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.

ELECTRONIC + BOOK = E-BOOK

 Hobby is something common between human beings, from the classic hobby collecting stamps to be a blogger there are something that people would like to do during their free time. As for me since small until now my all time favorite is reading story books.

As my parents are teachers, its not something unusual that my house equipped with a lot of storybooks. I know how to read in 3 languages which is English, Malay and Tamil. As a trilingual reader during my school time it is quit easy to get story books because i will borrow it from library or my parents will buy it for me.

At the age of 20, borrowing books from library is not an option for me anymore and the cost of a novel is more than RM 20 which is for me is a waste of money because nobody likes to read the same novel over and over. So when i enter university, i have a full access to use internet. That is how i found e-book.

E-book is an electronic version of a book. There are a lot of website which are providing e-book to be downloaded by users. There are two types of excess to the e-book , one is free excess and another one is  pay for the excess. Its not a very wise idea in my opinion to pay for something which you can get it for free. Usually you can use a keyword "e-book free download" to search in the search engines and tadaa... you have the listings of free e-books websites online. Just click any websites and search for the genre that you want and download the e-book of your choice.

Normally the e-books will be in pdf (portable document format) or in a compressed file. For the pdf file you just can use Adobe Reader to read the book. If it is a compressed file you have to use software such as Winrar or Winzip to decompress the file and read it using adobe reader.

There are a lot of gadget can be used to read  e-book such as computer, laptop, tablets, ipad and also smartphones. My favorite gadget would be smartphone because it is more convenient and portable because it is small in size. For me is a dream come true to read storybooks without any cost of money,

But i limit myself to read only storybook and not educational books because reading storybooks didn't need much concentration and i don't need to store the important points into my memory. But its vice verse when reading educational e books. So i prefer the old printed book method the read educational book .

HAND PHONE ....MY WAY OF LIFE

HANDPHONE .... One single technology based product that owned by almost everyone in Malaysia or i can say in world. As for me nowdays i cant imagine myself without my handphone with me. It almost like my best friend who i wake up and sleep with everyday.

Before the existence of hand phone in my life,  i always use normal land line  (TELEKOM) telephone (Until Form 5 - 2005) to contact my friends regarding school assignments or of i absent from school that day. But this happens only once in a moon because living in a family with educational background (my both parents are teachers) the telephone is considered as distraction for me as student.

                                  TELEPHONE

But the first hand phone that get was Nokia 3310. I was shocked when my father gave me the hand phone because i thought i wont own hand phone in my entire life. But finally i got one, but with a condition that i wont take it to school and i should not take it to my room with me at night. The main purpose i am
provided with this hand phone is that after my tuition it will be easy for my parents be communicate and fetch me.The function of that hand phone is to call, message and play games.

my first hand phone model

Later on 2007, i have entered university to pursue my degree. Later that time i am provided with handphone with camera and mp3 facility. So most of the time i use it to listen to songs and to send messages SMS with my friends and family. It has been a like my secretary because i will set my tasks and it will remind me with the task. Later i bought a handphone with wifi facility which i can use to view my social networks such as Facebook, twitter and yahoo chat. From there i started to use my handphone for updating my status in FB and twitter.

On 2012 i bought an android smartphone from samsung. From there my eye is opened to a new world of ICT which is i can do almost everything using my handphone and now i am not even using my laptop because it has been simplified in a  form of a smartphone. Browsing youtube and reading ebooks has never become a problem. Even i can prepare myself  for my business presentation using my handphone. How cool is that? Even more i can contact my friends and family free of charge using apps such as watsapp and viber.
Simply i can create a formula for this COMMUNICATION + ENTERTAINMENT + SECRETARY + E-LEARNING    = SMART PHONE.

But sometimes i feel that my privacy has been disturbed because everybody can reach me using this apps from strangers to people close to me. For eg during my masters class i wont pick up my phone and reply messages from my friends. But when they come to my shop the begin to ask me why i didnt pick up my handphone and when is answered i got class the seems didnt understand what i say and the reply "so what, u can get out from the class and answer my call?"Sometimes i feel irritated because people thinks that i have to give priority to them . Its like someone controlling.

Whatsoever nowdays i turn of my handphone when i need some space for relaxation.

YOUTUBE IN TEACHING ... MY EXPERIANCE

I would like to share my experiance in using youtube video in my teaching. The reason behind  this choice is that the topic that i need to teach was amphibian. So for students at the age of 6 wouldn't understand about a concept without picturisation or showing the product.

The subtopic that i choose to teach the students is Life Cycle of a Frog. For the first day i bring some flashcards to show to the students how the frog evolve from egg to a frog. After teach them the students seems to be didnt understand the concept of it because the frog egg, or TADPOLE OR FROGLET are not something that they see every day in their life.

After that i decided to use video to make them understand the concept. So for the videos i searched it in the youtube. Because the school didnt have a wifi facility and only have video recorder and tv i decided to download it. I use youtube downloader to download the video and because it is in flv format i have to transfer it to mpeg format in order to burn it in the CD.

The next day i show the video to the students and the students were watching it with their full concentration because the classroom was so quiet and if i drop a pin it can be heard. After the video, i try to give the students worksheet to assess the students whether they understand the life cycle of a frog or not. Most of the students able to arrange the life cycle of a frog in a correct order. it is a great relief for me as my objective of the teaching is achieved and the students understand the content.

Video Links
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDabzEJoa_A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pOsKcs78C4http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pOsKcs78C4

BLOG for my Instructional Technology Subject

Blog is a electronic platform where a person can utilize it in different ways such as personal blogging, educational blogging, Online business, and etc.
The word blog introduced to me by Puan Rafiza from Instructional Technology Department UM. She asked us to create a blog for the subject.

For a first year student like me creating a blog was not that easy. I have to search through google to find out how to create a blog. From the instructions that i get from there, i created my blog successfully.

The first task that  got from the lecturer was to update the blog weekly about my university life as a form of a personal jurnal. it is quit an interesting part where i can share my experiances online and it will be stored on database which is like my online diary.

The second task is to upload some readings which are relevant for the course. So it is simply like storing your readings online. This links can be accessed by my friend and my links can be accessed by my friends, its some sort of online notes sharing for our readings.

Finally on the last class Puan Rafiza told us that blog is an easiest way to share reading materials or to start subject discussions so that there will be learning process at home and blog can be a communication platform for teachers and students anywhere which i find it true because some malaysian teachers are using blogs for this purposes.

Some of the blogs :
http://skorperdagangan.blogspot.com/p/prestasi-subjek-perdagangan.html
http://cikgutancl.blogspot.com/
http://cikgumasita.blogspot.com/

OHP USAGE IN MY SECONDARY SCHOOL

OHP or known as Overhead Projector is one of the famous tool used in government school 

widely before the existence of Computer Lab's in Malaysia. An overhead projector typically consists of a large box containing a very bright lamp and a fan to cool it. On top of the box is a large fresnel lens that collimates the light. Above the box, typically on a long arm, is a mirror and lens that focusses and redirects the light forward instead of up.Transparencies are placed on top of the lens for display. The light from the lamp travels through the transparency and into the mirror where it is shone forward onto a screen for display. The mirror allows both the presenter and the audience to see the image at the same time, the presenter looking down at the transparency as if writing, the audience looking forward at the screen. The height of the mirror can be adjusted, to both focus the image and to make the image larger or smaller depending on how close the projector is to the screen. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overhead_projector)

Usually in my secondary the OHP Slides are used mostly for Science subjects such as Chemistry, Biology and Physics. Normally the slides are been bought from some educational based companies and the teachers job would be put it on the slide and project it on the screen, so that the students can write their notes on the respective subjects. 

As for me lessons using OHP is quit boring as there are no animations or interesting objects are available there. Some students (including me) will always photostat the transparencies bacause it feels very irritating the jot down every single words from the transparencies that had been projected. 

As for the teachers (esp my physics teacher) her job has been very easy because everday during her period she just project the transparencies  and ask us the write notes. After each topic she will go through the notes as fast as she could. As for me and my friends we have to take tuition in order to understand the subject. So as for me the usage of OHP in my science subjects didnt improvise my education but is makes me to lose my interest on the subjects.

                                                 Sample of OHP

MY FIRST EXPERIANCE on USING COMPUTER

HI,

For my first post i love to share my first experiance on using computer.

The word computer become synonym in my life when my father bought

computer for my family at the age of 9.

My father didnt encourage me to use computer because he scared if

i will spoil it.  Because  i was  too curious to use computer, i will try to open 

and explore the computer application by my own and sometimes i tend 

to corrupt some files by mistake.

But the more i explore it the more i learn from it. For example i learn how

to use Microsoft Word at the age of 11. I able to submit Bahasa Melayu scrapbook

by using Microsoft Word in primary school and the teachers praises me for that.

As time goes on i started to learn how to use Microsoft Excel and 

Microsoft Power Point with my father's guidance. 

But i learn more about the usage of technology from my minor course Instructional Technology 

at University. I learn about :

• Blogging
• Creating Yahoo Groups
• Spectrum
• Facebook Groups
• Creating Learning aid using powerpoint
• Multimedia Builder
• Adobe Flash Player
• Adobe Photoshop

I am glad that i know how to use the applications which are very important for a teacher

to create their own  aid for their students.

HI

Hi i am Uma Maheswary .... This is my blog for my Master's Course
PJGS6303 Aplikasi Teknologi Dalam Pelaksanaan Kurikulum (Application Of Technology In Curriculum Implementation)