CREATE A VIDEO?? NOT A PROBLEM

      For educator it is essential to learn how to make their own teaching aid. As the teachers are evaluated accordingly they have to do something out of the box to have a good grade for their evaluation. Video have been a great tool in teaching for the students to understand certain concepts clearer. 

    But its is a challenge to find the video of choice which related to the subject. If they get the video the language maybe the problem. As this what educators are facing, there is a solution for this problem. Making their own video. WHAT??? Yes each and everyone can create their own video free of charge and as simple as ABC.

    There are a lot of tool can be used. Online movie makers, Windows Media Movie Maker and Photostory. For  a beginner with no experience in creating such a things, Photostory is the best tool. Its created in such a way that is very easy to handle. The steps are provided and the user have to follow the instructions carefully. User can use their own voice to narrate the video. The output of this video can be chose. The video format that can be used everywhere is MPEG. The users can browse www.jakesonline.org/photostory3.pdlearn more about how to create your video.

MY JOURNEY WITH COMMUNICATION TOOLS- FROM MAIL TO WATSAPP

      Communication become a very important part in human's life. Human said to be civilized when they starts to communicate. In my life, i watch the evolution of the communication tool and i would like to share my view on this.

     At the early age of my life i know that letter become the most important tool. My father and mother will receive mails delivered by postman. I see that my father will open the envelope and read it. But later my house is equipped with telephone with land line from Telekom. People starts to call and i will pick up and they will ask me to call my father and mother and sometimes they talk with me too. I enjoy picking up and answering the telephone. But still postman will deliver mails. During Deepavali time we will receive a lot of greeting cards from friends and relatives.

      As time pass by, my father bought his first handphone.With telephone we have to stand close to the telephone because it is connected by chords. But with handphone we can move around that why sometimes it is called as mobile phones. Later our whole family owned a handphone each. It is easier for us to communicate with each other especially when we live far away from each other. From calls, we started to use short message system(sms). Not everytime we can talk using handphone, (during meetings, exams, etc), so SMS become an alternative for calls. For university students like me SMS can save money because it cost less than the call rate. Now the greeting cards that we receive become less and i receive the greetings through SMS.

       Now with everyone owning smarthphones, we can send and receive messages free of cost by having and app(applications) called watsapp. A person can send images, sms, video free with internet connection. But still for calls is there any apps? Of course YES. With an app  called  Viber we can talk FOC anytime anywhere with internet. But still the physical visiting and communicate face to face is much more important... to ensure that we are still human not robots.

HOW I USE TECHNOLOGY IN MY PRACTICUM

     For a students in education faculty who trained to be a teacher, Practicum is like a n nightmare. I also undergo practicum to a primary school preschool. As a practicum students the standard that people put to evaluate a students is very high. The older teacher in the school expect a lot from the students. As i understand this, my level of panic increases each and everyday.

     Although  there are some practices and exercises given for the practicum students but when i face the real school i realise that i have to do my teaching according to the capacity and the ability of the students. The only tool that support me that time is internet. 

      I use internet to search for new ideas that i can use in my teaching. Basically there are a lot of activites which are listed. But to choose the best for the students is the difficult part. To match the students level and the topic of the day is a challenge for me.

      Teacher's tube, youtube and teachers forum provide a wider range of choice. Usually i adapt an idea than i change it to the need of the students. For example i have to teach floating and sinking concept. From the search i do an experiment with egg where when i put an egg in the glass filed with water it sinks and i ask the students to do an experiment to make the egg  float. I provide them with sugar, salt and milk powder. The students work in group to find out the answer. for the students at this age, its essential for teacher to show a real object in order to make them understand better. Internet for me is a best companion during my practicum.

CASSETTE TO MP3 PLAYER

           I  cannot imagine my life without music. Music can calm and relax people's mind. Music is a proven relief for stress. I started to listen to songs since my young age. That time i see my mother turn on radio and i hear a lot of songs from there. But i cannot choose the song that i need  because the song will be played my the RJ of the radio station. When small i thought there are some tiny people inside the radio and i will try to find them but now that memory makes me smile. 

           Then my parents bought a radio with cassette player. I love this radio because i can choose the songs to play in the cassette. Usually my parents will buy new movie songs cassette. I can rewind, pause, play, forward and record songs which plays in radio.

            As time goes on my parents bought radio with CD player. Its same as the cassette player. But with CD player the number of songs that we can listen increases. Furthermore that time CD become the trend. I still can rewind, pause, forward and play the songs in CD but now i use remote control to do this tasks.

            But as i get to access to internet, i started to download the songs that i need free using internet. With CD and Cassette we have to pay money to buy it. But now i can get it for free by downloading the songs. To listen the songs anywhere i upload the downloaded songs into my handphone which have mp3 player facility. Then i bought a MP3 Player to listen the songs that i need on the go.

FACEBOOK LIFE

       

 FACEBOOK... A book with face or, a face with book, as everyone knows it doesn't have any relation with book. It is a media of communication where people can connect, communicate and share their ideas. It is internet based where people can use it anytime anywhere. And the most important thing!!! ITS FREE OF CHARGE. How cool is that? Nowadays we need to pay for everything. But as it free everybody who have internet access can have a Facebook account.

         I opened my Facebook Account at the age of 21, as its a trend that time. But didn't have courage to upload my profile picture because i didn't have the trust on Facebook privacy settings. But as time goes on i finally upload my picture in Facebook because my friend advise me to do that because only with profile picture we can find our friends that we lost connection.

          What my friend said was true because i able to find my primary school friends and get their connection back. But not only my old friends send friend request but unknown people from other country send friend request to me. But that time we have competition between our friends to see how many friends we have in Facebook. Some of my friends have 4000 plus friends. So u started to accept the unknown friend requests to increase my friends number. But the unknown friends started to chat and send messages which i think its no appropriate for me. The content of their messages also makes me to think whether i need them as friend or not. As a final decision i unfriend and block the people that i dont know. Thanks to Facebook admin to who create such a function which is beneficial everyone. Then only i started to check my privacy setting which i can adjust according to the level of security that i need.

             Facebook become a great media for me to get updated because people post a lot of latest information which is very beneficial for me. I also get to know events related to my friends and family members. When i get bored i like to play Facebook games, i tend to get addicted to it because the game is created in such a way that the person have to login and play the game everyday. But now i know how to control my temptation and now i spend my time wisely when i login into my Facebook account.

INTERNET

         Internet....hmmmm one word that change many people's lifestyle. I am not excluded in this matter. Internet entered into my life at the age of 12... But that time my access to internet is limited. My father put password for it. So basically i cant use internet without my fathers permission as he is the only one who got the password. That time i didn't need internet my primary and secondary school require internet.

             But as i enter university, internet accessibility didn't become a problem because University of Malaya provide free wifi service for students. So from there i become familiar with internet. Basically  internet make my life easier. Although people say that library makes a person knowledgeable but for me internet makes me a smarter person.

                   University student who are undergraduate who stays at university colleagues seldom have time to go to the library. Internet is a best media for me to get the required knowledge but mostly to do my assignments.  Rather than that internet become a medium of communication where i use e-mail to send information and share information between my friends.

                    But as i think i become smarter with internet now i realize that internet makes me become lazy. As i have every information at the tip of my hand with the help of internet, i seldom go out and communicate with my classmates. Not only that, i trust whatever in internet  is true. But as time pass by i realize that not everything in the internet is trust able because  some information didn't have validity and reliability. So now i become more mature thinker where i check the validity of the information and i use book as a reference for my assignments.

IS POWER POINT REALLY POWERFUL???

Power Point a word that become familiar in my life at the age of 10. My father went to a course to learn how to use Power Point. So after the course he will come home and practice it. So i will sitting beside my father and look at what he is doing and i learn my power point basic skills from there. I learn how o create a slide and incorporate sounds in the slides. But after that i didn't practice it regularly as i have concentrate in my studies.

Power point's rebirth in my life at University. Most of the assignments demand students to use power point for their presentation as a part of their assignments . So for me its not a big deal to do a normal regular power point presentation. The layout has been programmed and after that we just have to use our creativity (or not) to make the presentation to be appeal for everyone.

But my perspective on power point changed when i joined Instructional Technology class(my minor subject). I have been thought how to make a good power point presentations. Some of the tips i have learn is not to use a picture as background as it can overpower the texts, so it is advisable to use a plain layout.

But apart from that i have learn how to create a coursework for children with learning disabilities. For me i have choose a student who is a slow learner.  So as for learner the coursework that have been build should have some characteristics such as it should be attractive (colors or animations), and the content should be repeated as they have difficulties in understanding the subjects. So accordingly i have created a course ware which can educate the student.

But the point now is  the power point really can be utilized in classrooms for normal students. As at university i dont have any other extra works as teachers in schools have beside teaching. So i just can use my time to create a new coursework for students. But as for me it is not possible to use power point in classrooms. The main problem in goverment school is that not each and every classroom equipped with computer and projectors. They only have computer lab and it will be used for ICT learning. So its not possible that teachers from the other subjects to use power point for the T&L process. If private school i am not very sure about the infrastructure of the  classroom.

So is power point really powerful??? Maybe time has the answer and for me i am still searching the answer because i am not really convinced to come up with an answer.