I had came across Abigail's Post where she shared a video about what kids really think about social media. It is surprisingly that the kids are too innocent and without the guidance of adults, the social media might mislead them to something that is harmful in their learning journey. By exposing kids to social media, the adults need to be aware of the content and always there when there is inappropriate contents shown from the social media which might impact the kids' thoughts. It is important that the adults filter the social media before the kids gone into it without us noticing.
As a teacher, Pinterest would be describe as a heaven to me as I need to always look for resources and ideas for my daily teaching routine. Pinterest allows people to share their works and ideas which help the teacher (like me) who is not that creative can look for some ideas for the kids to have some interesting and creative learning experiences. Stephanie had talked about pinterest as well where the website have thousands or millions of ideas for us to explore and make used of in the children's learning. It is a challenging professional experience for me as ICT is needed to be integrated into the learning experiences of the students. A lot of thoughts are put into the effort of planning the lesson as the ICT resources are limited in the school context. I would have to bring my own laptop and tablet to integrate ICT into the lesson as the classroom has only radio and digital camera to be used. However, I found out that with this limited ICT resources, the lesson can still be interesting and use whatever resources the school has until the max of it. Overall, the students are enjoying the lesson with or without ICT integration for now and looking forward to the professional experience next week. I had read one of Queenni's post about ICT in helping people to keep important moment had inspired me to share my feelings about this. I had recently found a precious video clip of my grandfather during his birthday on my old phone's memory card. I was crying when I was watching the video and glad I checked out my old phone before I threw it away as I was cleaning and tidying up my stuffs. Smartphone was not popular that time when I took the the video. Not sure if iPhone 3G was out but anyway smartphone is not a common device to be seen at that period of time. The video was unclear but still it is well-kept and give me another chance to cherish the special moment and recall all my memories with my grandfather. ICT really helps us to keep our precious memory without us realizing since past until today. When it comes to phonics class, the children in my class will go wild as I would sing many songs with them and some music videos with my laptop. I tried to make the reading and flash card session to be short so they could have concentrate for longer time. Super Simple Learning had actually making phonics learning to be fun and interesting as they made animation for it with sound where the children could watch the animation and read-a-long with the sound! Instead of hearing me pronouncing the sound of each letters, they could actually "see" and "hear" what the sound of the letter from the video. One of Sanna's post - Phonics made fun had actually give me an idea of bringing my iPad to the classroom to teach phonics as well. Most of the children are talking and sharing about having an iPad and tablets at home and playing games with it, with iPad they would be more excited to watch and learn as well as playing with it. Besides the website that Sanna had shared, I had found another site which also suggesting some useful apps which can be use in the classroom context for the children to play and learn about phonics from best apps for kids where they have a list of apps which are related to phonics. Seriously, with all this internet and ICT gadgets thingy, who would have really gone to a bookstore and actually purchase a book to read? I am truly agree with Dayana where her post - E-library talks about the reading trends today. At least for me, buying a book to read is a waste of money as I can easily get an E-book online. There are a lots of reading materials we can get from the internet that we do not really need to go down to a bookstore to get one. Even purchasing an E-book online is easier and time saving. With E-book, we are actually saving the natural resources as trees had been chopped down to be processed into books. However, there is one issue where starring at the screen for long hours is bad for the eyes. This is why more and more children even adults are getting themselves a pair of spectacles due to this trend. It is important to aware of the time spend on the computer or gadgets for reading or entertaining purposes so we would not harming our health while we are comfortably enjoying the advancing technology bring to us. Mickey Mouse has always been one of my favorite cartoon animation since I was young until now. As the technology is advancing, the way they create the animation had evolved as well. I was inspired by Carmen's post where she talked about Cirkus ABS. There is an interesting video from Youtube which shows how Mickey Mouse is started - Mickey Mouse History - "It all started with a mouse". The video talks about how the creation of Mickey Mouse is evolving and until today. From a little mouse with two little round black eyes until today, a 3D educational cartoon animation with eyes like human! I had also found some websites which wrote about how Mickey Mouse has evolved in all these years and a brief history about the little mouse. The Evolution of Mickey Mouse had presented all the stories of Mickey Mouse from the past until who he is now with writing and videos and also some images for readers to have a better understanding. According to Suddath (2008), Mickey Mouse is actually 86 years old in 2014! Reference Suddath, C. (2008). A brief history about Mickey Mouse. Retrieved April 30, from http://content.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1859935,00.html As I was preparing the lesson for my 4 years old for the coming Monday, I had come across some ideas in my mind. My workplace had prepared some worksheets and Montessori materials for the kids to play and learn but still somehow couldn't get all of their interest and attention for long. They would get easily distracted from their friends and get bored after sometimes. So, as I was thinking, maybe using my laptop into the lesson would be great. What I can do is search for some interesting mathematics games online which I can get their attention and interact with the children at the same time. From the internet, I had found some cool site with interesting and appropriate games for the children such as Math Playground where it has all sort of games with different topics provided for the kids to learn and play. Cool-math Games also has a lot of mathematics game to aid the kids in learning mathematics. The most important thing is, those games are totally free! On the other day, I had tried music video of nursery rhymes which related to mathematics to enhance in their ability to recognize the numbers and counting. Sing-a-long is quite useful where they can happily enjoy and shout out the next numbers coming up from the music video. I was browsing through my friend's blog and I saw an interesting comic strip shared by Sanna in one of her post - What teachers make. As a teacher, It is being wonderful to know that we are actually "shaping" the kids regarding how we actually interact and respond to the kids. We cannot denied that teacher is an important profession to build the children's foundation as in behaviors wise and also academical wise but without the support and aid from the parents and the society, the passion of the teacher to share and learn with the children will be not the proceed as the children would not have enough support in learning experience if the parents and people around them are not being helpful and supportive. Just the teacher alone to stay strong in believing the children have unlimited possibilities are not enough. Not long after the submission of Assignment 1, here comes assignment 2! I'm glad that it was postponed as I have no idea how to start until I attend my last Saturday class. I had read through some sample unit plans from the study desk and gain some ideas of which topic to choose. Last semester I did something similar for one of my assignment and I thought maybe I can get some ideas to head start the unit plan. As I had done topic for "Me and My Family Tree" before, so I might as well go for that to teach preschool students about their family, family structures and the roles of themselves and the family members in the family. The integration of ICTs might not be as variety as the lesson for elder students due the age appropriateness for the children. Therefore, I am planning to use some simple computer programs such as Microsoft Paint and Microsoft PowerPoint where the students can easily adapt with and play with it to complete their project. Of course, there are still others ICT facilities will be used during the lesson such as PC and monitors, some useful videos from the internet and some digital devices for recording and playback purposes. |