Teaching Practice - 16 Feb 2009

I have TP (Teaching Practice) in SR. Pg Setia Jaya Pg Abdul Momin every Monday.

And for today's lesson, I'd taught them (Year 2) how to log in to the "Student" account in Macbook, launched the MS Word program and instructed them to type the simplest karangan (composition) of all, "DIRI SAYA".

It was their first time using a Macbook and they seemed to be encountering some minor problems with the touch pad because they kept accidentally brushed through it while typing and caused the word processing screen "un-highlighted". Letters would not appear on the screen and they would asked for help. I was the only teacher in the lab and hence I find it difficult to split myself up answering the pupils' problem.

Apart from that, the pupils were confused by the "Delete" and "Backspace" buttons. When using desktop, both "Delete" and "Backspace" buttons exist, whereas for Macbook, there's only one "Delete" button but instead of erasing the letter on the cursor's right-hand side, it erases the letter on the cursor's left, just like how "Backspace" is for Windows systems. I thought this little problem is tad confusing for them but they adapted to it soon after I explained.

Even though they're not very familiar with the new system, they did tried their best to finish up their compositions (I only asked for 5 lines) and I was glad that none of them roam around the lab disturbing others.

The kids having fun with Macbook

Batrishya and her composition

She's the only one who completed the task given.

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Instead of giving the lesson planned last week in Dr. Leong's class (Instant Messaging) for Year 3, I'd decided to play safe and let Year 5 do it and see the outcome first.

And the outcome was... (one word) CHAOTIC!

First of all, I asked them to launch the iChat program in the dock and look for "Teacher" and send me a message like "Hello" to see how the program works.

My screen on the board

Next, I asked them to click on any of the "Student" in the Bonjour list randomly and start asking questions to their anonymous friends. I reminded that I could see what they typed and asked them to converse in strictly formal English language only.

Observing the pupils' activities on their screens

Unfortunately, some pupils encountered problems like:

1. The "friend" that they messaged did not responded to their questions.
(Solution: I asked them to chat with another person)

2. One person might have multiple chatting screen and couldn't cope with it.

3. Some of them lied with their answers!

Example-
Q: Where do you live?
A: In Malaysia.


4. Some of them were using informal Malay to chat. I saw some words like "ntah" and worse, "muamu"!


Before ending the class, I gave them a piece of mind summing up with all the "disappointments" I had from them. They were noisy in the lab (over-excited trying new things I reckon) and they did not carried out the instruction I gave them (using Bahasa Brunei to chat) and lying for fun with their friends. I told them if they still repeat their mistakes for the next lesson, I will "lock" their macbooks for 5 minutes as punishment everytime when they misbehave.