Mona Lisa Smile...

My classmates and I watched a movie entitled ‘Mona Lisa Smile’ in our tutorial class. It is the first movie we watched for this semester. The movie was quite long about two hours. This movie was released seven years ago and I wasn’t interested to watch it that time because it was not related to me in any way but now that I am going to be a teacher next year I feel this movie touched me in some way or other.
The lead actress is Julia Roberts who is Katherine Watson, an arts teacher who asks the students to view arts from their own perspective and not from the book. The movie teaches me that I should never let my students to conform to the society and lock up their talent in a closet. This movie is taken in the 1950’s where the ladies main aim is to get married and take care of their family no matter how talented they are in any other fields. Miss Katherine Watson asked a brilliant student if she had a chance to continue studying for law, which University she would like to go. The girl answered Yale and the next day Miss Katherine gave her an admission form to go to Yale. The girl applied for it and she did get it but she chose to get married and have a family. They are very conservative. This is a girl from the 50’s which is far more different from nowadays where most girl’s dream of getting married would be last in the list after getting what they want first in their life especially education. Education is very important in this 21st century and it has nothing to do with gender. Women are seen as equal with man even though discrimination does occur slightly here and there but what matters is that education is needed by both man and women.
Miss Katherine encourages her students to study to become career professionals. She wants her students to lead the world and not just to live as the wife of somebody. She uses modern art to suggest that they need not conform to female stereotype. She feels that women can do more than solely adopt the roles of wives and mothers. Although many are initially put off by Watson's style, as the film progresses, more students begin to admire her, including Betty, despite being her most vehement critic.
I liked this movie because I can use some of the values used in this movie in my future when I become a teacher. This movie inspired me in a way where I can tell myself that anything is possible. All students need some motivation and confidence given to them by the teacher and they will become the best in their own way no matter how head strung they are. This is seen from one of the student Betty. This is a must watch movie!

Students day out...

Dr. Jaya didn’t come to class but we were brought to ‘Dewan Besar’ to see the ‘Pameran Reka Cipta dan Inovasi’ which was on for three days (20th-22nd July) Dr. Jaya were involved in it so we had the chance to visit the exhibition. While we were visiting one after another creation, the current went off all of a sudden and there were darkness for about five minutes. There were many kind of exhibition. We visited Dr. Jaya’s innovation before leaving the hall.
Dr. Jaya’s innovation was about creating questions for students using particular software created by Dr. Jaya and the team. It was nice to be out of the class and visit the exhibition because I don’t think I would have gone to the hall outside class time since I am so busy with classes and college activities. Some of the creation was very interesting. The one interested me the most was a cow’s skin which covers its testis is used to cure wounds. I wanted the guy to explain more but he was in a hurry to send the skin back to lab.
It was a nice experience for me to have the opportunity to look at the many creations done by the students and professors. It is also a good thing to have this kind of exhibition in UPM to expose students about hundreds of innovation that can we done by people. Where there is a will, there is a way!

Learning through games...

The first tutorial was in the Educational Faculty’s library. We were instructed to go to a website (http://drowgames.com/) to play a game online. It was also written on the instruction paper that there are prizes to be won such as iPod Touch and iPod Nanos which made me smile. I am sure all of my classmates smiled. It seems that Dr. Jaya and his friends developed this game.
I couldn’t enjoy the game as much as my other friends because I took a long time to get my verification code to my email address. This game is fun because we need to click on the answer before a box becomes red and it becomes red within 15 seconds. It is played by two players over the internet but we can only play it if the other player is willing to play. I played for five to ten minutes with Amelia (my tutor) and she won the game.
These are the information’s I was able to get about the game from the Home page. DROW is WORD in reverse, and DrowGames is a word games generator with tools (RestfulAPI) which enables game developers to extract words (and their selected elements) from the DROW database and then link them to their games. As a word game developer you don’t need to be a linguistic expert to create great games. You just need to be what you are good at – a creator of great games! With DrowGames, game developers can select or create word lists of their choice based on the DrowGames corpus and generate their very own XML files to incorporate these word lists into their flash games. It’s as easy as that! So please feel free to explore DrowGames and use its facilities to generate the games that only you can dream of. So there you go about some information on the website.
I personally feel that this game is suitable for school children from the age of thirteen to fifteen (form 1-3). Learning language is a boring thing to do for most students but introducing language through game will be a lot better then a teacher standing in front of the class and teaching. The questions from this game range from too easy – easy – difficult – too difficult. This will help students from the aspect of their cognitive development which refers to how they perceive, think and gain understanding. Among the areas of cognitive development are information processing, intelligence, reasoning, language development and memory. This game involves all these five areas. So this game should be available in all schools in the near future for a fun filled education.

Music for the soul...

First day of class with Dr. Jaya was on Tuesday at 3-4pm. In this one hour of class he asked us to listen to two songs which are quite meaningful to him. The first song was sung by Sain Zahoor Ahmed. The song lasted for about 8 minutes. Nobody knew the meaning of the song but what made it beautiful is the sound/music by him.
Sain Zahoor was born and raised in a rural peasant family and for decades he performed exclusively at dargahs and melas in his native Okara district of Pakistan. In 1989 he was invited to the All Pakistan Music Conference to give his first ever performance on a concert stage. Fans of the Sufiana kalams claim that seeing and hearing Sain Zahoor in full flow is the closest anyone alive will get to being in the presence of the the Sufi mystics of yore, like Bulle Shah and Shah Hussain. (http://wn.com/Sain)
The second song was Alejandro by Lady Gaga. We didn’t see the video clip but just listened to the song since it had explicit scenes. I liked the music of this song but I couldn’t catch the words she was singing. I told myself I would watch it once I go back to my college room which I did. I didn’t like the song or the video clip because I do not get the message and I think it’s not suitable for students. It may give students a lot of bad idea on the song. A good song for me is when I want to listen to it again and again which it didn’t happen with this particular song.
The music video was directed by photographer Steven Klein, and was released on June 8, 2010. It was inspired by Gaga's love for her gay friends and admiration of gay love—"her envy of the courage and bravery they require to be together". The music video portrays Gaga with a group of soldiers in a cabaret, dancing to the song. It is interspersed with scenes of Gaga as a nun swallowing a rosary and near-naked men, holding machine guns. The music video received from mixed to positive reviews, with critics complimenting its idea and dark nature, while the Catholic League attacked Gaga for her use of blasphemy, despite Klein dismissing the idea and claiming the scene in question (the swallowing of the Rosary beads) was Gaga's "desire to take in the Holy". (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alejandro_(song))
Out of the two songs I would play the first song for my students. The first song talks about the greatness of God. I can tell that even though I do not know what he is singing but it shows he is praising God. This song would give good vibes to the students and the environment. Some can even get spiritual relaxation from this song. Great!