WWW LESSON PLAN

Adjective (Describing People)
LEVEL: Form 1 (Intermediate to advanced)
TIME: 60 minutes

AIMS:
1. Students will learn how to use adjective to describe people
2. Students will learn how to set up a social networking account (Facebook)

TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS:
1. A computer for each student
2. A computer for the teacher together with a projector set
3. Internet connection

PREPARATION:
1. Teacher will prepare a group on Facebook for the class.
2. All the students must register an account on Facebook (if they haven’t got an account) and register on the group before class starts
3. All of the students in the class should already be friends on their Facebook account
4. All students MUST use profile pictures of themselves which include their whole appearance, from head to toe
5. Teacher will send each student a message containing a name of ONE of their classmates randomly

PROCEDURE:
Set Induction: (5 minutes)
1. Teachers greet students
2. Teacher shows pictures of interesting people or figures for students to describe

Development: (50 minutes)
1. Teacher instruct students to open up their Facebook account
2. Teacher instruct students to open their inbox and check a message sent by the teacher (which contain the randomly sent name of one of their classmates)
3. Teacher instruct students to describe their friend’s appearance using adjectives (the name that they got from their inbox) on the Wall of the class’ group page without including their friend’s name
4. After all the students finish posting the description of their friend on the group’s Wall, each student must reply to each post by writing the name of whom the description fits
5. Teacher will discuss with the class the description of the first 5 posts, identifying who the description fits
6. Teacher instruct students to do the worksheet posted on the class’ Facebook group

Closure: (5 minutes)
1. Teacher tells the students that the words used to describe people or things are called ‘adjectives’
2. Teacher reviews the lesson

Follow-up activities:
Each student have to describe their idol in a form of mind map using Microsoft Words

Art Deco Design

Art Deco design permeated all areas of design in the 1920s, from fashion to architecture.

The style that has come to be known as "Art Deco" came from the Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes held in 1925 in Paris. The purpose of the exposition was to forge a relationship between art and industrial design. The exhibits on display combined industrial technology with earlier design styles.

Interestingly, it was not until 1966 that the term "Art Deco" first appeared when British art critic and historian Bevis Hillier coined the phrase.

Before that, the style was called "Modernistic" or "Style Moderne."

Article Review: Making the Most of Video Sharing Websites: An Indonesian Scenario

Mokhamad Syaifudin. “Making the Most of Video Sharing Websites: An Indonesian Scenario.” CALL-EJ Online February 2010. Computer Assisted Language Learning-Electronic Journal. Web. August. 2010.

The author, Mokhamad Syaifudin has been an English teacher for both secondary and tertiary level for almost 12 years. He is a CALL teacher practitioner and Master Teacher Trainer who works on an Australian-Indonesian project serving almost 700 schools in Indonesia to train secondary school English teachers.

The paper done by Mokhamad Syaifudin dwells on video sharing websites’ potential as authentic sources for learning materials. The paper focuses on how to make use of video sharing websites and use them in the classroom settings. Here, the paper acts as a discussion to help teachers who wants to incorporate the use of videos in classrooms. The matters that are discussed in the paper includes information on video sharing websites, the criteria when selecting video materials, where to get videos, how to save videos, the media used to display videos and most importantly, how to use video in the classroom for language learning activities.

This paper interests me for a number of reasons. First of all, it interests me because it gives further elaboration and description on how to use videos in classrooms. What I like about the paper is that it discusses some of the issues that most teachers tend to overlook such as ‘what to consider when selecting video materials’, which included the video’s cultural appropriateness, the video’s requirements based on learners’ needs, video clip length and so on.

Secondly, the paper is interesting because everything that was discussed is practical, which means the ideas brought forth can be put into use straight away because readers won’t have to reflect heavily on the ideas because it is less theoretical. Some of the practical ideas are where to get videos, media to play videos and how to save videos, which I consider a very thoughtful idea discussed because as much as teachers know how to use them in class, most of them are not savvy enough to know how to save or where to download these videos.

Finally, I like this paper because it includes ‘how to use video in the classroom for language learning activities’. This is interesting because the activities mentioned are not what teachers usually do when using videos in classrooms. One example of activity with a video is the ‘freeze frame’; when the teacher pauses a clip at certain points and as questions such as “what is he wearing?”, “what colour is the car?” or “what’s going to happen next?” Rather than just playing the clip and asking questions later, why not make the learning more lateral and ask during the clip? Instead of showing the clip, why not ask students to make hypothesis or outcomes of the clip? Such ideas are rarely thought when using videos in classrooms.

Based on the points mentioned above, I have to give credit to the author for conveying these ideas brilliantly in the paper. Also, the level of English used is very general and easy to understand, compared to some paper which uses academic jargons which can be confusing even for scholars. This paper is suitable for any teacher, not just English teachers, to understand how to effectively apply videos in classrooms. Again, the ideas brought forth are applicable and the objective of lessons can be easily achieved by inferring to the guidelines included in this paper.

This paper is important to the teaching and learning of ESL in the general and Malaysian contexts because the idea of using technology are often mentioned and discussed in other articles and journals but not many dwell into the aspect of using videos effectively in classrooms. In Malaysia especially, where we are in the run to catch up with other countries in terms of technology incorporation in classrooms, this article should help teachers understand how technologies should be fully utilized in classrooms, and not just requirements to meet with learning objectives or the standards of ISO. Hopefully, this article will help teachers who incorporates CALL in their classrooms make full use of the technology to achieve a much richer learning experience in class.

Hot Potatoes: A Reflection

Hot Potatoes is a freeware from Half-Baked Software Inc that allows the user to create interactive activities for the World Wide Web. For this CALL course, me and my classmates have been learning to use it to create interesting English language related activities. Here, I will reflect upon the using of Hot Potatoes.

The first thing I noticed when using Hot Potatoes was how easy and userfriendly it is to create activities. We have been taught to create interesting exercises using Hot Potatoes, and some of it includes gap-fill exercises, matching or ordering and jumbled sentence.

It is very easy to use and it can save a lot of time for teachers to prepare them. Plus, the activities and exercises can be done via World Wide Web, so as long as there is internet connection, the activities can be done. The exercises might be more interesting to do because pictures can easily be included in the activities. Pictures can help students on details such as describing things, people or places. The usage of pictures in the Hot Potatoes can easily teach students how to use 'adjectives'.

How teachers show what a 'didgeridoo' looks like; by using pictures

However, I encountered a problem when trying to insert pictures from the hard drive. When I have chosen a picture from my hard drive to be included in the activities, a warning box pops up and it says "These source and target paths are on different drives, so no relative paths can be created." This bothers me because when I saved the project and tried to view it via World Wide Web, the pictures weren't included in the exercise.

"These source and target paths are on different drives, so no relative paths can be created."

I managed to overcome this problem by inserting pictures from it's Web URL. That way, the software can access the picture easily through the address given and the pictures were finally included in my exercises. I'm sure there is a way to insert the pictures from the hard drive because the option do so is there, so there must be a way to do it, and it must have been my fault for not putting the pictures in the related drive. However, I prefer to choose pictures from the Web because I have so many options and varieties of pictures to choose from.

Clearly, Hot Potatoes should be used by all English teachers to prepare activities for computer intergrated classrooms or lessons.

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