My Zen Garden: October 2011

Wednesday, 26 October 2011

Week 6 - Lesson Plan / Mini-teaching

Remember the time I told you there would be a final evaluation? It’s here. In this case, it’s our presenting of a lesson plan based on the video we’ve produced that day. Indeed, we’re all small scale producers, directors, editors and etc etc. Same old, same old… We’ve done this last semester and we’re doing it again this semester. As if we’re be going through this whole cycle of presenting a lesson plan and conducting a micro-teaching every turn of semester.

Indeed, we’ve decided to stick to our original video to be included into our lesson plan. Initially though, I’ve thought of changing our topic of interest to grammatical components. Thanks Pete, my group mates did talk some sense into me that we would have to start all over again, digging for information and reediting the video. So much to do, so little time… It’s a blessing in disguise that we’ve decided to go through with the “Flash Floods” video. We’ve received pretty positive reviews from Mr. Norsarihan.

Our target group is Form 3 students. In fact, our micro-teaching is an 80 minutes long lesson (2 periods). And since it’s a group work, it would be fair to divide tasks amongst us. There would be 5 important parts in our lesson plan, namely:

· Set Induction (By Allen Ting)

·         Pre-S/L/R/W     (By Abang Joharizal)

·         While S/L/R/W (By Jennie Tie)

·         Post S/L/R/W    (By Rachel Chin)

·         Lastly, Closure   (By ME!)

I must admit that everyone in the group has great sense of cooperation. We managed to finish our lesson plan preparation and even task sheets for students in time, despite many little insufficiencies.

Indeed, there’re some amendments to be made in our lesson plan. Through this presentation, I’ve realized that even the littlest thing could make a huge difference in our lesson plan preparation. Comments given by Mr. Norsarihan are indeed useful for our up-coming practicum later. To sum it up, I would like to express my deepest gratitude towards Mr. Norsarihan and my fellow group mates for making this lesson plan a successful reality.

Toodles…

Aileen Tiong Ling
A135735
B. Ed TESL IPGKS - UKM
GGGE2153 Educational Technology
Faculty of Education
Telephone Num.         : 013-5603522
Email Address(es)      : aileenukm7@yahoo.com/ aileenukm7@gmail.com
Blog Address              : http://aileentiong135735.blogspot.com

Week 5 - CASPER Model, etc

This week marks another new beginning, another new entry into Educational Technology. Prior this week, we were introduced to the CASPER Model, of which we had no clue what-so-ever. In fact, the name itself reminded me of the little kid ghost, Casper.

After searching high and low for more infos, CASPER Model, in actual fact, is a presentation kit which consists of a series of dos and don’ts in the making of an effective presentation. I’ll break it down for you.

C – Contrast

· It is advisable not to use more than 3 colours per slides in your presentation preparation. It’s a big no no and you should always remember this especially during your template & font selection. It would be best if you opt for colours that contrast one another. E.g. Black vs. White or Blue vs. Yellow. It would be a strain to the eye if the colours are not defined precisely. Imagine yellow with orange... Ouch, right?

A – Alignment

· An important tip of the day: Present your idea in point forms, starting from your left-hand side. It’s much more comprehensible for audiences to understand rather than jumbling all your thoughts into a single slide. If you want to emphasise on any other points, align that particular sentence(s) in the middle. You could also try to bold, italicise or even underline the text for better emphasis. It is advisable not to type more than 20 words per slide as it would turn the audiences off. In fact, there’s a high tendency that the audiences would read the slides rather than focus on your presentation. It’s a minus point for someone who aims to become an effective presenter.

S – Simplicity

· DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT pack all your main thoughts into a single slide. Simple and compact is not what we’re aiming for an effective presentation. Simple, YES! But compact, an enormous NO NO! This goes the same with images and pictures too. Indeed, the audience would lose focus during the presentation.

P – Proximity

· Try to equalise the spacing between words to create balance. By all means, avoid wide spacing. 1.5 line spacing would be optimal. Try to maintain the same fonts and size throughout the presentation. We’re aiming for focus and attention here.

E – Emphasis

· However, you could put emphasis on the intended image but selecting an image that could closely relate to the idea you’re presenting. ‘One and meaningful’ or ‘Many but pointless’, it’s your choice, eh? Indeed, besides “bold”-ing, italicising or underlining your ideas for better emphasis, you too could go for changing of font colours.

R – Repetition

· Yet, the most effective step for greater emphasis of thoughts, it would be repetition. Keep repeating, if possible, the main idea throughout the whole presentation.

I think that’s all for this week. Hopefully, all future teachers could implement this CASPER Model in their presentation preparation to guarantee better T&L process.

So long...

Thursday, 6 October 2011

Week 4 - Reflection (Blog Presentation, etc)

Hello,Folks! Welcome to my 4th entry...

This week, it's all about our official blogspot (Actually, it's quite personal to us). Last week, we were told to be prepared with our updating and customising our blogspots as we're going to present them to Mr. Norsarihan. Our Educational Technology assignment consisit of 4 different yet related parts and this is one of it. Yes! You heard me right. We are required to constantly update and if possible, customise our personal space as it carries marks which will eventually affect our overall GCP pointer...

As aforementioned, we were each given an allocated time (preferably 3 to 5 minutes) to present our blogspots in front of the entire class. It's interesting to see how different people came up with different ideas and concepts through this presentation. Funny but true to see how different colours, templates, fonts and etcetera in a blogspot could differentiate mine from the others. Mine was pretty different or so I thought. I opted for the "Zen" concept. Odd for a Educational Technology blogspot but to me, it's all the more practical.

Indeed, Educational Technology might be quite a stressful subject to others. Why not create a more relaxing ambience then? Green is my main choice of colour. Plus, after long consideration, I've decided to name my blogspot, "My Zen Garden"; courtesy of "Plants vs. Zombies" an online gaming application. The following are some of the gadgets I've 'planted' in "My Zen Garden":-

On the your left side

Profile
Follow by Email
Followers
Chatbox (ShoutMix Chat widget)
Blog Archive

On your right side

Search Box
Calender & Clock
Music Playlist (MixPod.com)- Featuring soothing & Zen-like music
List of favourite blogs

At the bottom of the webpage

Virtual Pond (Fish application)
Number of visitors

Next, we were also given extra task, to prepare a PPT presentation based on the notes given by Mr. Norsarihan titled, "Video in Multimedia". Long story short, we have to translate the notes from BM to English. Extra work but all the more educational *fingers crossed* Luckily, we were given time till after the Deepavali holidays to present those notes. Whew!

All in all, plenty was gained throughout this week where ICT and technology are concerned. Hopefully, this will persist in the future to aid my acquiring new technological knowledge, as we're a new breed of teachers.

P/s: My podo is embeded in my very first blog entry. All is welcome to listen.

Link: http://aileentiong135735.blogspot.com/2011/09/self-introduction_09.html

Saturday, 1 October 2011

Video Presentation - Flash Floods

Watch and Learn...

Enjoy!

P/s: Sorry for the poor quality...

Volume Flicks