Think again...

Salam...

The presentation for SMARTBOARD was being continued and I was a bit worried since Prof Maznah will just randomly choose anyone from us to present in front. Although I felt grateful not to be chosen for the day, the presentations from my other friends have knocked my mind to think over of my presentation. Some critical issues have been raised by Prof and other tutors which make me a bit doubt about my finished product. Am I putting enough thoughts in my presentation? Am I being critical enough in devising activities for the students? Are there enough elements of creativity being integrated in my presentation? How is my learning outcomes and learning objectives suit with my activities? All of these ‘crucial’ questions keep buzzing in my head and need a clear clarification before I submit my assignment next week.

I noticed that creativity is one of the main subject matter being discussed in the class. The most thing that I remembered from creativity is what being said by my friend, ‘Creativity no need to be expressed using astounding, mesmerizing presentation but it may be something simple, but looks creative”. Forgive me if this is not what being said by my friend, but this saying makes me rethink about the content of my presentation. A simple presentation that demands students to think creatively may be better than a presentation that replicates flabbergasting, fascinating pictures that may confuse students at the end of the lesson. Creativity is something that is very abstract. In my opinion, creativity is something ‘invisible’. You cannot say that something is creative just by observing the surface of the presentation. The surface may look very interesting and attracting, but when you try it, you may feel that it is just like any other ordinary presentation. In contrast, a simple presentation may be somehow very creative after you experience it. That’s how I define creativity, and it may sound a bit weird to others, but for me, creativity is something that is very abstract to observe with naked eyes.

Besides that, I noticed that we need to we need to put more effort since we are using SMARTBOARD as our instructional material. The activities produced need to be something that are different from ordinary paper and pencil exercise; or the use of SMARTBOARD will not achieve it supposed objectives. There is a need to exploit the SMARTBOARD and all its features in order to produce a quality instructional material. The level of interactivity between SMARTBOARD and the students needs to be enhanced, and we ‘teacher to be’ are like a promoter who will try to use this latest technology to enhance the effectiveness of the classroom teaching.

After hearing all the comments, I really felt that need to revise and think again of the suitability of my activity. More effort and critical thoughts, combined with creativity and art of teaching may probably be a good ingredient in producing a better SMARTBOARD presentation.

Presentations and feedback

Salam...

The class for the day was just focusing on the progression of the SMARTBOARD assignment, besides the presentation from the representative of the chosen group. Sincerely, I am very impressed with the guidance and tolerance replicated by the tutors and the lecturer itself when the class just started on the day. Ms. Chin, one of the tutors was busily moving around to solve our problem, besides facilitating us in producing a better presentation in the classroom. In my opinion, she is a very good tutor since she is very open, soft and willing to hear our problem, and we also feel comfortable consulting with her.

The presentation part was very effective for me since I managed to learn lots of things that I may have overlooked before. I now become aware that something that may look good at our eyes may become very irritating for children. Why? This is because the unique characteristics of children and their variability of seeing world is just not the same like us. For example, children are attracted to big, colourful, eye-catching pictures and we as ‘teacher to be’ need to consider this factor in our presentation. Based on the presentation, I noticed that there were many factors that sometimes being overlooked by us. For instance, too many wordings in a presentation for Year 1 pupils may be quite inappropriate for them. As we know, children have short attention span and they are more towards visual learners. Too many wordings will make them boring and confused, which will eventually affect the learning process for the day. Besides that, I noticed that the background that is being used in the presentation also have special effect towards our presentation. Hence, there is a need to be more careful in choosing the background for the presentation; a scenery background may not be quite suitable to teach mathematics for young children. Besides that, some comments were given to the animations used in the presentation. Although it is good to use animations to attract students’ attention, too many animations may distract the real teaching point of the day. Besides that, some comments were given to the fonts and the pictures used in some of the presentations.

From all the comments given, I learnt that producing a good SMARTBOARD presentation is not an easy task as it sounds. The positive feedbacks, the negative feedbacks and the suggestions for improvements from the lecturer, the tutors and my friends help me a lot towards the process of completing this assignment. More effort and critical thinking has to be put on. In addition, the voluntariness of some of my friends displaying their presentation (although it is not yet completed) was really beneficial since it provides rooms for others to improve their presentations.

In short, the class for that day was really useful as it acts like an opening-eye, lead us to be more sensitive with young learners’ needs along the process of completing our assignment.

Searching and editing

Salam...

The process of producing a good activity for my SMARTBOARD presentation was quite tough. I need to find suitable, realistic picture since I am doing the topic about plants. Although there were vast choices of images in the internet, I need to be really careful since some picture may confuse students; especially those who are imported from the other country. For instance, students may have a different view of how banana tree looks like, but the banana tree from the other country may look different at all. As a result, students’ background knowledge will be disturbed, hence giving a negative impact towards their learning. In addition, I also have to photo edit some of the picture, so that it can be viewed clearly by students. As we know, most of the students at this stage are visual learners; they are more attracted to learn if the teacher uses teaching aids that replicate beauty and creativity, besides familiarity with their environment. As a ‘teacher to be’, I need to be aware with this fact so that the teaching and learning process will be more effective and successful for both teacher and students.

Exploration time...

Salam...

SMARTBOARD... you need to explore the board since the board itself is smart. That’s what I think when I want to use the SMARTBOARD for the first time. The process of creating the activities required me to explore and get use with all the functions in the SMARTBOARD, so that I can exploit the board at its maximum level. Why? This is because the activity created must be interactive enough for children to explore it, and this is the main reason why we are actually using SMARTBOARD in learning. First of all, I just try out some of the icons in the SMARTBOARD, and roughly make a simple learning exercise. Although it’s quite difficult at the first time, but with the help of my friends, I managed to understand some basic functions in it. Besides that, I also surf the website officially created for SMARTBOARD, which is smarttech.com in order to obtain enough information regarding the application of SMARTBOARD. The simple tutorial in the web gives me a quite clearer view on how to use SMARTBOARD in teaching.

EFFORT...

Salam...

Prof Maznah has given us the liberty to proceed with our SMARTBOARD assignment for the whole 3 hours class. Since she wants the assignment to be 90% completed by next week, each of us has started to put more and more effort in it. There were also some of us who just started to think about this assignment, and I cannot blame them since this semester is quite tough for us. Most of our works involve the use of technology, and this is not a common phenomenon when we were studying at the teacher-trainee college. Furthermore, I cannot deny that some of us are still adjusting with this so called ‘university life’. However, some of my friends seemed at the last stage of completing their assignment. I think this group of my friends were really wise in dividing their time for all the assignment, and this is sign that everything can be managed if we know how to handle it.

I spent most of my time looking for animated pictures, buttons and arrows since I found that all these were very useful in my presentation later. We cannot deny the fact that children are more attracted to all this ‘mobile’ stuff, since they are also active and like to move around. Besides that, it can also give positive impact towards teaching and learning process. When learners are attracted to the teaching aids prepared by the teacher, their attention span will be prolonged. In general, most children have short attention span; they cannot concentrate on one thing for a long duration of time. In order to cope with this, teacher needs to prepare teaching materials that will attract them to focus and participate in the classroom activity. Therefore, the use of animation during presentation is one of the best ways to capture their attention in the activities. However, it is important for teachers to not use too much animation as this will disturb the learning point as the students will be more focused on the animation rather than the content of the lesson.

Besides that, there are also some points to be considered while choosing the pictures to be used in the assignment. A clear, colourful and relevant picture will be some of the main criteria in choosing pictures for classroom activity, as this will enhance students’ attention and makes the process of acquisition of new knowledge easier for them. In short, there are many factors to be considered in producing this SMARTBOARD assignment and I hope that I will always be aware with the needs of learners along the process of completing this assignment.