Week 10 Reflection

The very last week of our semester has finally come. Finally, I have finished all our tasks, assignments and also contact hours. Finally, I have done all my works for Educational Technology. Finally, all the presentations have been successfully done. And, this is a final reflection for this semester.

Throughout the semester, I have been struggled a lot in order to learn the terms and skills of technology. However, a lot of people are willing to help me whenever I faced any problem.

First of all, I would like to appreciate my lecturer for Educational Technology, Mr. Norsarihan. He has given us a lot of comments and also suggestion on our presentation. The guidance and advices that he gave enabled me to learn a lot and gain lots of knowledge.

         

Secondly, I would to thank my entire group members who have cooperate with me in every group work and also assignments. Thanks a lot for giving me support and also for being cooperative in every task given. Acknowledgement to my beloved group members as listed below:

1.     Chong Xin Txin

2.    Doris Chelam Kasturi

3.    Ilanggo Kanan

4.    Leon Lennie

5.    Me (for trying really hard to complete every task given)

Last but not least, I would like to appreciate my entire classmates for the willingness to share their knowledge and skills of technology. Once again, thank you everyone for helping me and guiding me whenever I am in need. 

Week 9 Reflection

Finally, we have presented the article review on software piracy. Mr. Norsarihan did make some comment on our presentation. He commented we could actually include misuse of technology into our presentation. Also, we should try to clarify the relationship between software piracy and also education.

Our group is the only group who did a presentation on software piracy. Other groups mainly talking about web 2.0. Web 2.0 is becoming more and more popular in education. It brings quite a lot of advantages.

First of all, web 2.0 enables distance learning. Students need not to waste their time to attend a class and they can gain knowledge via internet. Besides that, Web 2.0 enables learning process occur at anytime and anywhere. Also, online discussion can be done and this enables more students to voice out their opinion on internet if they do not dare to do this in the classroom.

Unluckily, in Malaysia, there are still a number of schools do not have internet access especially for those schools which are in rural areas. Hence, they are not able to enjoy the advantages brought by Web 2.0. As a result, the gap between the schools of urban area and also the schools of rural are become farer. Hence, I hope internet access can be provided in rural areas as soon as possible so that all the students from Malaysia can be exposed to the world of technology and will not be left out the era of globalisation. 

Week 8 Reflection

This week, we continue our task on article review. Apart from writing an article review, we also need to do a PowerPoint presentation based on the article review that we have done.

          Since we are given more time to complete the article review, we try our best to edit it to make it more perfect. We came across another interesting issue that we have found regarding the software piracy. Government announced that schools are allowed to use pirated software for educational purposes. The reasons given for this issue is to increase the using of technology among students since students cannot afford to buy original software.

          In my opinion, this suggestion has its own pros and cons. For the pros, students can easily access to various types of software and undoubtedly they learn more technology skills. Besides that, it is a good way to reduce the cost and expenses since all types of software can be downloaded from internet without paying a single dime.

          However, on the other hand, software piracy is a crime in Malaysia. Doesn’t it mean that all of us are criminals if we use pirated software even for educational purposes? Besides that, all an educator, we should set ourselves as a role model to our students. If we as a teacher support pirated software, then all our young students sure will follow the paces of their teachers.

          As a conclusion, this issue is a very controversial issue and many people are debating over it. For more details about our article review, kindly visit:

https://docs.google.com/#folders/0B_BC6efDEs8YY2MwNzUxZjYtNGE1ZS00YTQ0LTk3YjMtZGMxOGNlODBiZDY5

p/s: Inside the folder of this Google docs, I have uploaded PowerPoint Presentation of the Issue, Article Review and also References (articles).

Bibliography:

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B9klbPPsBwMVZjNiYzBlN2UtZTQ2Ni00M2Y4LThmOTUtODQ3MDQzYThmNDhh&hl=en_US

Week 7 Reflection

This week, we are assigned to do an article review. First of all, we need to choose a topic, read some articles based on the topic and lastly write a review. The topic that we have chosen is Original and Pirated Software. This is an interesting topic as this issue is very popular among computer users. Original software is not affordable by all computer users and hence pirated software has become the choices of many computer users. However, using and owning pirated software is illegally wrong.

To study the topic in depth, we have chosen 10 articles which discuss about the issue of pirated and original software. Some articles are discussing about the issues that had happened in Malaysia. As we all know, pirated software is even more popular than original software in Malaysia. Hence, some online articles do talk about the reasons why pirated software is very popular among Malaysian.

Since this week I s Deepavali Holiday, we could hardly discuss and do the task together. Hence we divided the task among five group members and assign a group member to compile everything. I am assigned to read and select five articles based on the topics that we have chosen. During the process of searching and reading, I found that original and pirated software is a very controversial issue. I spend quite a lot of time reading the material that I get and finally I manage to select five best articles from the “mountain of information”.

Next week, I will upload the article review that we have written together with the link to the articles. 

Week 6 Reflection

This week, every group had presented their lesson plan. After several weeks of preparation all of us manage to come out with a good lesson plan.  Our group chooses to do a lesson on poetry recital. My group consists of five members who are:

1.     Chong Xin Txin

2.    Doris Chelam Kasturi

3.    Ilanggo Kanan

4.    Leon Lennie Lening

5.    Ting Suk Hua

Each of our group members is assigned to conduct each part of our mini lesson plan. We do “Riddle Poem” as our introduction for poetry recital. Straight away after the riddle poem, we insert the video that we have produced before. After showing the video, students are given task sheet to enhance their learning.

Our micro-teaching can be considered as good and Mr. Norsarihan did give some comments. We all appreciate the comments as those comments will help us to do better in our next task. Thanks, Mr. Norsarihan.

Overall, every group did a very good job on their micro-teaching. Every group manages to choose an interesting topic and insert a lot of pictures in their micro-teaching. Those pictures can easily grab the attention from students. So, good job, everyone.

Finally, please click the link follow to view our lesson plan, PowerPoint Presentation and also the task sheet.

Lesson Plan:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/19XSGJphgkcmR8f3Gu-PtL65jffwmLYndUz-zSyveFow/edit?hl=en_US&pli=1

PowerPoint Presentation:

https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B9klbPPsBwMVNjliZTI5ZTctNjQ4ZS00ODkzLTg5OTAtMTZhOTQ3NDhhNjBm&hl=en_US&pli=1

Task sheet:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/15Q7rhKxUiV8l-9HnzGOj_fv-o_fn9Hlwn4wm_DYirlc/edit?hl=en_US

Week 5 Reflection

Moving towards week 5, this week is a really hectic week and is packed of lots of activities. Another new topic is introduced by Mr. Norsarihan in Week 5. The topic is “CASPER”. “CASPER” is acronym for a list of elements to do presentation. CASPER model is an useful model in doing PowerPoint Presentation.

Here, I list down the elements of “CASPER”.

C-Contrast  

A-Alignment

S-Simplicity

P- Proximity

E-Emphasis

R-Repetition

The very first element is “contrast”. “Contrast” means we need to use two contrast colours in our slides. For example, black and white, yellow and blue, those are the colours which can show big contrast.

The second element is “alignment”. Alignment means the way we put our text and also pictures in our slides. If the text consists of many points, then we can use bullets and put it to the right side of the slide. If the test just consists of one sentence we can put it in the middle. Besides that pictures should not overlap with text so that the audience would not distract by the pictures.

The third element of CASPER is “simplicity”. Simplicity means that our slides should not be too complicated. First of all, we should not insert too many pictures in one slide as the slides will looks packed. Also, the text we put in the slides should be simplified which means the text cannot be too long.

The fourth element is “proximity”. When we are doing PowerPoint slides, we should be consistent in using the fonts and also the colours of the text. To many types of fonts and colours used will distract the attention of readers.

The fifth element of CASPER is “emphasis”. Emphasis means that we can highlight the main point in a sentence so that the readers can easily remember the main point of the presentation. The main points can be highlighted in different colours.

The last element of CASPER is “repetition”. If we want the audiences to remember the key point, we can repeat it in our slides throughout the presentation.

As a conclusion, PowerPoint Presentation is now an effective tool for us to carry out our lesson. However, we should design our slides properly so that the audiences would not get fed out of the boring and dull slides. Hence, CASPER model is a model which we can remember easily and also apply it in our presentation. 

Week 4 Reflection

This week, we need to present our blog to Mr. Norsarihan and also our classmates. Overall, most of us do a very good job in designing their blog. The popular gadgets include chat box, calendar and clock, poll, blog list and also blog statistics. Besides that, everyone of us has design the layout of our blog nicely. I choose to design my blog into a natural scenery. I use blue and purple as my background colour. Besides that, I have put a beautiful scenery picture behind my blog title. Mr. Norsarihan is very satisfied with our blog and he did give good comments on our blog.

Besides that, this week, we were asked to do a presentation. The topic that our group gets is “Graphics”. I enjoy doing this topic as me myself like graphics very much. From the presentation that I have done, I learn about the different types of graphics which include drawing or illustration, photograph, diagram or figure, cartoon and chart.

Apart from that, I also learn to edit the graphics. For example, we can edit the graphics by using Microsoft Paint and also Adobe Photoshop. Also, we can add the effects to graphics, for example, colours, shadow, and so on.

As a conclusion, graphics play an important role in our teaching lesson plan. Graphics make our presentation looks more interesting and fun. Hence, as a teacher-to-be, it is quite important for us to learn about the topic “Graphics”.