This year is the first time we’re sending a team to participate in the district level English Language debate competition. To me, our main objective is to give exposure to students as well as boost their self-esteem in debating and voicing their viewpoints. I always believe we need to provide platform for students to explore their potentials and shine! I am proud of my students for trying their best and I am sure this is not the end of their debating experience.
I was the Chief Judge for the final round where SIGS met SSI. The motion is “this house will bring all oil and gas companies into public ownership.” Both teams did brilliantly and debated with finesse. Congrats SIGS and all the best for the state competition.
I’m humbled to be invited by Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia to be the jury, Nano Workshop presenter (Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality in 21st Century Classroom) & Bicara 4.0 presenter (Emotional Intelligence for the Digital Age) at K-NOVASI 2018. At first, it was nerve wrecking as the others are accomplished scholars but I perceive this as an opportunity to share diversified perspectives & experiences of the education realm. Just give your best in everything you do. Do check out the recorded presentation of my TED-style talk.
I presented the paper I co-wrote with my supervisors, Prof. Rose Alinda Alias & Nakanishi sensei on “MOOC as the learning platform for new academia ecosystem and the Fourth Industrial Revolution” in the Learning Conference 2017 at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. Thanks you OpenLearning for the sponsorship. A great learning experience.
One of the main challenges for students in writing is lack of vocabulary, specifically in describing an object or situation. I’d like to share two cool websites that anyone can use to assist them in describing words more effectively. For teachers, you can facilitate the students to choose suitable words from the list of websites provided. However, they can be helpful for independent learning as well. Hope it helps!
I like this website as it would be useful for anyone from beginner to advance as we might need a bit of vocabulary nudge to describe a person/thing/situation. Just key in the word and voila! You’ll get as many as 100 possible words! The end-user can customize the answers based on usage frequency or uniqueness.
Say goodbye to the boring way of learning and remembering new words! Vocabulary.com emphasizes contextual learning where learners understand the meaning and context of the words rather merely memorizing it. It teaches you words by systematically exposing you to a wide array of question types and activities by embedding the elements of games and quizzes. Not sure how to test your students’ understanding on the novel/text you’re teaching? Paste up to 100 pages of text into the box and a learning activity will be generated for you to assign to your students. Do check it out!
When I signed up for the Innovator’s Mindset MOOC by George Couros, my main reason is to revive the important learning nuggets I’ve picked up from the book by discussing with others. For the first week of #IMMOOC , we are encouraged to blog on this:
Why is innovation in education so crucial today?
I’ve pondered upon the question, thinking where to begin and I feel the best way is to reflect on my personal journey as an educator, a learner and a researcher. I’ve been teaching for the past 16 years in a public secondary school in Malaysia and now pursuing my PhD in Management of Technology at the same time. Just like my students, I’m multi-tasking and that’s one of the challenges faced by students and many adult learners out there. Hence, there is a need for paradigm shift in understanding why there is a need to innovate ways in providing effective learning. This could be seen in ways heutagogy is now taking centre-stage of global learning where self-driven learning requires educators, instructional learning designers, technologists as well as parents to find ways to sustain lifelong learning.
There has been a robust development of teaching and learning methods as years progress but the crux of teaching and learning remains: the students. Albeit myriad innovation in the form of tools, theories and approaches, the crucial part of learning gratification lies in providing an engaging and meaningful learning for both the educators and learners. George has highlighted 10 essential characteristics of a 21st century educator. You see, in Malaysia, 21st century learning is the current buzzword in Malaysia where everyone is jumping onto the bandwagon trying to envisage the classroom of the future education via classroom management, teaching methodologies as well as teaching tools that differ from merely chalk and talk or sage on the stage.
As a practising teacher and a MOOC researcher, I’ve discovered that there is a gap that needs to be addressed in how innovation and 21st century learning should be implemented in school and higher education. The preoccupation verging on the obsession of getting hi-tech gadgets and gizmos is tad worrying. Innovation is beyond technology and hi-tech gadgets (it helps to have ’em) but you still can rock the lessons by ulitizing and optimizing the resources that are available. This was pointed out by A.J. Juliani in his book, Empower where the focus is shifting from materials but more on innovating our mindsets where accessibility of learning is beyond classroom boundaries (MOOC, OER, NOOC etc.) and collaborative learning is as important as personalized learning (heutagogy & peeragogy) as interchangibility of learning approaches occur depending on the needs and learning ethos.
A few days ago, I was invited as a forum panellist at the International University Carnival on E-Learning (IUCEL2017) and the topic was on “Envisaging Beyond E-Learning.” To understand the impact of innovation for future education, it is vital to know how innovation works and why the advancement of machine learning, AI or robotics can never replace the human touch. One of the points that I’ve highlighted during the discussion is the importance of fostering creativity and innovation in teaching and learning. As we are dealing with Gen Z (the digital natives and unfortunately, with shorter attention span), educators have to deal with ways to cater to the needs and wants of our learners. Rather than teach them to hog all the hi-tech gadgets and learn the way we do in the past, we need to facilitate them to find the potentials in creating (maker mindset, job creator) as well as improvising the existing system with the aid of multi-disciplinary knowledge & technology. (innovator’s mindset, industrial revolution mindset).
I am looking forward to sharing my views on #IMMOOC as well as learning from others too!
