A new week is now no longer to mark a new beginning and new tasks for this semester is coming to its end. Assignments were all completed and handed in. Time really flies. For this semester has come to its end, it also marks a curtain fall for this course; GGGE1155 Computer in Education. It is ended but the knowledge that I gained will never expire. There are tons of bittersweet and memorable experiences throughout this course.
Personally, I shall say that through this course I have grown a lot in computers and technologies. From a person who was pretty naïve about the skills and applications, I am now a total opposite of who I was before. For this while, I have been utilizing internet and computers for social networking and assignment purposes but the skills I have applied can be considered as the basic skills.
Started off with minimal skills and knowledge about ICT, I told myself not to take this course for granted for it is not going to be as easy as we spell out its name. As what has been mentioned in the course proforma, we have 9 assignments altogether to be completed within only 7 weeks of lecture. I was shocked for this was the first time I have 9 assignments in hand for only one particular course. However, now I shall say that I am proud to be able to complete all the assignments within the time frame given with endless guidance and support from our course coordinator, Dr. Siti Fatimah and our own lecturer, Mr. Fariduddin. A thousand of gratitude I praised to both of them.
My diary for assignments started off as early as in the first week of lecture. It was a light start actually for we only had to sign up for numerous accounts on the net and these accounts had to be official accounts. They were Yahoo Mail, Gmail, Yahoo Groups, Facebook, Facebook Group and lastly to create a personal blog for our weekly reflections. For this course, we were required to work in pairs and there were 10 topics to be chosen. I paired up with Vanessa Cordilia and we chose the 8th topic that was Web 2.0 in Education. Since that, every new week marked new assignments and experiences. Started off with doing an article regarding the topic chosen and uploaded it to Facebook Document in our personal Facebook Group, I realized that Facebook is not only a platform for social networking. It actually can be utilized as a discussion site for educational purposes as every members of the group can post any comments and questions. Then we moved on to learn about Learning/Content Management System (L/CMS). It was followed by writing a literature review on the topic Web 2.0 in Education. After that, we came across the toughest assignment that was the Mini Research. It was really lots of new skill that I have learnt throughout managing the mini research; from designing the questionnaire till writing the report. I think one of the most outstanding parts of it that the other researchers seldom utilize was to design and distribute the questionnaire via online (SurveyMonkey and Google Docs). Normally, the respondents are being approached manually and by face to face interaction but for our research, all the responses from the respondents are being recorded automatically via online. That was really a meaningful experience for all of us in preparing us for a bigger research in the future. Then, saying goodbye to mini research, mark a “hi” to the sixth assignment that was to design a brochure and booklet. It was followed by the multimedia week in which we have to prepare a power point slides using Open Office Impress and to create a courseware after learning to edit songs to be used as the background music for the short movie clip that we created using Windows Movie Maker. It was such a great experience to do create multimedia courseware. After finishing that, we moved on to a more serious assignment which was related to spreadsheet. We were to plan a one year financial management using Open Office Calc. To do that, I felt like I was an accountant. (sigh). Yeah, at least I know a bit about the work of an accountant even though I guess that was just a small partition of their actual work. Moving from the job of an accountant, we faced the real job and responsibility as a teacher. We created students’ score and grade using Microsoft Excel. The skills learnt are very crucial to be utilized in school later. And finally, as the concluding assignment, we were to design a database.
There are really a lot of meaningful skills and knowledge I gained in a short period of time. Seven weeks time flies just like that. One of the most crucial thing I learnt was good time management. Despite the tiredness of completing all the assignments in a short period of time, I learnt to manage my time wisely. Every seconds and minutes were like gold to me. It is very precious and I should not simply waste it. Apart from that, what I have discovered about learning ICT is, it is not an instant, all concrete and an express thing to be learnt. We learnt about ICT directly or indirectly, formally and informally. Learning about ICT is continuous. The skills learnt need to be practiced and renewed from time to time. Like the golden phrase, “PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT”. Besides, I guess there is no such thing as failure in ICT. Every mistakes and unfamiliarity has a solution for it with the permit of a true determination and real patience. It is all about self-exploration. Grasp the interest and determination and you will never be upset by it. Learning ICT I shall say is wonderful, interesting and fun.
As a teacher-to-be, it is very important for me to be proficient and competent in ICT. To make the lesson interesting, I have to utilize various skills such as Microsoft Powerpoint, Open Office Impress, videos and etcetera in order to grab the students’ interest and attention to the lesson. Besides, for database purposes, we really owe ICT for the convenience it served for teachers to record students’ data, score, and grade.
For the concluding remark, I would like to take this opportunity to bid a token of gratitude and appreciation to our course coordinator, Dr. Siti Fatimah for her endless support and guidance to us even though it was all done virtually for we are separated by the distance. Besides, a thousand of appreciation I channeled to Mr. Mohd. Fariddudin Wajdi Anthony for all the knowledge and experiences that he has shared sincerely. Last but not least, I would like to thank my partner, Vanessa Cordilia ak Paterson for all the cooperation and support while doing our assignment. Thanks for always being there with me in sweetness and in pain. I owe you much for that. Lastly, THANK YOU so much to all my coursemates for the endless sharing of knowledge. Seven weeks of course may seem very short but the experience I gained is so precious that it is irreplaceable.
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