Learning from the Experts

20th July 2010 (Tuesday)

EDU 3234 is like no other courses. It is an adventure. Just a quick scan from the previous posts and you would notice that the activities were extraordinary, such as listening to songs and online DrowGames. Guess what had we done today?

In brief, we had an educational visit to an exhibition, namely, PRPI. For your information, PRPI is the abbreviation for “Pameran Rekacipta, Penyelidikan dan Inovasi”. Now, why PRPI?

In EDU 3234, every activity we had done has an underlying purpose behind it. In fact, self-exploration and self-realization are the basic essentials of the course. Apparently, the main reason of visiting PRPI is to learn from the experts, especially the researchers, on the research process.

Throughout the visit, we were exposed to different products of researches from science creation to agriculture. Moreover, we were allowed to ask questions to the participating researchers to enquire more about the knowledge and skills of conducting a research. Thus, it had been an eye-opening experience to us. We were learning from the experts who had done researches before, which would help us a great deal in our course EDU 3234: READINGS & PROJECT WORK FOR TEACHING LITERATURE IN ESL CONTEXT, where we are required to do a lot of readings and research on literature works.

For more information, kindly refer to http://u-events.upm.my/prpi/index.php?content=am .

Games and ICT - The New Teaching Approaches

15^th July 2010 (Thursday)

Believe it or not, our tutorial today was on playing games. However, it was not any game. It was the DrowGames – an educational game developed by Dr. Jaya and his friends, with the purpose to increase students’ English proficiency level and to have fun learning English.

Moreover, the game held a competition, which started from July 8, 2010 and ends at July 31, 2010. The prizes are iPod Touch 32GB, iPod 8GB and iPod nanos. This is no joke! Which educational game would reward you with such expensive prizes? It’s as though the players could kill two birds with one stone. They get to improve their English, and on the other hand, they can win attractive prizes.

After playing DrowGames, I could imagine the excitement of the school students, if it were introduced in their language classroom. Personally, I like the game and I strongly believe that students would like it too. If there were any problem, I would comment about its user-friendliness. Perhaps, DrowGames should welcome hotmail users too, in order to encourage more people to join the game. In fact, it took me almost an hour just to log into the system.

If the game were to be introduced to school students, I would recommend it to be implemented in upper primary and lower secondary language classroom, with age ranges from 10 to 15. In order to play the game, certain level of proficiency in the target language is needed. And since it is a game, it would motivate students who are not highly motivated in the learning process. Furthermore, competition prizes will act as a good source of motivation to them. As for which aspect of language would students benefit while playing this game, it would be the reading skills, for it prompts fast and accurate reading while answering questions within a short period of time.

Gone were the days when chalk and talk dominated teaching, the current development of teaching encourages the usage of fun elements and interactive approaches, with the implementation of modern technology. Yes, you name it – games and ICT. Could they encourage the effectiveness of teaching and learning process? Well, try it yourself! DrowGames will tell you the answer.

“Enjoy DrowGames, the future world of word based games.”

Media Labs Team

Ready, Get Set, Go!

13th July 2010 (Tuesday)

Saieen Zahoor ‘s “Toomba” and Lady Gaga’s “Alejandro”

The first lecture of EDU 3234 – how would it be? Being an unpredictable and joyful lecturer, we always anticipate the unexpected, especially in his first lecture of the semester. So what have we done today? Well, we listened to two songs, i.e. Saieen Zahoor ‘s “Toomba” and Lady Gaga’s “Alejandro”. Songs?! What do songs get to do with literature? I never thought that songs and literature can have any similarity or even relation. Well, until today……

The following is the brief account of our discussion today:

1. Some songs can last forever; some songs will only be popular for a short period of time, and then, it’s heard no more. The same goes to literary works.

So what makes a literary work to be remembered and valued by readers?

2. Other than lyrics, singers loves to project their thoughts through MTV. For example, Lady Gaga’s is a brilliant choreographer who knows how to project the idea of sexuality, or even good vs. evil, through the images that are formed in her dances.

The technique of portraying underlying meaning, e.g. the use of figurative languages, determines a written work to be a highly extolled literature work or just an ordinary writing.

3. Learning about the songwriters through their songs. This reminds me about John Peck’s book, entitled “How to Study a Poet” by analyzing the dichotomies in a poetry.

We can study and understand more about a writer through their works or vice versa.

All in all, today’s lecture was a great set induction a.k.a. introduction for EDU 3234: Readings and Project Work for Teaching Literature in ESL Context. Enjoyable…… Relaxing…… Yet meaningful. It taught me on the criteria of a good literature, as well as the importance of having set induction before starting a new lesson.

Ready : Getting students to be ready,
Get set : Setting up the right network of schemata,

Go: Letting them go to obtain more knowledge through self-exploration and direct transmission from teachers.

“Teachers open the door. You enter by yourself.”

Chinese Proverb