Owh, the video kit!

Salam folks!
Yup, everyone’s relieved it’s completed, sent and currently being marked. Such a relief of course! My apologies for not updating on the video kit works (huhuu, Ms Ng you have reasons to minus my marks!) Let’s try to recap!
What I need to do (personal):

• edit the video
• video manual
• project
• task sheet
• report

What I need to do (for the group kit)

• brochure
• poster
• help with the packaging (kewl!)

For the project item, I came up with a puzzle-game sort of activity whereby the kids will have to work by asking their group member clues on where to locate animals on the map. Meanwhile, the task sheet was rather simple, useful for while-viewing activity, requires them to name the animals on the task sheet. And there was the manual, 6 pages in all, contained video synopsis, video screen shots, tips on how to use the video, suggested activity and suggested lesson outline. Well, here the second fold of the manual? What do you think?

Meanwhile, for the video kit, my group has delegated two works for me; the brochure and the poster. Okay, sounds cool to me!
,
The front page of the brochure. Picture it printed on yellow paper. Should look good hehe 😀

The poster. Again, picture it in yellow papers! It does look good in printed version. Love it!
The finished product in the video package box.

The group members. Me, Asmah, Najwa, Yati, Helmi. Haha, I wanted to hold the poster, can’t help but to love it!
P/S: Did a little practice on how to sell it, haha, please don’t make us sell it!

Education TV?

Salam folks!
I remembered when I was in the primary schools, we had the educational television channel (called TV Pendidikan) set up by the Ministry of Education aired on TV2, then it was on Astro channel 13 (back when they still have the TV mosaic, I missed that thing!) and now I guess it’s on TV9. My honest comment: IT SUCKS! Sorry, the programmes were boring and the teachers prefer to watch movies with the class in the TV room of the school rather than spending time watching TVP. So, when Dr Chin (or Ms Ng) gave the links to web education TVs, I was skeptical, and anticipative too.
First, I tried EduWebTV. First impression: okay, it looks good. So, I clicked on "Kurikulum > Bahasa Inggeris > KBSR" but when I clicked on KBSR it sent me nowhere. Thus, I tried searching "English KBSR" it displayed a video titled "Nac’s World". I tried to play it but then it loads too slow, I decided not to wait. However, based on the snapshots, I guess the video was done with animation and there’s a woman translating in sign language for the hearing impaired kids (is it?). That’s great!

Next, I visited the eLearning Kiosk. Well, it is nice, but it’s more of an interactive webpage rather than webTV. But still, the ‘proverb’ menu I browsed through was quite good. Perhaps it would be better to add some pictures / funny comics accompanying each proverbs. Just a suggestion…

HOW TO BENEFIT FROM THESE
There are two ways I think on how the webTVs could be used in classroom / to assist learning. One way is to use it as the main part of the lesson, replacing teacher’s usual chalk and teach part, flash it to the class, let the kids watch it and if needed, the teacher could help slips in and clear some confusions in between. The other way is to ask the kids to watch on their own, as revision to the formal lesson or ‘substitute’ the teacher when he/she couldn’t make it to the class.

QUESTIONS
It’s more of technical issues that bothers me with the websites. I wonder if I took quite some time to load the video, how about the rural schools with satelite internet connection which is a lot slower. My suggestion is for them to have the videos in lower size because when I checked it was like 150MB++ on average for each video, which quite big compared to YouTube or similar online video channels.

Sorry if I’m a bit negative. Thanks folks for reading!

Revisiting the Video

Salam folks!
Sadly I can’t upload the video here, the least I could do is to basically tell you what I have done to edit my video. In case you didn’t remember what was my video like, watch this…
http://www.facebook.com/v/1203664845663
Notice something you don’t think was done right? After some reading on feedback given by you, my friends, on the YouTube channel, I realised there were few notable mistakes / critics that needed me to work on as improvements for the video. Among them were;

1. The animals’ name written in capital letters
2. "Kitten" was spelled "Kit" and "Ten"
3. Absence of background music

IMPROVEMENT 1
I asked around why it’s not right to write nouns in capital letters and they generally said that it is because when the kids see it written that way, they will it that way. Means that, if you write the nouns in capital letters the kids will write it in that way even in their writings as they would get the idea it should be written that way. Thus, it is more ‘advisable’, ‘effective’ to have them written in a more ‘normal’ way, all in small caps or sentence case (for proper nouns). That’s practically why I decided to heed the feedback given to change the animals’ name written in uppercase to small caps.

IMPROVEMENT 2
The original video, if you realise, have a ‘session’ after each animal ‘discovery’, whereby there’s a voice-over spelling the name of the animals and their little ones. One clear error made, which went overlooked by me, what that when "kitten" was spelled, the "kit" and "ten" were seperated. Instead of "k + i + t + t + e + n =KITTEN" it was spelled "k + i + t =KIT"  "t + e + n =TEN". It was rather odd and Malay-ish I must say huhuhu. I guess it was wrong to pronounce a word separately in syllables, and you ,of course, wouldn’t want the kids to pick up wrong language. Thus, changes were made to that voice-over, so it that it’s being done right.

I DID NOT CHANGE
Yes, there were suggestions for the video to have some background music to make it more ‘cheerful’ and ‘child-friendly’. At first, I did try to give the idea a go, but then again I decided to leave it without the music. The reason was that I don’t want the music to interfere with the voice-over, conversations between the characters and the spelling session. And I failed to find the music that is suitable with the whole mood of the video, cheerful yet not too ‘happy’ kind.

Thanks for reading again 😀

My Podcast

Salam,

Here’s my podcast

http://media.imeem.com/m/_mlWST8kyT

PC_PEH070043.mp3 –

Dont feel like listening to my voice?

Well, here’s the script:

 

Hi, I am Naqib Ibrahim

I am 22 years old and I am a trainee teacher

When I actually become a teacher,

I want to be the teacher that empowers my kids to learn what they need to learn,

the teacher that inspires them to be what they want to be

and I also want to be the cool teacher that my kids are going to remember all the time.

 

I used Audacity, of course, to record the podcast and I used this song "Bill Whiters – Lovely Day", which is one of my all time favourite, as the background music. It feels a bit crappy, hehe am I allowed to say that, but what’s important for me is to get the message out. Enjoy~

Trial Video…

Dont have mush to say, watch this…

GoAnimate.com: Verb by natkid
http://goanimate.com//api/animation/player?utm_source=embed

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It’s free and fun!

The Video

Salam…
So everybody’s asking everybody what’s their video going to be like. Well, here’s mine. Before that…

Name                     : Muhammad Naqib bin Ibrahim
Matrix Number      : PEH070043
Group                     : Group 8
Principle                 : The Aesthetic Dimension

Title of Video         : "Little Ones”
Selected Audience: Pupils (age from 9 to 10) and teachers
Objectives              : At the end of the video, audience will be able to:
i)  identify animals and their babies
ii) pronounce and say loudly names of animals and their babies
ii)  produce stick puppets of the animals (different animal for different pupil)

And the revised one..

Name                     : Muhammad Naqib bin Ibrahim
Matrix Number      : PEH070043
Group                     : Group 8
Principle                 : The Aesthetic Dimension

Title of Video         : "Little Ones”
Selected Audience: Pupils (age from 9) and teachers
Objectives              : At the end of the video, audience will be able to:
i)  identify animals and their babies
ii) pronounce and say loudly names of animals and their babies
ii)  mimic sounds of the animals
Previous Knowledge:
Pupils have learned about name of some animals

So what’s all about? The video is going to feature a chicken and her chick going to a safari upon when they encounter other animals and their babies (little ones). The method? I’m still divided between using stick puppets or using other types of animation though the former is occupying #1 in my tiny brain here. I guess I’m gonna decide after consulting the group member ;).
So why the change? As suggested by Miss Ng (thanks a lot Miss :D), I changed the age group into just pupils of 9 years old and I replaced the third objective with "mimic sounds of the animals" as the puppet making segment won’t feature in the video. Perhaps the activity can be used for the post-viewing programme.
Comments?

The Philosophy

Salam,
When it comes to education, I have this one belief that teachers should learners with inputs that is important for their life and
their future, rather than just anything that suits one’s philosophy and
wisdom. What I mean by that is, a child ought to be taught with inputs that are useful for their future life, or to say their career in the adulthood. Those inputs may include Mathematics, Science, Language and Living Skills. You look at the school syllabus and you will find subjects which are irrelevant and burdening. Subjects like Moral or Civic Education for example may have its own importance but it’s merely burdening the kids to spend hours studying something they could have learned through life experience or being socialized to act in by their parents, society and religion.
By the end of this programme, we would have learned more than a handful of theories, models and frameworks advocated by educational philosophers. We take account of all that in carrying out lessons in classroom. On top of that, we have the National Education Philosophy, the curricullum specifications, moral values, technology applications, government’s aspirations and all sort of idealism to abide it. My question is, will our own philosophy be of any use?

21st Century Learner

Salam,
This week’s topic on lecture was mainly about 21st century children. What is so special about them which sets them apart from children (or rather say their grandparents) from centuries and decades ago?
21st century kids are no different from any other kids. They are not born in laboratories tubes, they don’t wear spacesuits to their class and neither do they have humanoid robots to babysit them. What sets them apart is their exposure to modern technology in their life. They are savvy with computing skills and technology is in every aspect of their everyday life. They wake up with Playhouse Disney channel airing interactive kindergarten programmes, they go to school in cars with DVD-enabled LCDs, they spend their evening playing Halo, Grand Theft Auto, Red Alerts and god knows on their computers, and SMS their friends good night wishes. They will surely boo you if you ask them to buy the News Straits Times and read the politics segment.

And then the question is so what? They still attend schools and sit for examinations. Well, what we need to have is the schooling environment familiar to their "world". Chalk and blackboard should be a thing of the past, in place should be smart boards, LCDs, notebooks, and whatever is regarded technology for that matter. If an average children attention span is about 10 or 15 minutes (McKay, 2006), expects these kids to have shorter period of attention. Thus, as teachers, we need not just to get them interested, but to have them glued to our lesson for as long as it could be. To do that, we need to know how to take advantages of the technology of their age. That’s what I hope I will be learning in this course.
Toodles!

One

Salam,
One is not my luckiest number but I always love one as it represents the firsts of something. It could be a position and a beginning of something new. As it is a beginning, one cannot expect it to be smooth and "according to plan" sort.
My first week in UM was a mixture of goods and bads. I started off the first day by mistakenly taking a bus to MidValley, instead of UM, lucky enough I stumbled upon my girlfriends and was given a ride. Then, it all comes together well and I must say that I am beginning to love my campus life. It’s just that I was regularly tired of travelling everyday from my place in Sungai Besi. Hahaha, sapa suruh duduk jauh sangat?
Courses wise, I dont really enjoy them, especially the one class, you know which one hahaha 😛 As for PKEY3101, I really ‘like’ the idea of getting to use this technology of sort, perhaps I need time to ‘love’ it. I am yet to write in my ‘educational philosophy’ thing and I think I will personalize my space and my profile once I have my Streamyx connection back up.
Toodles!