes i'm still thinking that teachers nowadays are still using the same conventional methods of teaching and learning, as i've experienced during my school days. Now, I think that we need to change as the time passes by. We are lucky to live in this modern day. I'm going to be a teacher in the future, and the knowledge of using latest technologies as teaching aids are fundamental for me. During the presentation, I'm beginning to get an idea on how teachers can take advantage of using those technologies presented by my friends to enhance teaching and learning activities. I believe that using latest technologies in classroom can create fun and interactive classroom activities; thus create a positive learning environment.

Behold!! The greatest blog from a great man

Yes..yes..you have read the title.. it is not great at all. in fact, I'm regretting my attitude..the attitude of "tak apa" (popular commercial on TV nowadays..). after almost 4 weeks, only today i manage to post this. well, the truth is..I'm not familiar with Blog actually. I've never post any before. in fact, I created this blog of mine because of this course requirement. yes i've seen other people's blogs before (mostly from Friendster). but, never thought of having one. See, I'm bad in describing things. or talk about myself, or telling everyone about my activities for the day or how i'm so pissed off about particular things. Actually, that's what i saw in other people's blogs (again..Friendster's blogs). that's why i'm not interested of having a blog before..

Well, people, that perception is about to change..

Although i haven't make any reflection of the previous lesson (Technology in Primary Education subject of course..), but don't think that I just sat there in the class and listen nothing! no.. here, i'm going to write about my opinion about this course, what i feel about learning technology in UM (from week 1 till today) and..etc2. hahhahaa.

on the first week of learning this course, well, it's always the same like introducing the topic, what we are going to learn in this course blablabla. it was our first week in UM actually..yeah.like a freshman..always enthusiast about new things, new experiences. as for me, this is a new experience; which is good. i'm going to be a teacher in the future, so it makes sense to develop my skills in using technology. i want to integrate modern technology into my teaching. i think it is a great approach of teaching to young learners. Prof. Maznah is cool.. personally i think I'm going to enjoy learning this course.

Nothing much, and then Prof. asked us to create a blog. everyone must do it. then we discussed about what are the things that we can include in the blog; about what we want to share with other friends, announcements, gossip, etc2.. what impresses me was there is a Smartboard! perghh..first time in my life seeing it.. makes me appreciate the beauty of science and technology.. ahh sorry. i'm a little bit 'kampung'.. but, from my observation, i can see most of my friends 'captivated' with that sophisticated machine (they even volunteered to write their idea on the board just to experiment it).. heheh. and Prof. took pictures of them writing on the board. stylooo...

hurrmmmmmm.. that's about it. to be continued....

oh yeah. i'm going to subscribe streamyx in this short time. yes..yes..you guys are going to read plenty of posts from me. muahaha!