Week Number 3

It was my third week already attending Using and Developing Resources For the ESL Classroom lecture with Puan Foziah.


So, for this week, rather than Puan Foziah talking, we were the one who were going to give the talking. We were asked to prepare a presentation about Working with language learners, the first chapter from the book entitled Teaching English in the Primary Classroom, written by Susan Halliwell. Puan Foziah then asked us to look at 6 qualities that young learners possess, and they are:
I.CHILDREN'S ABILITY TO GRASP MEANING
II.CHILDREN'S CREATIVE USE OF LIMITED LANGUAGE RESOURCES
III.CHILDREN'S CAPACITY FOR DIRECT/INDIRECT LEARNING
IV.CHILDREN'S INSTINCT FOR PLAY AND FUN
V.THE ROLE OF IMAGINATION
VI.THE INSTINCT FOR INTERACTION AND TALK

Before that, we were divided into six small groups and assigned with a subtopic each. In grouping us, we were asked to say numbers from 1 to 6, and I was in group 2 and had to present about “Children’s creative use of limited language resources.” In this particular subtopic, the main focus is about how we could stretch children’s creativity in using the language and which areas children are creative with in applying the language.

After an hour preparing, it was time to present and my group was the fifth group to present. It was a nervy moment for me to be honest to present and talk in front of the big audience as I am a shy and not a talkative person, moreover, it had been a long time since I last presented in front of a big crowd. This is the problem that is still unresolved eventhough I had went through a lot of presentations prior to this.


It was two groups to go before my group’s turn when suddenly a lecturer appeared at the front door, nagging and whining to Puan Foziah, complaining something about the usage of the computer laboratories for a while. She actually demanded the room that we were using as she had a class at 12.30pm. Minutes later after discussing with all of us, Puan Foziah decided to release all of us earlier. This incident reminded me the importance of being tolerant and considerable in every situation that I am going to face, especially the difficult ones.

However, all things considered, I was pretty relieved actually. It was indeed a blessing in disguise for me (as I didn’t have to present it on that day), but for how long this feeling would continue?????Hmmmm….not for long for sure..

Week Number 2

In the second week, for Using and Developing Resources class,we were having a more comfortable session since the number of occupants in the Computer Lab has been cut down, meaning that, from about 70 plus students, we were now having just about 30 plus in a session.

The class began with some ice breaking session.



Then,we were given papers which we had to answer questionnaires regarding several things of our learning experience during our primary years till today during our tertiary studying years, but actually, I could see the questionnaires is all about our ICT skills.


After that,we were explained about our assignment a little bit, for instance on tutorials,portfolios and so on. It had came back!!!What??ASSIGNMENTS!


So, it seems our most challenging assignment is to complete five modules. Each module provide tutorials on how to do certain things based on these skills:
1. INTERNET AND COMPUTING SKILL

2. PHOTO EDITING

3. AUDIO EDITING

4. VIDEO EDITING

5. SOFTWARE FOR ELT (ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING)

For sure, all those skills would be useful and helpful for us, teachers in order to develop resources that are interesting and effective.


Meanwhile, for our blogs, it would be evaluated based on these criteria:
i.timely and number of blogs, minimum is 14(5%)

ii.depth of reflection (8%)

iii.creativity (5%)

iv.comments on your classmates' blogs (2%)


We were also introduced to touch-typing,a typing method which enable us to type words or sentences without even have to glance to the keyboard to look for letters to spell out the words that we intended to type.



Finally, we were introduced to SKYDRIVE. SKYDRIVE is a part of Microsoft's Windows Live range of online services. It is also a file storage and sharing service that allows users to upload files to the computing cloud, then access them from a web browser. It would be good for us to have this facility to store things online and decide whether to make it private or public. SKYDRIVE also helps to lessen the burden of keeping too much devices to store documents at home as it offers 21GB of free personal storage with individual files limited to 50MB.

And whatever it is, I can't wait to use all the things as soon as possible and I hope I would be able to maximise their usage, so what I have learnt in this course would not become a waste.

FARIZUL AKMAL BIN MUSTAZAR(PEH080012)-Week Number 1

In the first day in PBEY3102 Using and Developing Resources for the ESL Classroom, I found out that the class was really crowded as all 77 of us were packed into the same class in the same session.

As a result, the computers were not enough and some of us had to go to another laboratory to take some chairs. As the class began, Puan Foziah Mahmood introduced herself as our lecturer for this subject. The class should begin at 10 o’clock and finish at 1 pm. However, as Puan Foziah felt quite exhausted and maybe felt the class was quite disorganized and incomprehensive, she decided to stop the class earlier than what it supposed to be. We dismissed after that but there were still several issues to be settled as instructed by Puan Foziah. For instance, all of us had to choose which day we want to enter the class and register it to Haiqal, so the number of students in the class for each session would be more manageable thus creating a more comfortable and comprehensive learning environment.

Besides, we had also asked to prepare a passport-sized picture of ourselves.

Other issues that we should settle and have throughout the year during the course are:
i-BLOG:update and post entries every week reporting on what I've learned and experienced;

ii-8G PENDRIVE:store things that we are going to use for this course;

iii-ADOBE CS3 PHOTOSHOP:it will be useful for me because I'm going to edit lots of pictures in this course

In conclusion, eventhough in my first day in class I was not learning a lot, I found out that this class could be really challenging as well as interesting because I am going to learn developing teaching aids for my pupils. Teaching aids are very important in teaching and learning process especially nowadays because by integrating it with technology, the aids would be more colourful, neater and practical which lead to a very fun and comprehensive learning.