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!