Bl0gging for pupils

Blogging for pupils..What's your opinion about it?

Well, as for me, I feel that blogging has more pros than cons. Blogging could draw out a young writer and open the doors to their future. Employing blogs help to develop good spelling habits, grammar skills, and develop a love for writing at a young age. It is an innovative concept that has potential benefits.

Blogging helps to increase communication with friends, teachers and even parents. Since blogging will be presented to an audience, pupils will learn to take pride in their work and will want to present their ‘best’ work. Thus, it develops pupils' confidence and get a real sense of fulfilment from publishing their work. The automated spell-checking function helps pupils to be aware of their spelling errors when they occur. Also, pupils getting acquainted with keyboards at a young age could help them to become familiar with their layout and function.

However,there are cons of blogging for pupils. Since blogging involves the Internet, teachers should educate pupils about the dangers of the Internet. The Internet is global in its reach and developing safe Internet habits at a young age is important.

My FutUrE cLaSSR0oM

This week's class allowed us to dream and be farsighted about future classroom. Well, as for me, I was longing for a classroom which was equipped by basic technology appliances such as computer, LCD and SMARTBOARD. With these technology facilities in the classroom, I was able to apply the skills and knowledge that I gained in UM especially in integrating technology in teaching and learning activities.

Using technology in teaching and learning activities is beneficial as it brings new method of teaching that is more interactive, fun, easy and meaningful. With just a click, a teacher can expose the pupils with technology that is crucial in today's modern era. Indirectly, it develops pupils' computer literacy skills while they are learning in the classroom.

However, there are some risks that may occur while carrying out activities using technology. For example, electricity problem, computer malfunction and so on. So, to overcome this, teachers should be flexible and initiative enough to design Plan B as the backup plan. Thus, still, the traditional way of teaching such as using 'chalk-and-talk' is still relevant in future classroom when teachers encounter problems in using technology.

To conclude, I strongly believe that both traditional and modern method of teaching is equally important and relevant to be applied in future classroom. Where there is problem while integrating technology in teaching and learning activities in the classroom, there is always traditional way of teaching.

In addition, I believe that teachers themselves have to play their crucial role in conducting suitable teaching and learning activities and approach that can ensure the objectives to be achieved successfully and effectively. That is the most important thing of all. Even though the classroom is not well-equipped with the latest technology appliances, teachers can still teach and conduct activities if the activities reflect their learning objectives. Well, everything depends on how the teacher designs, conducts and the approach that she uses to carry out the teaching and learning activities.

SELAMAT HARI RAYA

To Prof Raja Maznah,

Mr Hafiz

and fellow friends,

SELAMAT

HARI

RAYA

&

MAAF

ZAHIR

BATIN

FISH Philosohy

I love this week’s class. It was electrifying and stimulating. I was quite shocked when Prof Maznah threw some fish toys to us at the beginning of the lecture and we threw them to each other. That was really fun and I bet all of us were having fun too..haha..then,I started wondering the significance of throwing the ‘fishes’ to us at the beginning of the lecture.. Does it have anything to do with our lecture today?

I finally got the answer when Prof introduced ‘FISH Philosophy’ to us. Honestly, I love the way she introduced the philosophy by playing some kind like ‘game’ when we threw the ‘fishes’ to each other earlier. That was brilliant! Maybe I can apply this technique to my pupils in future.

FISH Philosophy is a skill that provides the process, tools and language to generate the skills necessary to design a workplace full of inspiration, creativity and innovation.

It emphasizes on four simple practices – Be There, Play, Make Their Day and Choose Your Attitude. Basically, it was all about inspiring us to have fun at work, school and home. It also inspires us to develop new attitude about how we show up in our community both at home and in the workplace.

In my opinion, as teachers, we should apply FISH philosophy as we need to understand our pupils’ feelings and background so that we are ‘connected’ to them and have good rapport. This is crucial in order to motivate pupils for learning and have fun simultaneously. I’m sure pupils will love you if you apply this wonderful philosophy in your teaching style =)GAMBATE!!

Thank you, Ma'am and tUt0rs

We continued with our presentation on smartboard activities in this week's class..but this time, we had it from group 1 followed by the next group. My group, WHITEBOARD, was the fifth group to present on that day. As before, every group had to choose the best SMARTBOARD activities among the group members and my activity had been chosen for this week's class. I was quite nervous and worried if Prof and tutors would comment on my activities badly..huhu..However, with the support from my group members, Kumi, Dila, Hafiz, Kak Hidayah and Kak Niza, I gained my confidence and ready to present it to the class. This is what I like about working in this group..helping each other..supporting each other..just love it=)

Unluckily, I could not present my activities to class because most of us would like to continue editing their SMARTBOARD activities. So, Prof allowed to do our own work and edit it nicely. Thank you , Prof and tutors for being very undertstanding. I really appreciate it a lot=)

I should be grateful to have such an understanding lecturer and tutors for this course. That means a lot to me..They even allowed us to decide on the date of submission for the SMARTBOARD assignment (that's what I like about this course..hehe..). However, my group had discussed and decided to submit the assignment next week, which was on 24th September 2008 instead of submitting it after Raya. We believed that there will be more assignments to be submitted after Raya so, that's why we decided to submit our assignment before going back for Raya holiday=)

The last 30 minutes of this week's class was having discussion with lecturer and tutors about our SMARTBOARD assignment. Luckily, I managed to show my activities to Prof and she suggested me some ideas to improve one of the activities. Overall, the activities are fine. Thank you, Prof Maznah for the ideas and advice. I will edit it for my final product. All the best!!

All the best!

Luckily, I had finished my SMARTBOARD assignment. Two of my group members, Dila, Kumi and myself had shown each others’ work on Tuesday, the day before our technology class. We commented on each others’ work and suggested some ideas to improve our product. Honestly, I love this kind of ‘working together concept’ where we cooperate and help each other that makes us work as a team. Indirectly, we had developed soft skill such as collaboration, communication, mutual respect and leadership while working together as a group. Thank you Kumi, Dila, Hafiz, Kak Niza and Kak Hidayah.

In this week’s class, we were required to sit in our group and decide on which product to be chosen and presented in front of the classroom. At first, Dila and I had suggested to choose Kumi’s product to be presented in front of the classroom because we thought that her product was the best among us. She had some videos in her SMARTBOARD activities which was something extra compared to the others..but then, the other group members decided to choose my product to be presented in front of the classroom because they thought mine was attractive. I was quite surprised because I believed that my SMARTBOARD activities were not that great and the activities were simple that involves dragging, matching and writing on the SMARTBOARD. However, I agreed to present the activities to class as my group members told me so.

Nonetheless, after I heard Ma’am mentioned that we need to choose the best among the best, I was wondering again. I whole heartedly believe that my activities were not the best among the best because I think Kumi’s activities deserved to be chosen for the presentation since her activities were more creative and apply more SMARTBOARD application like spotting things using magic pen on the SMARTBOARD. So, finally, we decided to choose Kumi’s activities to be presented in front of the classroom.

While watching other groups presenting, certain groups had been assigned to look into certain aspects such as the positive points, negative points and ways to improve it. After watching the presentations by a few groups, I think that Kumi’s activities were the best among the others which was presented today. Congratulation, Kumi!
Personally, I think the presentation session of SMARTBOARD activities was very helpful in giving us ideas about the criteria to be focused on in designing the activities such as content, creativity (originality and types of activities), justification (theories) and presentation (layout, audio, video, font, font size, colour and pictures). After watching the presentations and discussing comments about it, I realized that I need to add some ‘spices’ on my SMARTBOARD activities to make it more attractive. So, to all my group members and me myself, I wish you all the best!

Time is running out!!

Luckily, we were given the chance to do our own work for designing our smartboard activities for this week's class.
That means I can continue searching and working with my SMARTBOARD assignment. Actually, I'm searching for animated gifs or pictures to be included in my SMARTBOARD assignment later. I believe it can attract pupils' interest and make the lesson more entertaining.
However, the most important thing is that I need to finish it as soon as I can because time is running out!