Technology & Education : What Say You?

Write an article on the topic integrating technology in teaching writing. It can be anything related to the slides, own opinion. How you would use it in future.

Nowadays, technology is playing an important role in human’s life. The benefit of using technology is a fact that everyone cannot deny. We can see through every aspect in this world influenced food and shelter using machine. Indeed in education, technology has brought rapid development in the process of educating people.

   From the presentation last week I have learn not just about the benefits that technology bring, but I also learn what are the disadvantages of using them. Well the advantages or benefits are, technology improves the quality of student work. In addition, technology improves students attitudes towards learning. In the other hand, we can do collaboration writing with peer. Likewise, it increases motivation and self esteem and improves students skills such as thinking, problem solving and writing skills as well.While the disadvantages or issues are, teacher not well equipped with knowledge to apply those technology in teaching. Other than that, lack of technology devices are also affected the challenges in integrating technology in writing classroom. In the same way, the possibility of students being distracted while using these technology also highly argued. There are solution in every disadvantages of using technology. For example, the government should equipped school with enough and latest technology. Likewise, parents and teachers should cooperate to voice out the younger generation needs. 

In future,how would I use technology in teaching?

I will definitely use technology in teaching. To avoid the problem that may appear in using these technology, I will seek for an advice from senior teacher and I will make sure that I have all the knowledge in using technology. Other than that, I will seek for a help from student's parent in order to facilitate students work. As a result for that, the possibility of students to get distracted using technology will be reduced.

In teaching, I will make use of all helpful material from the education website.  In order to improve my students writing, I will create for example WebQuest or create a class with a Web Site. It is because, the Web is an excellent way to communicate with students and their parents or guardians. I can include course information, assignments, lecture notes and presentations, links to interesting sites, challenges, study tools, links to textbook Web sites, and many other features.

As a teacher for sure,I need to remain focused on the purpose of each activity when I conducted a lesson. I have to make clear learning objective for each lesson and most important are, I should prepare with back- up lesson plan in case technology malfunction.

Mini Test!

Question 1.

Use the picture given to write instructions for TWO activities. Your instructions must be specific and engaging. 

My Instructions;

a) You and your family are attending a wedding of your parent's friend in Hayatt Regency Kinabalu Hotel. On you way, you have lost the invitation card. Your father call the bride to ask the direction. Fill in the conversation dialogue below 

Dad: Can you tell us the direction to the hotel because we has lost the invitation card?

Bride: Yes, where is your location right now?

Dad: We are currently at Jalan Haji saman. 

Bride: Alright. ______________ you will see the Kinabalu Daya Hotel._____________ Jalan Tun Fuad Stephen . _________________ Hayatt Regency Kinabalu Hotel before the roundabout.

Dad: Thank you. See you there!.

b) You are having a vacation in Kota Kinabalu Sabah. You cousin has just send you an email asking you what interesting there. Reply his email by giving description and location of the place where you can do this activity:

Shopping and eating western cuisine.

In you email , you should include the information about where to go for further information about interesting places in Sabah. Your email should not more than 100words.

Question 2.

You are teaching the theme 'Environment' to a form three class with intermediate level of proficiency. Describe one activity on how to integrate the following thinking skills into your lesson. (6 marks)

The activity that we can do on this effect is writing an essay on the effect of pollution to human health using picture.

(A) Analysis

Soil pollution are caused by human activities.

Water pollution- contaminated water destroy a living!

I will give them a picture of Type of pollution which are consist of water, air and soil pollution. From the picture, I will do brainstorming with the students and analysis what are the causes and effects of the pollution's to human health.

(B) Application

From the brainstorming activity, I ask the students to come up with 180words essay on the effect of pollution to human health. In their essay they are applying what have we discussed before.

 

Responding To Student's Writing

Read the essay distributed. Decide what to do with the errors. Are you going to use  written comments, talk to the writer or use checklist? Will you encourage peer edit before the next submission? What is your follow-up activity to deal with the most common errors found in your essay? <------------------- The Instruction!

I don't have the picture of the essay so i just go with my opinion .

The essay that distributed to me has some grammatical error. For example, the student who wrote the essay are not able to use inappropriate past tense. To deal with the error, I will take 'talk about the paper' approaches. I will meet the student privately maybe at teachers room so I can focus on the dialogue and the students as well can pay more attention rather than doing it in class which may cause distraction from his/her classmate. Yes, I will encourage peer editing as it can help students to deal with common mistakes or error on their essay. As a help for them  to do the editing, I will provide them a check list so they can check in that part. 

What can I do to deal with Tenses error?

I could do mix and match activity regarding the changes of word when we use a tenses.

Present Tense		Past Tense
see		shone
shine		watched
split		taught
weep		Wrote
watch		saw
Write		split
teach		wept

Seriously Serious Gaming!

Inside The Haiti Earthquake - The Serious Game.

Our lecturer asked to play this game and she want us to give reflection after playing it. Well, at first I thought it was just an ordinary game. After trying it, I felt different and I have new perspective about gaming; The bright side of game of course for the educational purpose. In the game, I choose a rule as a survivor and what had i experienced when playing that game I can simplify below:
1) I know how its feel like being in an earthquake situation. This is because the game uses a real visual aid that make it live. (Picture,Scene,Voice)
2) I realise that I have been so ignorant as I do not really care when it happen. Thus, it make me grateful because I live in a place where out of such a danger zone.
3) Playing this game is not just for fun. We can use game as a tool for learning too!

How to Integrate This game In writing Lesson?Any Activity?
There are some activity that I can create for writing lesson such as:

• I asked them to play this game. After that, I asked them to write an essay based on the role they have chosen in this game. They have to include the process of playing that game. 
• In addition, I can also ask them to describe the earthquake tragedy.
• In the other hand, I can ask them to come out with an essay on cause and effects of earthquake. For making this learning activity successful, I should give them an information about the earthquake. For example, I tell them WH question about the game. So that, students know more about the issue that helps them to create a successful essay. 

                                                                                       Rational VS Self judgement

What are The Advantages Using Game as A Learning Medium to Students?
It is true the fact that using game in teaching are applicable, but we have to know and study the possibility for students to get distracted by these game. As a solution for the issue i mention above, I think we can use this method successively by giving fully guidance to the students.
Through this game, students can learn the moral value such as to be grateful, patience and help other who needs.Thus, they can apply it in daily life. As a future teacher, we cant simply says that we will use game in teaching writing. It needs a self judgement whether we can carry a lesson using these or not. In my opinion, it is good to challenge our ability to teach by using this game. Thus,we have to plan a lesson properly or otherwise we could fail!
                                                                     

Assessing To The Students Writing.

This is assessing, responding and learning process.

Assessing and responding to the students essay is a way to learn for both students and teachers. 

    In the situation of teachers assessing or responding to students’ essay, students could learn how to improve themselves in their writing. While for the teachers, they will be able to know their students weak point and most important it’ll make teacher THINK and use (apply) their knowledge in teaching.  For this task, we were given an essay written by students. Our lecturer asked us to asses or marking for the essay. This is a group work, so I have a discussion before decided to give mark for the essay.

The moment I do this task, I actually have not got the essay’s picture. So I just make use of what I have with me. The picture below shows the marking scheme that we refer before giving marks. The marking process started with reading through the essay. After that we marks in every mistakes or error in that essay.Then, we refer to the marking scheme to get the classification or level of the essay.

Focusing on the essay, we think that it is well planned because we can see the plot or flow of the essay. Although it was understandable, there are problems in the grammar aspect. After a discussion and an analysis we decided to give this essay 12marks out of 20marks. The reason why we gave 12marks are:

The marking scheme as a guideline in assessing essays. 

1) The student shows an understanding of writing and topic development.
- The student understand what he/her trying to write.

2) There are Mechanical errors in his/her essay that affect communication. For example, in the area of spelling and punctuation.
Spelling - 'want' to 'went'
Punctuation- Overuse of full-stop.

So, we gave this student a pass!