Benchmarks and best practices

Attitude is everything!
      When I was in secondary school, my principal always says that “change you attitude first then only you can success!  Attitude is the most important thing to ensure one’s success.” I do agree with what he told us, until today I still remember  how serious of his expression when he said this during the assembly.When I started teaching, I would say this to my students too.
      Currently I am teaching Mathematics for a form 2 class, most of the students in that class are weak students. One of the boy in this class impress me most. He is a quiet and obedient boy, when I am teaching in front of the class, he would listen attentively despite other are making noise beside him, he done all the assignments I gave and hand in the exercise book on time every time. Last year, he failed his mathematics during the year end exam, but this year he got an A for his mathematics during the half year exam, this surprising me. I did interview him once, he say last year he was sitting with someone who is very talkative and this person influence him a lot, this year he is sitting with a group of  hardworking and serious students, therefore he can concentrate during the lesson. In this case, I think the attitude is the most important part to guarantee his success!


Be sure all instructions are clear and concise. What might be obvious to you is not necessarily be clear to your students.
         Giving instructions is the routine work of teachers in the class, so teachers must always make themselves clear and make sure the students understand what they need them to do in the class. I remembered once in my class, it was a form 4 chemistry class. I asked the students to do an experiment with a type of acid but I did not tell them the concentration of the acid ,  I only mentioned “ diluted acid”, I thought the students would understand what I meant, but end up, quite disappointing me, they used the acid with high concentration. After this case, every time whenever I ask them to do experiment, I will always tell them the exact concentration of the solution, and I will also write on the board clearly for them to see.  


Having students critique the design of the course to make sure everything is clear.
        Students are the clients of the teachers, and the course is the product the teachers sell to the students, so the design of the course must depend on the students’ need and be able to fulfil the students’ requirement in the class. To make sure the lesson is effective, teachers have to listen to the students’ comment to design their course.  Most of the teachers design the lessons based on their own way,  they never think whether the students learn or not with the designated lessons. 
       In my class,  some students did comment and say that using the power point to teach is boring, and they say doing experiments are more fun and make them have more interest to learn, so I try my best to let my students to do experiment frequently and I find some course related videos for them to see in the class. They are quite happy with these changing. 


Making sure you understand the technology you expect your students to use.  
   The students now are a generation so-called the millennial, they are very good  in handling the technology devices. Although they are good in handling the technology, for the educational purpose, the students still have a lo to learn. Teachers have to make sure they are understand and be able to use technology before they ask the students to use, so the teacher able to teach the students whenever they encounter problems.

The second class...

     On the last Saturday, my mood was very nervous and stressful when I was on the way to UM because haven’t finish my assignment of doing the learning contract and I also did not finish reading the article given by madam Ng last week. To me, the time really passes so fast, without completing all the work given, I have to attend for the second lesson. Luckily Madam Ng is very kind and she allow us to finish the learning contract in class and help us a lot while we were doing it. I couldn’t complete the learning contract in the given time,so I tried to complete it after the lesson in home. I took about 3 hours to do it and finally i had completed what I have to put inside the learning contract, but when I tried to edit it in the goggle docs, I was so frustrated because on the half way of doing it the window will appear a message and say that ‘trying to reach to goggle’. At first I thought It was due to the line problem but after a few trying, the same thing happened and happened, at the end  i was fed up and I post the word doc in the spectrum. After reading Monica’s blog, then only I knew the correct way of uploading the document.     For the article ‘Do generational differences matter in instructional design’ by professor Thomas C Reeves, I do agree with so of the points sharing by him. In his article, he mentioned that ‘Although it is clear that middle and upper class Millennials are more likely to possess and use the latest high tech gear such as iPods, video phones, and game boxes, there is also evidence that their information literacy, especially with respect to judging the quality of information obtained on the Internet through search engines such as Google, is unacceptably weak (Oblinger & Oblinger, 2005).’ Actually I am also the one of the so-called millennial, I do feel the same as mentioned above. The youngster nowadays posses all the technology devices like iPhone, iPad, and etc, they are very good in playing with all these devices but when asking to judge the information obtained from the internet, they would think all the information are correct without any doubt. One of the example is when teacher ask the students to do research about something, the students will just copy some of the information giving in the internet, edit it and hand in as their assignment. They won’t really sit down and read one by one to find the best one because there are too much of the information given and they don’t know how to judge it.
      In the article, there is a highly respected literacy and applied linguistics professor from the University of Wisconsin, James Paul Gee (2003), has concluded that playing contemporary video games has positive outcomes with respect to many cognitive skills. To me, before I read this article, I think playing games is such a time wasting activity, I am not the one who likes to play games, but I do agree with the professor after I read this ‘Games force you to decide, to choose, to prioritize. All of the intellectual benefits of gaming derive from this fundamental virtue, because learning how to think is ultimately about learning how to make the right decision: weighing evidence, analyzing situations, consulting your long-terms goals, and then deciding. (p. 41)’. Since gaming has so many benefits, therefore I think we as the educators should design our instructional by inserting games in the lesson so that the students enjoy while learning.
    I appreciate a lot for the web sites given by madam Ng regarding the web tools we can use to design our lesson. I will use them to make my lessons more interesting. 
        

The first lesson....

This is the first time I have a blog and writting in a blog. I think if not because of this course, I would never create my own blog, this is a good try and a good start!
This is the first lesson after I had been rested for nine months. Last semester I applied holiday because I was pregnant. My life will be busy again with my job, my course and my baby, I tell myself I need to manage my time very well to make sure I can cope three papers in this sem!
When I first saw madam Ng I was shocked to know this young lady is my lecturer, after listening to the explanation about the course, I found madam Ng is a very systematic person and she always make herself clear.
I am currently using power point presentation and videos from youtube in my chemistry class, but I feel these are not enough because the students easily get bored after a few power point slide, when I am showing the video, the students are excited, but I couldn't get many suitable videos to show them due to the different syllabus in Malaysia and other countries. After this class, I knew there are many technology tools can make the interesting teaching aid on our own, making comic is the one, I think students would be more interesting in reading the comic than the boring power point slide...
Regarding the video of 'learning in digital age', I find what the professor saying is very true, the teaching method using now must be different from the teaching method used in the olden day as what our teacher did last time, students now are very smart in using the digital devices, and they love to use it too. By using the technology, the students can form collaborative group online, this is say to help the students learn better when they form study group online just like when they are playing war craft or other online game, they can discuss and learn together. Actually they are learning virtually among themselve.