Week 6: Start of the Modules

This week’s class, we were given the first of five modules. The modules are tutorials on how we do something using some softwares. Module one was about computing and internet skills. We were given some time to complete the tutorials and we need to pass up the module with comments on the tutorials. This module was very thick and it shows just how much we need to work for this course. I have expected the worst because this was just module one, there were four more to go. So like it or not, we must do it as soon as possible so that he workload would not be too heavy later.

While doing the module, I know so many new things. The software used and how to used it was very helpful to me. I did not know that certain software can be use to do something unexpected. I have found some information that I would like to share with everyone else. It is about the advantages and disadvantages of using computers in education (taken from wiki.answers.com)

Over the past few years, computers have become a vastly popular household item. The luxury of emailing messages as opposed to charging up the phone bill is more appealing. Checking news, weather, and sports via the Internet is a convenience that many are taking advantage of.

Our children's lives are already getting influenced by technology - and this is just the beginning. Computers and Internet are here to stay and software titles targeting young children continue to increase. Computer science is has become a compulsory subject in Indian schools. Today, we find computers in use everywhere, whether we go to reserve a train ticket or to a Bank. This is because it is faster and helps us complete our work without mistakes/errors. So Parents too have realized the need to help their children develop strong computer skills.

Children are learning to read and write with computer games instead of homemade flash cards. They are reading their bedtime stories online instead of in bed with their parents. Slowly traditions are being broken and the computer is becoming a child's learning tool. Many parents are buying computer learning games instead of board games and pop-up books.

Parents are leaving the learning up to the computers and spending less quality time with their children. The most important learning step for children is interaction with others. If they are sitting in front of the screen all day, they do not learn to share, wait their turn, or even something as simples as manners. Children need to be in contact with other children, adults, and animals. They need to experience things first hand not off a computer screen.

When children log on to the computer their innocence is noticeable. Children are an easy target for adults who pose to be other children with similar interests. Sexual offenders often chat online with children and then make plans to meet them or slowly filter information about them.

Children are innocents and honesty on the computer can pose some huge problems. They do not know any better and usually it will only harm them in the end.

What are the advantages of computers for young children?

One benefit of the computer age is that children are becoming smarter. They are growing up computer literate and will have that as a huge advantage. Computer literacy is becoming a huge job qualification and feeling comfortable with one will put them a step ahead.

Children will also be able to complete homework on line. In some places, if you miss school you can find out the assignments that you miss and catch up. This is very helpful if your child comes down with the flu, but do you want them to feel like it is okay to miss school because they can catch up with their computer?

Overall, children can benefit from computers if they are used wisely. Parents that supervise their children when they are on the computer can ensure that everything is happening safely.

Computers are the wave of the future, but old fashioned learning techniques should not be forgotten. A child needs to interact physically with other people and not learn everything from computers.

What are the advantages of computers for young children?

Computers help children to be in control of their experience, to set their own pace, and to select the level of challenge with which they feel comfortable.

Computers help children to use all of their senses to extract information. Computers fascinate kids and can draw their full attention, which often results in a deeper focus and concentration.

Computers enable children to learn through creating, just as they gain hands-on knowledge and understanding when they build forts, make up stories, and paint, increase their skills

As they master computers, children build positive attitudes toward technology that will pay dividends for the rest of their lives.

Computers benefit the development of fundamental skills

Good educational software enables children to develop and practice broad range skills. It can help them learn, for example, about letters, numbers, shapes, colors, and rhythm. Good software can also help children develop their understanding of cause and effect, higher order problem solving, procedural thinking, and creative expression. Today, the wide range of multimedia available for kids in India is really amazing.

Emotional skills: By using a computer children develop self-confidence and self-esteem as they master computer skills and use the computer to make things happen. This also gives them a reason to smile!

Social skills: In the classroom setting or in the home when their friends or parents are available, children often prefer working with one or two partners over working alone, which leads to the development of social skills.

Computers benefit children with special needs

Computers have proven extremely beneficial to kids with certain speech, audio, and motor limitations. Kids with special needs can use alternative input and output devices (assistive technologies) to interact with computers and do things that they normally could not accomplish independently. They benefit especially from having access to an on-demand, patient tutor that allows them to work at their own pace. What they achieve through using a computer enhances their self-esteem and provides them with a greater sense of control and engagement with the world. The internet provides them with the best of knowledge for their treatments and they can be in touch with doctors or friends through the internet, in India or Abroad. Also, the internet can later help them earn their means of livelihood.

What are the disadvantages of computers for young children?

Computers are very engaging and can exercise a strong "holding power" on children as well as adults. They really seem to mesmerize children. Since we do not yet understand the impact of this power, we need to monitor the amount of time a child spends before a computer.

If the software is not age-appropriate, children are likely to become frustrated and associate a computer with failure.

Kids with access to software that is not age appropriate may be exposed to such negative influences as violence, strong language, and over-stimulation from fast-action graphics.

Frequent and prolonged computer sessions may pose physical health risks for children. The most frequently cited are visual strain, harmful effects of radiation, and posture and skeletal problems. In the case of normal usage and normal operating conditions, however, research has shown that computer monitors are safe and do not compromise the health of our eyes and that computer monitors emit little or no harmful radiation. What does seem to pose a hazard is the strain placed on a child's posture and skeletal structure if she consistently uses a computer set-up designed for an adult.

For Surfing the Internet, parental involvement & control is a must.

To sum up the entry, I hope that we can put up a good use of the internet and computing skills. No matter how hard to control it, but if we try, we may manage to use them for a good reason.

Week 5-Teaching Aids

In this week’s class, we need to collect as many as possible non-technological and technological teaching aids for the topic given. We need to find as many as possible teaching aids for different stages and stated the reason why the material is suitable for that particular stage. This task was done in pair and the pair must be mixed gender. My pair and I got the topic for year 2 and year 3, which is "Making a robot” and “Once Upon A Time”.

This is one of the examples of what we have created for the task;

Year 2, Topic 5 Making A Robot

Set Induction

Teaching aids

Picture 1: This picture contains different shapes with different colours.

Rationale

-This picture introduces students to the shapes that they are going to learn.

-It can attract their attention because it has different colours and shapes.

Pre-Stage

Teaching aids

Video 1 (song):

This video is a song that explains about shapes to the viewer; square, rectangle, triangle and circle. The songs used a squirrel as a singer in the video and it introduces the shapes to the viewer. It also explains the differences between the shapes.

Rationale

-The video clearly shows the shapes and their explanations.
- The song is quite catchy. It also has a squirrel as the singer in the video, thus it can attract students attention while enjoying the song.
-The song helps the teacher to lead students to the topic that he/she going to teach (shape).


While-Stage

Teaching Aids

Video:

The video contains the introduction of the shapes and what they can make.

PowerPoint: This PowerPoint shows a picture of a robot with its different shapes of parts.

Picture:

This picture shows the different shapes of parts of a robot.

Rationale

-The video shows the shapes and what can be created using these shapes. It allows the students to get ready to create something using these shapes.

-The PowerPoint helps the students to see that the shapes they have learned can be used to draw a robot.

-The picture helps the students to be more creative in drawing their robot because there are many possibilities that can be made from the shapes. Students can change the shapes of the parts as they like as long as it is the shapes that they have learn in the previous stage.

Post-Stage

Teaching Aids

PowerPoint:

The PowerPoint shows a picture of a robot but without its colour and with only dotted lines.

Power Point :

This PowerPoint shows how the task should be done.

Rationale

-The students will be given a picture of a robot without its colours. They need to connect the lines and colour the shapes. This is done to help the students to practice before they draw their own robot using the shapes.

- The second PowerPoint is used as the guidance for the students to do the task given. Teacher can show this slide to the pupils before, while or after doing the task given.

Follow Up-Stage

Teaching Aids

Microsoft office: word puzzle (question)

This is a word puzzle that contains the shapes that the students need to find out.

Microsoft office: Word Puzzle (answer)

Rationale

- Games can help the students to learn while enjoying the process of learning itself. The word puzzle can help the students to recall what they have learned while enjoying the lesson. This word puzzle can help them to learn in a fun but knowledgeable condition.

-The second Word Puzzle with answers can help students to see and check the correct answers. They may not be able to find the answer; a word puzzle with the answers can help students to check whether they are correct or not.

After I have done this tasks, I gave realized the importance of selecting my materials correctly. Materials are important as they are the core of the activity. Without the materials, teachers cannot deliver the activity and with wrong materials, students may even be confused. Teaching aids could help teachers to save time in teaching and focused more on the students. Nowadays, teaching and learning process are more to student-centered learning, so that students can learn more. But if the teacher takes too much time teaching, students would not be able to practice and apply the knowledge themselves. So the right materials would be a lot of help for students to learn.

All and all, I have gained new knowledge today. I hope that I can apply this knowledge in my future classroom. Thanks to Puan Foziah for the precious knowledge.

Week 4– Working With Young Learners 2

In this week’s Resources class, we continue the presentation from last week, which is about "Working with Young Learners”. It started with the group that presented on "The Children's ability to grasp meaning" until the group that presented on “The Role of Imagination”. It was just a continuation from where we left off last week.

These are the elements that they are presenting;

Children’s ability to grasp meaning

Young children are able to understand what is being said to them even before they understand the individual words. Intonation, gesture, facial expressions, actions and circumstances all help to tell them what the unknown words and phrases probably mean. By understanding the message in this way they start to understand the language. In later life, we all maintain this first source of understanding alongside our knowledge of the language itself. It remains a fundamental part of human communication.

Children’s instinct for play and fun

Children have an enormous capacity for finding and making fun. Sometimes, it has to be said, they choose the most inconvenient moments to indulge it. They bring a spark of individuality and of drama to much that they do. When engaged in guessing activities, for example, children nearly always inject their own element of drama into their classmates. They shuffle their cards ostentatiously under the table so that the others cannot see. They may utter an increasingly triumphant or smug “No!” as the others fail to guess. No matter how well teacher explains an activity, there is often someone in the class who produces a version of their own. Sometimes it is better than the teacher’s original idea.

The role of imagination.

Children delight in imagination and fantasy. It is more than simply a matter of enjoyment. In the primary school, children are very busy making sense of the world around them. They are identifying pattern and also deviation from that pattern. They test out their versions of the world through fantasy and confirm how the world actually is by imagining how it might be different. In the language classroom, this capacity for fantasy and imagination has a very constructive part to play.

Learning this knowledge has helped me to be a better teacher. “To learn before we can teach” I think that is the concept that I am inculcating within myself. I hope that I can learn so much more so that I can become more resourceful and better teacher in the future. Thanks to Puan Foziah for teaching us this knowledge.

Week 3: Working with young learners

In this week’s class, we were learning about how we should work with young language learners. It was necessary for us as we will handle these learners in the future. We were divided into six groups; each group will take a sub-topic from the main “big” topic. These sub-topics were; children’s ability to grasp meaning, children’s creative use of limited language resources, children’s capacity for indirect learning, children’s instinct for play and fun, the role of imagination and the instinct for interaction and talk.

I was in Group 2, and the topic that I worked on is “Children’s creative use of limited language resources". This topic talked about the way the young kids excel in making a little language with the language that they know and mastered. Even they did not know the grammatical forms or the correct way to form a sentence; they are very creative to convey the meaning through the language that they know. So, here, the role of teacher is to enhance their creativity skills in using the target language to the fullest. Teacher must also be an active and creative when designing activity for the children. They must create activity/games that can urge them to utter and talk and use the target language effectively.

These are the other five elements;

Children’s ability to grasp meaning

Young children are able to understand what is being said to them even before they understand the individual words. Intonation, gesture, facial expressions, actions and circumstances all help to tell them what the unknown words and phrases probably mean. By understanding the message in this way they start to understand the language. In later life, we all maintain this first source of understanding alongside our knowledge of the language itself. It remains a fundamental part of human communication.

Children’s capacity for indirect learning

Even when teachers are controlling an activity fairly closely, children sometimes seem to notice something out of the corner of their eye and to remember it better than what they were actually supposed to be learning. At times, this can be a frustrating experience for the teacher. But this capacity too can be turned to our advantage in language classroom. It is part of the rather complex phenomenon of indirect learning. Language activities which involve children in guessing what phrase or word someone has thought of are very good examples of this phenomenon in action.

Children’s instinct for play and fun

Children have an enormous capacity for finding and making fun. Sometimes, it has to be said, they choose the most inconvenient moments to indulge it. They bring a spark of individuality and of drama to much that they do. When engaged in guessing activities, for example, children nearly always inject their own element of drama into their classmates. They shuffle their cards ostentatiously under the table so that the others cannot see. They may utter an increasingly triumphant or smug “No!” as the others fail to guess. No matter how well teacher explains an activity, there is often someone in the class who produces a version of their own. Sometimes it is better than the teacher’s original idea.

The role of imagination.

Children delight in imagination and fantasy. It is more than simply a matter of enjoyment. In the primary school, children are very busy making sense of the world around them. They are identifying pattern and also deviation from that pattern. They test out their versions of the world through fantasy and confirm how the world actually is by imagining how it might be different. In the language classroom, this capacity for fantasy and imagination has a very constructive part to play.

The instinct for interaction and talk

Of all the instincts and attributes that children bring to the classroom, this is probably the most important for the language teacher. It is also the most obvious, so there is no need to labor the point. Let us just say that this particular capacity can surface unbidden and sometimes unwanted in all classrooms. Its persistence and strength is very much to our advantage in the primary classroom. It is one of the most powerful motivators for using the language. Children need to talk. Without talking, they cannot become good at talking. They can learn about the language, and the only way to learn to use it is to use it.

Learning about these elements has taught me to be more open minded. I now know how to handle young learners and the activities that suit them. It will be easier to teach with their attention and their won motivation. Guiding them for the knowledge would be easier and they would be able to grasp the main ideas taught to them. Teaching and learning process would be so much fun for me and for them.

All and all, I would like to thank Puan Foziah for this important knowledge.