my first entry

THE EXPERIENCE OF TAKING ICT COURSE

2007-04-12T07:53:00.000-07:00

During the last Language and Information Technology tutorial, we have taken the Uji Kendiri ICT which is an online test. The test has been prepared by Pusat Pembangunan Akademik. I have done this online test twice; the first time I have taken the Kemahiran Pertengahan ICT which is Sesi Terbuka Ujian Peringkat Pertengahan, the second level. However the test I should take is the first level, that is Kemahiran Asas ICT,Sesi Terbuka Ujian Peringkat Asas. I was mistaken, so I just change it. The highest level is Kemahiran Lanjutan ICT, Sesi Terbuka Ujian Peringkat Lanjutan. There are 30 questions in the test of the first level, each question provided 1 mark and i just got 16 marks from it only, it showed that my proficiency in ICT is quite poor. Frankly, I am quite disappointed for myself. Most of my friend can get a very good result; they even can take the second level of the test. The test that I taken is the basic and simplest but there are still many words I don’t understand, actually it is provided in Malay but not in English, I wonder why it provided in Malay but not in English, or maybe it can provide in both the language to let the test taker choose, seems that English is the global language.

Usually the test is provided in the same question for all of the test takers, but this online test is not, the question provided is totally different for all of us , this is very good because it have not given us the opportunities to copy with each other . Furthermore, when we done the test and submit our answer, the result will come out very fast, it give us the instant feedback, its great! To me, this is randomization. However, the test just told us the mark that we got but not showed us the correct answers, it makes me confused because I don’t know which question I’ve wrong, I need to know the correct answer in order to improved myself
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For me, this course is quite good, it tough us all about the ICT and language too. Prof. Madya Datin Dr. Norizan Binti Abdul Razak, or usually we just called her Datin, our lecturer, is very nice, she tough us lots about the ICT. I will give this course 8 mark because it is quite informative. After taking this course, I realized that my typing skill and my knowledge about ICT has improved, before this I don’t really know what is blog? How does it work? Now, I found that blog is really useful, it is one of the ways for us to share our feeling, viewpoints, opinion and so many more…..Although this is our last posting, but I will still continued my blogging. Thanks for those have helped me in this coBiet tin gi chua, vao day coi di http://gaigoisaigon.0catch.com urse ever before, thanks…..

oONLINE LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY ASSESSMENT

2007-04-05T06:27:00.000-07:00

In last lectyure, Datin give us the lecture about online language proficiency asessment.From the article: ONLINE LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY ASESSMENT by Norizan Abdul Razak, Hazita Azman, Sallehuddin Abdul Aziz, Wong Fook Fei, Afendi Hamat, from UKM. The English language competency test should profile the lecturer 's general english ,language proficiency and english instructional language control in the target language . The test development is guided by the communitive competence theoretical construct within the target "target language use domain" framework( Bachman and Palmer, 1997).

UKM has embraced information and communication technology(ICT) as one of its top manegement agenda UKM produced its ICT blueprint to equip its staff for k-economy and globalization(Aziz Deraman and Syahrul Fahmi,2003). The concept of k-campus as proposed by Aziz Deraman and Syahrul Fahmi(2003) is to establish a knowledge - centric e-campus whereby a web-based system is used to facilitate education knowledge and resouses servises for the campus community and skateholders . Learning care is a wed-based fully intergrated e-learning solution,which provides UKM community a tool to develop, implement and share effectively the use of web- based technology for intra and inter organization learning process.

UKM community is able to subscribe , create and manage the portfolios(courses)available from anywhere in the world learning care asessment module allows the portfolio owners to create and manage questions. The qustions can be programmed in several forums , included fill in the blank, true and false, multiple choice, multipleanswer, matching, ordering and short essays. Learning care does provide a relatively simple interface for test development, scoring and statistic keeping, which made it a good platform for the development of the pilot phase of the online test. The online test provides test results summary and details on the number of user attempts, total test takers attempt,user average score, user highest score ever and overall highscore. The test also needs to be administered in a controlled environment within a specified time frame.

EXPERIENCE OF USING ONLINE DATABASE

2007-03-28T19:33:00.000-07:00

SUMARIZE THE APPLICATION OF ICT IN LANGUAGE LEARNING

1) EMERALD

From the article i searching from EMERALD, It told that in 1996, the SYFEC college faced a number of opportunities and associated challenges how to exploit major investment in ICT, given limited organizational experiences of this; how to reach new market for learning provision; how to improved the flexibility of learning provision to learners unwilling or unable to learn by traditional means, and how to enter the strategic and growing e-learning market place. To face the challenge, the consortium needed to developed the abilities of college teaching staff and learning support staff to tutor learners online unable to find suitable courses for this purpose, the consortium developed its own course, LeTTOL(Learning To Tech Online)to train people as online tutors. LeTTOL would enhance the SYFEC’s range of service by providing a learning solution that’s flexible and responsible to learners needs. The overall objectives of the course was to equip learners with the skills to incorporate online tutoring into their work either by developing an online course or learning recourses, competence for teaching online or substantially the friend from those face to face teaching. The learning objectives of the courses were formally enshrined for design and accredidation purposes. Learners would competent in use of technology necessary for successful online teaching. There are 4 components of the course: orientation, learning online, learning management issues, online design and delivery. Overall, Cascade has been extremely successful in achieving its objectives of setting up and delivering, flexible, face to face ICT training.

2) GEMA- English language activities in computers-Based learning environment: A case study in ESL Malaysian classroom by Norah Abu Bakar, UKM

Technology in the classroom is widely believed to help teachers promote a constructive class environment and it is view by many researchers to have influential effects on the teaching and learning process. Computer can help facilities need and challenge students learning practices( Warshauer and Healey ,1998) Having excellent computer facilities such as having good language software, and program and also with the internet connection will not ensure giving students full benefits and opportunities of English learning. In terms of English instruction, the uses of computer have a great influence in education especially in teaching the second language. Computer supporting learning environment is predicted to be one of the ways to give the students an authentic learning environment AND THIS CONDITIONS HELP STUDENTS TO LEARN English better than the daily classroom context.(Egbert and Jessup,1996)Computer function as presentation tools, exploratory devices, tutorial aids, in the classroom. In conclusion, the study how that there are benefits and great opportunities for students to use L2 in computer based learning environment. However the learning benefits the students received for using computer based activities are depending on many related factors that to be studied.

3)EXPERIENCE USING ONLINE DATABASE

The last tutorial, we had spend our time in PTSL to search information by using online database. 3 of the titles given are Prospect of online lifelong learning, application of ICT in language learning and e-learning for language study. The online database included Excohost, Educationfulltext, Proquest, Educationjournal, Eric, Lisanet, Emerald, Sciencedirect, Newsmedia.This was the first time we used online database, That day, we went to cybercafé in PTSL and the first thing we do is to register for using the pc. The program was electronic devices, it using thumbpaint to recognize our identities. After that, we all start our work by using online database. Initially, I tried to search the educationfulltext, but it was extremely difficult to get into it. It takes abut 45 minutes to wait,however, we still cannot get anything from it. I also try to search another database: emerald, this database is speed than educationfulltext. I just click “emerald “and enter the phrase that I want to search, “Application of ICT in language learning”. Later the screen just appears the information that I want. Next, I search for “proquest”, I just spent few minutes to get into it, the last database I used to search my information was “Gema”. It was not easy to get into it. I spent almost 20 minutes to wait for the information. It was hard for us to searching the information using the online database because this was the first time we use the online database.

BLOG EXPERIENCE

2007-03-22T02:30:00.000-07:00

Last tutorial, our group have been discuss a topic about the experience of blog .The discussion included the disadvantages and advantages of the blog, application of blog, and our reaction to the blog.

In our discussion,we found that there are many advantages and disadvantages of blog. To us, blog is a medium to express ourselves about thoughts, feelings , opinions, views, and so on. It is a free bound without any restriction.The disadvantages of blag is that, it is one way communication, we cant get immediately response from others. We cannot make sure that there will be a feedback or response from our blog, maybe we need wait for several hours, several days or even a longer time!Besides, blog is a space that can spread rumours,untrue information and news. For example, we can found that there are lots of information that we cannot determine whether it has been proven or not because people can just make up things in the blog. People would spread the news like a superstar has been found die but later we will discovered that it just a joke . Nevertheless, blog still got its advantages,we can write anything free through the blog, we can express our viewpoints, ideas, feelings, opinions, and so on, and also tell others about our life, our joy, our sorrow, or anything, but we must take responsibilities to what we wrote and talked about.It is also very easy and convenient , because we can log on to blog at any time, any place.

In our group discussion we also discuss about our reaction to blog , our feeling when we found that our blog has been publish and there is a lot of people giving their comments to our blog. Most of us feel pround, to us, it is an encouragement, it will boost our confidence, the next time we will do our best , to publish a better blog. We also discuss our reaction to the blog. W e can learn how to decorate our own blog, is the opppoturnity to show our creativity, to give our blog a brand new background, a beatiful decoration. Actually i just learnt the ways to decorate my blog,the ways to edit photoes, music on the blog from coursemate,. I felt i've been left behind because most of my coursemate know how to decorate their blog by their own.

From the article BLOGGING AND TRAINEE TEACHERS' PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT by Malachi Edwin Vethamani from University Putra Malaysia. We found that blog is a very good way for us to express ourselves, we can express our feeling, opinions, thoughts, feelings , ideas, and so on trough the blog. It is a medium t let people to communicate with each other, to know and understand others and learn from them .Writing blog can make people become more confidence, because we may not brave enought to give our viewpoints in the class, because of certain causes but trough blog , we can write about ourselves without fear or any obstacles. Writing blog can also make us become more creative trough the use of the softskill , becuse we need to decorate our our own blog, by the way to edit our photoes, music and the decoration of the background. Apart from this, we can overcome our shyness by writing a blog because maybe we are shy or afraid to express our viewpoint in the class, to our course -mate, our lecturer, the face to face discussion, but we can confide our feeling by writing blog without feeling shy, because nobody will look at us but look at our blog only.

CONCORDANCE

2007-03-15T05:00:00.000-07:00

In the last tutorial,Datin divided us into 4 groups, each groups have 4 peoples.She want us to discuss the occurances of the article"a"in the concordance.This task sounds simple, just discuss the occurances only,but later i found that its quite complicated to me...After the discussion , 1 person from each group will present their work,Datin said all of us have the chance to present, to talk in front the people...im gonna do my best,i know......

Concordance is a tool or a program( software) that helps to list the words in the context.Its function are analyze the text, suitable for those who wants to study texts closely or analyze language in depth.Concordance use to make indexes and word list, count words frequencies, compare diffrent usage of a word, analyze key words, find phrases and idioms, and also publish to the web.The applications of concordance is language teaching and learning, data mining and data clean up, literary work and linguistic , translation, corpus linguistics and content analysis.

In the discussion about the occurancess of the article"a", we found that "a" is usually occur before a noun and an adjective. It function as subject/subject complement/object or object complement etc. "The or cuffin him not a minute before,"a" is occur before a noun,that is minute.It function as a subject complement because "a" is giving more information about the subject "him" in the concordance."was made into a kind of shepherd,receiving his", "a" in this concordance still occur before a noun but now it function as a object complement. It explain the object.In another example:"bedridden,forehold a downfore of snow before long""a" occur before a noun ,too.It function as a object.In the discussion, we also found that apart from noun,"a"also occur before an adjective.Now ,lets look at it,"me now.I pluked up a brave heart, howeverand took"At here,"a"is come before anadjective, it function as a object and the adjective"brave"function as a pre-modifier of the word"heart"."out once more-a long despairing, wailing cry,to",in this case,"a" still come before an adjective but the diffrent is it function as a subject now."ways.i supposed i was a clever lad,at any rate,i always got",we can found that"a"also occur before an adjective,nevertheless, it function as a subject complement. The word "clever"use to describe "lad"as a pre-modifier.

There is an article about concordance in the OLT book,"BEYOND CONCORDANCE LINES:USING CONCORDANCE TO INVESTIGATE LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT,by Arshad Abd.Samad,UPM.From the article , i knew that teachers, reseachers and language leaners tend to examine concordance lines to discover how words and grammatical construction are used. Besides,the language corpus is used as the basic of dictionaries and teaching materials but its use is now enhanced by concordance software. Concordance software can help analyzing language data and greatly extend the potential of corpus. Concordance software can be used to help analyze the language data available but we still be easily disturbed by the huge amount of data available.

the similarities and differeces of sms, email and chat languages.

2007-03-06T18:37:00.000-08:00

The similarities of sms, email and chat languages are they could be informal languages, we can use short forms, put smileys or emoticons and whatever we like on it.Besides , they are easy, speed and convenient.They are also ICT, we use them to communicate to each other.
The differences of sms, email and chat are , we use cellphone to sms to the other but we need to suft internet to chat or send email . People know they received sms when their phone rang but just know they receive mail when they online to check their mail. Furthermore, we need to reload and just can sms but chat and email not need to reload.

my first entry

2007-03-06T18:20:00.000-08:00

This is my first entry to blogger .com, actually blog is not familiar to me, i just heard it from my friend before. What is blog? i dont really know, i just know that is a space for us to publish our information or mail or whatever we want to attach on it.I really thanks to Datin who give us the chance to create our own blog. I think this is another way for us to communicate and understand more with each other .Although this is my first entry ,and i still not familiar with blog, but i really appreciate this oppoturnity , i would do my best to know more about it.