INTIMIDATED LEARNING versus POSITIVE LEARNING

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Intimidation or stern in a learning process may not help Aqilah to become a professional photographer

Learning is a continuous process - some people believes that in whatever method of learning, the objective is that you are getting the knowledge and experience of the learning process. In an absurd situation, you may get yourself engaged with an intimidated learning. In Cambridge Online dictionary states that, intimidated means "to frighten or threaten someone, usually in order to persuade them to do something that you want them to do." One has to decide whether we want our students or listener to follow with what we have said or be more flexible in a learning environment so that more ideas are produced. I remembered the first day of my teaching a.k.a day of becoming academician. I was nervous, hesitated and procrastinate before taking my deep breath and start the lecture. "This is it, this is it", I remembered I whispered to myself that it's the starting of everything because the fact that I have been working forcefully behind the laptop for more than 13 years without really thinking that one day, I would be jumping into a challenging career which is to become a lecturer. 

As a beginner, I and maybe many of us needs to decide whether we should be more receptive to feedback from our audiences or be more engaged and intimidating in their decision to voice out and sharing. I remembered during that first class of mine, while going through the slide presentation and explaining about BCG matrix one of the students raised his hand and was asking.

"In your slide, you mentioned that the purpose of the matrix is to identify the status or situation of a company but how come the explanation that I read in the website is slightly different?". 

Ok, that was quite an eye opening for me because I never taught that a student would get his hands free during the lecture to check on his iPad and perhaps to a further extent to verify what I've taught in the class. Later and sooner I realized that in my future classes, I will keep emphasizing that students must bring their expensive hand phone, laptop and any gadget that they have backed home to be fully utilized in the class. While lecturing, once a while I will get students to check and ask them the meaning of certain jargon and terms - at the same time verifying whether what I delivered in the class fulfilling their perspectives and related to the learning objectives. This will let them try to understand the concept better and how to apply back in a real situation. Indeed, classroom learning is full of technical, facts and figure therefore you need to let them engage with the outside world quickly - which is the fastest way is by letting them holding to the gadget that they have in hand.   

I kept telling to my students that, "during the old days, during my time, when Internet is not around, your focus of knowledge is your lecturer, lecturer notes and the library". You feel indiscriminate because there are not much information and rather limited access, but during the Internet age, information are all over the places. But, you still feel indiscriminate because there are just too many information available and you have difficulty to define which is related to you and in your context of study. 

Is intimidation in learning still exist?

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Students in my class are forced to present in a big event as part of their work assessment - not only to develop the maturity of the content but instill their confidence.

The answer could be yes and no. It pretty much depends on the objective set forth by the planner (lecturer). Perhaps the concept of forcing and agreeing with the fact that you are suggesting have long gone from the classroom environment but; apart from being non-flexible in providing content, we are spposed to be more flexible in accepting the feedback in the form of contents and method. Imagine that we have 26 students in the class that could give us wonders in the information searching - and our task is basically to consolidate and provide a guide so that the whole entities in the class are talking and looking at the same context.



Nizam Mohammad

In Between Advertisement and Savings.

Image credit : Life Hacker

If you look around us, what will be emblazoned in front of us is advertisement, advertisement and advertisement. The moment you open your own house door, you will see advertisement in the mail box. The moment you open the gate, you  will see many advertisements that are hang here and there - at the electric pole, telephone pole and even there is dedicated advertisement post. Anywhere we go, there will be lots of advertisements that are spread out - on television, in newspaper, in magazines, in any space; even in social site like Facebook, Google Adsense also increase the prosperity of advertising space all over the world. World? hehe

Therefore, what is the main purpose of advertisement?

My personal point of view, the purposes of advertisement are depends on the intention of whoever initiated the advertisement to fulfill their intention. There are people who advertised the services that they have to offer, there are advertiser who would like people to know the product that they are selling and there are also some advertisers who advertised the information that they have to the targeted group of people. 

Image credit : Google search

Searched on Google.com with the search keywords "main purpose of advertisements" has returned with 67,800,000 results on the main purpose of advertisements. Taken from the first link appear on the search results which is from Share Your Essays outlined eight main purposes of advertisements. The eight main purposes of the advertisements can be derived as follows: 

1. Communicates information.

2. Creates ground for personal selling.

3. Educates people.

4. Creates and extends demand:

5. Creates image for the product or service.

6. Builds goodwill

7. Obtain dealer support.

8. Counters competition

Learning Log That Is Compulsory

Image credit : Self collection
(Picture is for decorative purposes)

In my class, I always make it compulsory for my students to submit and write their own learning log. The best part is when I saw them open their eyes wide - no blinking, seriously did not blink at all. 

"What should we write?." I am smiling

I told them to write anything but do not put it too formal. I don't like it, at least my way. I believed if you write 'schema' words and too formal, you cannot be creative in smearing ideas. But indeed, the more you don't like it the more they compress into it. Goshhh... But of course after a while, they are just into it, enjoy it in fact, I fancy that some of them are just like to write their log. But to some, it's the same thing what you've written on the whiteboard, in your slide and the discussion in the class. The best part is, majority of the contents are identical to each other. Speechless.

With the non-guided learning log, at least that is what they told to use in Problem Based Learning (PBL) assessment. And at least that is what I'm trying to achieve, the more feedback you get, the more you will be understanding them. From the log;

I can see their sincere comments of what I have delivered in class. 

Whether whatever objective that I put through, are achievable by the students at the end of the class session. 

Dilema pengguna 'laptop' dan kedai 24 jam

Image credit : Baby Med

Bila kita menggunakan 'laptop' yang pertama kita kena keluarkan 'laptop' , keluarkan 'adaptor', dan keluarkan segala alat2 / bahan untuk di gunakan..... saya rasa aturan untuk menutup nya pun begitu. Boleh mengambil masa 15 minit nak 'settle'kan kerja-kerja tersebut. Ramai pengguna 'laptop' yang gemar melepak di restoran-restoran makanan segera atau dikenali 'lifestyle cafe' atau kedai mamak untuk menatap 'laptop' mereka. 

Bermain 'games', menyiapkan laporan @ thesis atau menyudahkan kerja-kerja yang tertunggak. Ramai juga wakil-wakil syarikat takaful @ MLM yang berjumpa 'client2' mereka di situ.  Banyak daya tarikan yang menyebabkan pengguna 'laptop' menghabiskan banyak masa di situ - Internet laju, 24 jam dibuka, ada TV dan angin sepoi2 bahasa, ada 'washroom' yang bersih dan wangi. Sekali sekala boleh menjeling kepada skrin besar yang menayangkan siaran stesyen tv satelit berbayar. 

Graduasi dan sekeping roti

Image credit : The Mommers

Apabila masuk bulan Ogos hingga Oktober, banyak universiti, kolej universiti dan kolej yang akan mengadakan majlis graduasi untuk meraikan kejayaan para mahasiswa dan mahasiswi menamatkan pengajian mereka di tempat pengajian masing-masing. Kebiasaannya, majlis graduasi akan berlangsung dalam beberapa sidang dan hari... Ada hari pertama, ada hari kedua, ada sidang pagi dan ada sidang petang.

Bagi mereka yang akan menghadiri majlis graduasi sidang pagi, mereka perlu berpagi-pagi, manakala bagi yang sidang petang, mereka perlu berpusu-pusu. Jika terlibat dengan sidang pagi, sudah tentu pihak IPT (A/S), akan memohon para ibu bapa, graduan terutama sekali yang akan mengikuti majlis graduasi di dalam dewan, untuk datang awal. Sangat-sangat awal. Inilah yang dimaksudkan berpagi-pagi.