Week 10: Full of anticipation

Hi! Today was another fun-filling and exciting day. Exciting as I think most of us are heading towards our home sweet home soon. As for today's lecture, we had presented the articles which were assigned to us last week. From the presentions, I've really gained a lot of in-depth insights on the importance of preservice teachers to equip ourselves with the knowledge of technology and how they should integrate it into the lesson. In these 9 weeks, I realised that technology can really do wonders in teaching as there are many educational softwares, websites or programmes that can be explored to enhance and motivate pupils' interest to learn. I found that the presentations done by Doreen's group was very clear and informational as they had shown vivid examples as to how technology can be brought into the classroom, and they also explained in detail on how technology can improve pupils' listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. Now, I have more ideas on how to integrate technology into language teaching. For example, I deem that blogging is one of the ways to motivate pupils to write, as young children generally dislike traditional method of teaching, and the use of technology would definitely capture the attention of these active, bubbly and fun-seeking young learners.
For the second part of the lesson, Ma'am showed us a short advertisement entitled "recycle". I was flabbergasted upon watching this awesome video. Although it was a very short video, which was merely 30 seconds, the idea was marvelous and catchy. The producer managed to deliver the message "it's never too young to start recycling" within 30 seconds. This video featured a boy who sends a question to one of the girls, asking her whether she loves him or not, but the girl rejects him. Then he erases the message and resends the question to another girl. Wow, the idea behind that was simply marvelous! To those who have missed this cute video, you can watch it here.

Before the class ended, Ma'am also commented on some of our storyboards for our video editing assignment. My pair, Aizat and I managed to come out with our story board too, but we didn't have sufficient time to show it to Ma'am. Basically, our video's topic is "It's never too late to express your love". Our video focuses on love towards our family and friends. As we realised that nowadays, people find it hard or awkward to express or show their love, and the word "love" is seldom uttered to people who care for us, especially our parents. So, with this video, we hope that it will bring a sense of awareness especially to youngsters to show their love towards their parents, and also their friends, God, and their loved ones. In our video, we will insert some children's opinions about love. We've found a few quotatios, and we found that they are very meaningful. With this, we hope that we will get our message accrossed. To those who are also in the midst of producing their videos, all the best ya!
Lastly, I would like to wish all my fellow friends and lecturers happy holiday and Selamat Hari Raya! Enjoy your holiday!

Video editing here we come!

Hi there. Today's lecture was yet another "eye-opener" session for me. This week, our assignment is to produce a video! Video, I thought, not again, we had just finished producing one video for our technology assignment! However, as Ma'am revealed one of her all time favourite 'ella and wu chun's' video clip, I was totally impressed by the video edited by their fans! The video managed to capture our attention, and upon seeing their work, I am fully motivated to create one as well!

Besides that, Ma'am also showed us some video editing softwares that can be utilised for this assignment. One of them was one true media. Before this, I only know windows movie maker, power director and photostory. This time around I am going to try something new! Sounds interesting and challenging isn't it?
As I browsed through the net, I found one particular fan made video which had captured my attention. It is a video created by the fan of some hong kong drama series. They had merged some scenes in a few dramas and combined into one short meaningful video. The song that they chose really goes well with the video. Maybe this is not the best video, but the efforts that they have put in deserve a thumbs up! You can watch the video that I've attached below.
Besides that, we were also asked to work in pairs of different gender. So, this time I'm no longer working with my sweet female partner, but I'm working with a new partner from different gender. Luckily, I managed to find one partner, who is Aizat. I have worked with him previously and he is a nice partner to work with! So, I hope we can produce a good video!
So far, we have brainstormed some ideas and we found that creating a video isn't an easy job. So, we will try to squeeze some creative juice out of our little brains and hopefully we can produce a video which can really inspire our audience. Really look forward to start this assignment.
I believe strongly that 'with great determination, nothing is impossible!' So, best of luck, my friends! Enjoy watching the video! :)

Week 8=housekeeping!

Today's lecture was all about housekeeping. We've finally handed in our assignments. So far, everything is going smoothly, and I'm glad that all of us managed to complete the tasks on time! However, some of us did not follow the instructions given by Ma'am when handing in assignment, thus we had to spend the whole lecture arranging and sorting things back to order.
As for this assignment, I've really gained a lot of hands-on experience on how to edit audio. Indeed, I found that this assignment was quite fun. I think we are half way to become professional audio editors now.Haha! So far, I've learnt to use Audacity and music editing master. I found that these softwares are quite user friendly and we can basically edit all sorts of audio files. They are quite easy to use and they have all the tools we need to enhance the quality of audio files. It also enables us to merge two songs and add effects to the songs. Quite cool isn't it?
So for next week, we will be learning video editing. Wow, we are gonna be all-rounded teachers! I really look forward to the lecture next week and hopefully we can gain something new and useful. Okay, that's all for now and have a nice day!

Reflection week 7

Hi. Without realising, half semester has passed! As for today, we were given another task to complete : audio editing. So far, we've developed an ebook, edited photos and now we are venturing into the audio editing world! I am glad that we have the chance to learn so many amazing things! I'm positive that all those skills are worth learning. Frankly speaking, I really enjoy the process of doing the works and I'm proud to see the end products. I hope I will be able to cope with the heavy workloads and complete the assignments on time. Before this, I had used a few songs for my simulated teaching back in college, and I was not satisfied with the quality of the song, however, I did not know how to edit the song according to my preferences. Now, finally, I have the chance to explore and learn it!

For this lecture, we've been exposed to some examples of audio editing work done by Mdm Foziah, and she also introduced us to some tools for audio editing, the purpose for editing audio, and the history of audio editing world. I think I'm quite interested in doing this task, and hopefully I can manage to come out with a good piece of product! So, we really need to work hard now! All the best to all!

Photoshop!

Hi people, hope everyone is doing fine. I would like to share the photos that I edited recently for the photo editing task.

Personally, I enjoyed doing the photoshop, and I'm proud with the end product as well. At least I've learnt something new and useful! These are the photos. Hope you'll like it!

(Before)

(After)

E-book, here we come!

Today is a pleasant day, and I just enjoyed our resources class! The lesson began with a short presentation from Mdm Foziah. The topic of the lecture was about criteria for selecting or creating stories. I found that this lesson was indeed very useful and I'm glad that we all had a strong foundation in this field as we had been exposed to a similar course named "Stories in the ESL classroom" before. Mdm Foziah had also exposed us to the criteria that we should take note in developing a story, which include the text, font size, plot, and illustrations. This is to help us to develop an e-book, which is our next assignment! This is the very first time that we are to create an e-book! As I browsed through Google, e-book refers to an e-text that forms the digital media equivalent of a conventional printed book. So, the idea is quite similar to a story books that we usually read, but it's just that e-book is presented in the form of electronic media.

So far, we have learnt to do tutorials, photoshop and now, we are to apply what we have learnt from the previous lessons to this assignment! This serves as another learning platform for us to develop our internet and computer skills! Wow, we have learnt so many things in such a short period, amazing isn't it? As quoted by Abigail Adams " learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence". I extremely agree with this quotation! I think what I need now is passion in learning and also to persevere in what I'm doing now! Although they are lots of assignment awaiting us, I believe that with great passion and determination, we can excel in the end! So, let's work hard together towards achieving what we aim for!

Oh ya, happy holiday to all my beloved friends and lecturers! Enjoy your holiday :)

My fifth resources class: overwhelming!

Hi, greetings to all. I would say today's resources class was yet another "eye-opener" for me. Before the lesson started, we were surprised by the fire drill. All of us were like ants scattered at the ground floor, and waited for the instructions from the firemen. The drill was simply cool, especially when the firemen demonstrated to us on how to use the fire extinguisher. For me, I just stood at the back and enjoyed the "show". Haha.

As for the class, we were given another assignment from Mdm Foziah. Ouhh, not again, I sighed. However, as Maam explained to us on what we should do, I found that this assignment is not bad after all. For this assignment, we are to collect all the electronic teaching aids that we have produced or found, then categorise and compile them. I found that this assignment is very beneficial for us, as when we have a variety of teaching aids, it helps us to save a lot of time if we are to use them in the future. We don't have to undergo the trouble of finding or downloading them, because it's already there, ready to be used! Besides that, I believe that we will definitely gain wonderful experience doing this assignment, as we will be able to learn how to produce quality teaching aids. Thumbs up for this assignment! Hehe..

Apart from that, Mdm Foziah has also shown us some examples of photo editing, and how people add effects to pictures. I was surprised to see all the pictures done by those people, because they were amazing. I wonder how they found time to edit all those photos! The most beautiful job done by them was the photo featuring the well-known taiwanese singer and actor, Ella and Wu Chun. Their fan had actually replaced Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's photo with their faces. The photo was remarkable, because the picture fitted their faces so well. These were some of the photos with added effects. Hope I am able to produce similar work soon!

I didn't even realise that this photo was actually being cut and merged together. Amazing isn't it?

This was another photo edited by their fan. I was flabbergasted upon seeing all the pictures. The effect is just remarkable.

I didn't even know how this was done. So, this shows that there are a lot for me to learn! Okay, I think I shall procrastinate no more and start to work hard! Good luck to all my friends! Adios!