Weekly Reflection 6: 21 April 2016

The lesson of the day was conducted by Dr. Noordayana.

We were exposed on the usefulness of online engagement tools.
- positive community feedback
- long-term engagement
- priotitize ideas
- reporting tools
- support

Later, we were asked to work in a group to read on the types of engagement and come up with a powerpoint slides to share our ideas with our classmates.

As shown in the figure above, there are three types of engagement, namely teaching presence, social presence and cognitive presence.

The summary of the types of engagement

• Social Presence is the extent to which a student's true self is projected an perceived n an online course.
• Teaching Presence is the direct and indirect role and influence of the teacher and perhaps senior students in the design, direction and facilitation to ensure a meaningful educational experience.
• Cognitive Presence is the extent to which a learner can construct and confirm meaning (learning) through discourse  in a critical community of inquiry.  

The table shows  each type of engagement from IAP2 Public Participation Spectrum, from "inform" to "empower". It explains the underlying principles, provides examples of how they can be used in each type of engagement. 

Little Reflection of the day♥
I realised that in order for a successful media to be implemented in the teaching and learning process, engagement is a crucial. In education field, the good engagement encourage a feeling of belonging in learning. It helps the learners to be involved with others to make meaningful experience in learning. Therefore, it is important to raise the awareness of the students' engagement when a social media is used as one of the teaching tools :)

Weekly Reflection 5: 31 March 2016

For today's class, we were asked to give comments on other groups' proposal for our best practices project.

For my group, we were assigned to give comments for Sarah's group proposal.

The following are the elements that we have to look into:

1. Problem background 

 - Existing problem teaching or learning process?

 - What aspects of learning process should be improved?

 - Learning objective?

 - Target user?

2. Project objective

 -  Achievable?

 - Suitable? Explain.

3. Learning Theory & Strategies

 - What is the pedagogical need?

 - What is the learning theory/ strategy/ model selected? Is it suitable?

 - Suggest other learning theory/ strategy/ model that able to help solving the learning problem?

4. Social & New Media Selected

 - How will the selected social media help to meet the need?

 - What learning outcomes can be better achieved?

 - What is the expected behaviour of the students' of the selected social media? 

We had the opportunity to get comments from the others' point of view to improve on our proposal.

When we work together, we provide brilliant and critical views and ideas

The initial idea of our proposal was to use slideshare as a method to teaching Mathematics.

However, few questions were raised by Dr. Nora during the discussion
"what is the needs of using slideshare to teach Mathematics"
"Is it more effective as compared to the traditional way of teaching Mathematics? or there are no difference?"

Always consider the needs of the method/ media/ tool selected to teach

Yes, too often when we teach, we neglect the importance of the needs of the method or tools used. Therefore, my groupmates and I have decided to make changes and improve on our proposal.


Little Reflection of the day♥
I enjoyed the process of this peer reviewing because we get the chance to listen to people's comment on our work. It allows a diversity of opinions to be brought to the table and improve for better quality work :) Peer reviewing is another way of learning. 

a quote to remind myself that learning is a never-ending story :)

Weekly Reflection 4: 24 March 2016

The class today was cancelled. However, we have to complete an online quiz related to blended learning :)

In order to answer the questions, I did some reading on blended learning.

What is Blended Learning? 

Blended learning goes beyong one-to-one and high-tech gadgets. In other words, it it not the same as technology-rich instruction.

• It involves leveraging the Internet to afford each students a more personalised learning experience, which includes increased student control over the time, place or place of learning. 

There are several characteristics of blended learning:

• students learn in part through online learning
• students have the autonomy to control their learning pace over time and place
• students' learning path are connected to provide an integrated learning experience.

Little Reflection of the day♥
Blended Learning promotes a learner-centered environment in which it encourages the students to reflect on what they are learning and how they are learning it. Besides that. it provides the students with the opportunity to take in charge of their own learning. Blended learning is an effective learning method that can be implemented in the classroom to facilitate the students' learning.

Weekly Reflection 3: 17 March 2016

The class was conducted by Dr. Noordayana. She taught us explicitly on the learning theories that can be used in implementing instructional tools.

Why Learning Theories are Important? 

• Learning theories allow teachers to better understand the process of learning
• Together with the use of technology, learning theories have made a significant impact in facilitating the students in the learning process

The 3 main categories of learning theories: 

1. Behaviourism

2. Cognitivism 

3. Constructivism

There are various types of learning strategies that can be adopted. However, I would like to introduce two strategies that could trigger critical thinking skills among the students. This is because HOTS (Higher Order Thinking Skills) is widely practiced in Malaysian educational system today. 

1. Inquiry-Based Learning

• learning process that is based on inquiry or asking questions
• enables the students to explore new avenues of knowledge and insight through challenging questions
• cyclical learning process composed of many different stages starting with asking uestions and results in asking more questions

2. Problem-based learning

• students engage complex, challenging problems and work collaboratively towards their resolution
• students connecting disciplinary knowledge to a real-world problem

Little Reflection of the day♥

The proper selection of learning theories and strategies is important to achieve the full use of the technology incorporated in the teaching and learning process. This could create a better learning environment which support higher level of thinking skills. Besides that, it would motivate the students to engage actively in the learning process. 

Weekly Reflection 2: 10 March 2016

Today's lesson is about social media. As we have discussed about new media in the previous lesson, social media is actually a subset of new media.

What exactly is considered a social media?

The "social" part : refers to interacting with others by the sharing and receiving information from others. 

The "media" part : refers to an instrument of communication, such as internet.

When we put the separate terms together, we can come to a definition sounds like:

Social media are web-based communication tools that enable people to interact with each other by both sharing and consuming information. 

Basically, it is a phrase that we throw around a lot these days, often to describe what we post on sites and apps such as Facebook, Instragram, Twitter and others. 

Dr. Nora started the lesson by asking us to work in pair to choose one social media and relate the usefulness of the social media selected to effective classroom teaching.

My friend and I decided to use Instagram to teach writing. This is because we realised that students nowadays are having problem when it comes to writing. Therefore, we decided to choose an interactive way of teaching writing. 

This is the slide that we have done for the presentation. Do try it in your class. :)

How to Instragram to teach writing? 

We believe that this kind of learning enables the students to start writing activity by constructing simple sentences in answering the WH questions. Besides that, we make use of the hashtags # tool in Instagram in enabling the students to easily find their friends' post. This helps them to interact with each other by commenting on their friends' work :)

We also learnt from the other classmates who presented about Facebook, Youtube, Visual Learning Tool, Pinterest and Storybird. It was indeed a great class. We have the opportunities to share ideas and gain more information of the media that can be used in our teaching. 

Social Media TOOLSSSSS

Little Reflection of the day♥
Social media permeates today's society and even in the education field, it is undoubtedly of its advantages to our daily lives. However, as teachers, we should be always be mindful in the incorporation of the social media in the classroom. social media tools can be useful and at the same time could be dangerous too if the students misused the tools. Therefore, we as teachers have be to there always to facilitate the students and set guidelines and rules to ensure that it is used for the intended purpose. 

Weekly Reflection 1: 17 February 2016

Good day everyone, it's me again :) I'm going to share with you all on my personal reflections for the course "Best Practices of Teaching and Learning in New Media". 

Importance of self-reflection :)

I remembered when I first registered myself on this course, I was attracted by its name, I hope to gain more insights on the use of computer technological tools in my teaching profession. I wish to equip myself with the theory, applications and pedagogical best practices of social and new media environment for teaching and learning. This would be beneficial for me as a TESL teacher-to-be in effectively incorporate these best practices media for the teaching and learning process.

It was great to meet Dr. Nora again :) We were told that this class is going to be taught by two lecturer, Dr. Nora and Dr. Noordayana. The class was started by Dr. Noordayana and later continued by Dr. Nora. 

The activity of the day was conducted by Dr. Nora in which she asked us to read the articles on Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. Personally, I found this kind of self learning very useful as we are able to discover new knowledge by our own. Later, we were asked to come up with powerpoint slide to share our ideas on the understanding of new media.


What is OLD MEDIA?

The term old media has become synonymous with the seven traditional forms of mass communication: books, newspapers, magazines, film, sound recordings, radio and televsion.
Old media is a more traditional media where it can only involve one way communication.

New Media, on the other hand mot commonly refers to content available on-demand through the Internet, accessible on any digital device, usually containing interactive user feedback and creative participation. Examples of commonly used new media include online newspapers, blogs, wiis, video games and social media.

This is the NEW MEDIA PARADIGM



The following is the differences of old media and new media

This is the slide that my partner and I have produced based on our readings :)

Little Reflection of the day♥

After the lesson, I realised that new media is important for us, especially in the teaching and learning process. New media can be a component of active learning strategies to enhance students' learning. This is because it helps to build bridges between students' knowledge and the learning objectives of the learning process. Through the incorporation of new media, it helps to engage students, aids students retention of knowledge and motivates interest in the subject matter. By doing so, it will indirectly creates a powerful learning experience.