My Magnificent English Class

What I learnt in class ...
Today, when I told my DDC sem 1 students that they need to create a blog for this English course, I vividly remember the look on their face. Some looked very excited, very thrilled – well, I thought perhaps they already had a blog before and felt eager to continue with what they have or maybe perhaps these are the challenger lovers –who dare to try something new, something that they have never tried before- I just love this type of look on my students’ face.
Yet, There is another look which sort of worries me a bit – the anxiety look which the face sort of saying inside them “Wow! What’s this? Can I do it... it looks like something big... to start with –my English is not good to understand the instruction on how to create a blog ..wow, I feel like quitting the course”.
I’m glad that I didn’t get the uninterested and ‘bored to death’ look from both classes. Thank God. From my experience, dealing with uninterested students was difficult and traumatic.
The students asked questions on what to write, I could see that they were still puzzled , even though I have told and written on the board on journal writing , I also used the word ‘dairy’ which they are more familiar with. Ok here I learnt one thing – I need to be more specific next time, I should write it down (instead of just saying it verbally), perhaps on transparency, the specific things or sub topics that the students should include in their journal writing so that they will be on the right track. I shouldn’t confuse them and make them feel unhappy for not knowing what to write. I guess better still, I do one example in my own blog of what I want them to write in their blog. Yeah, I think the students will be clearer this way and save me from getting angry seeing the students’ work /blog not being done the way I want it.

Vocabularies of today
1.Accelerate means
(i) to increase speed
• She accelerated and passed the bus in front.
(ii)to cause something to occur faster or happen earlier
• Fertilizers accelerate the growth of plants
2.Absurd means unreasonable, foolish, ridiculous.
• What an absurd suggestion!
• Don’t be absurd!

My Opinion on current issue – Coupling
I’m against coupling among students because it is wrong in our religion. Islam forbid one from going out with an opposite gender friend because it will bring about more harm than good – the Satan or devil will be there where the couples are, whispering to them to do things that they are not supposed to do.
Nowadays, if you read the daily newspaper or watch the news bulletin on TV, there are so many news on new born babies being dumped by the parent. Why didn’t the parent love the baby ? You and I knew the answer. They were unfortunate, unwanted babies born out of wedlock. So to prevent this thing from happening, and not to regret over spill milk, don’t get involved in coupling.

Ahmad School 'Golden' reunion

Last night - 18th of June 2011, for the second time, a reunion of ex-students of Ahmad primary and Ahmad High school was held. Compared to the previous reunion which was held last year, this one is more special

Mission accomplished!

Wow! What a relief ! my mission of creating an e-portfolio finally comes to an end. This is my ultimate and I must say, my well done - from my own point of view, of course -portfolio. Finally it’s googlepages for me, after my twice fail attempts creating e-portfolios using the freeweb and Weebly. I must say each one of these web has its own strengths and weaknesses. Meaning they are good in their own way. But I guess I opt for googlepages because it’s faster and user friendly.
Perhaps one might say that my e-portfolio is not that good, but I must admit that I’m proud of myself ( and thanks to Dr. Edwin who assigned me to do this as an assignment) because I managed to create and have something in the cyber space for the world to view…and it’s totally mine and I did it on my own. Frankly, I love my site and I intend to modify and always update it from time to time as my personal professional development.

What a headache!

I have finished creating my e-portfolio last week but I got this big problem-my web site address was very long. Oh dear ! it seemed to be the longest address I’ve ever seen-even longer than the previous freeweb address. My address was http://jamilahmanan.googglepages.com/jamilahabulmananeprofessionaldevelopmente-portfolio

This really gave me a headache. I thought I had tried everything to shorten the address, but it just didn’t work. How could I give my lecturer and friends this address of mine… for sure they would laugh at me. Oh no. I thought I would have to create a new web site and wasted my precious hours on it, which actually should be used for preparation for my final examination and my comprehensive exam. I tried asking my friends but nobody seemed to know what to do..apparently they didn’t encounter such problem. Luckily for me, at last , today one of my friends, Dahlia ‘came to rescue’ me, we eventually sat down and tried few things on the site setting and finally the miracle happened. Ahhh…. Thank god! At last I got this short address I’d longed for..
http://jamilahmanan.googglepages.com/ . Only the almighty god knows how happy I am.Thanks dahlia, even though she is not an IT expert, just as novice as I am, she managed to click the correct button. I guess I got to treat her for lunch tomorrow.

Enough of being undecided!

Earlier I thought I was an expert because previously it wasnt that difficult for me to create a portfolio but ..today I was like 24 hours staring at this screen. I am working on something new . An e-portfolio using a new website - googglepages.com. I was told that it was a user friendly site. But here I am... exploring, experimenting, click here and there to get whole picture of creating my very own portfolio. it doesnt seem that easy to me. Compare to the 'Freeweb' and 'Weebly' , I feel that 'Googlepages' is rather more technical, more challenging in a sense. The first two are more straight forward, easier to use.
Anyhow, I think I am going to stick to this gogglepages. It is very fast. I begin to like working on this portfolio. This, ultimately, will be my confirmed portfolio.
My main concern is what should I put in this site. After browsing at a few examples of e-portfolio, I have an idea of what pages I should include.
Then I asked myself - who is going to be my target audience? or who can actually benefit from reading my site ? who am I preparing this wonderful site for? OK. I got all the answers - I have made up my mind - apart from the fact that this site is for my lecturer, who is going to assess me, this site is going to be for my very own satisfaction and also for all ELT practitioners.
Therefore all my pages will tailor to these audience of mine.

I aim for something unique

There's just something that I dont like about my freeweb e-portfolio. One thing is that I dont like the design..how fussy of me!. Yesterday, I had a look at my friend's webpage. I was kind of envy when I saw her nice & presentable e-portfolio. I guess I need to change mine. Perhaps I try another website, like my friend's. She uses the weebly website. I want to have a pleasant looking portfolio too. So what I did was I created another portfolio but this this time I use the weebly website. I followed the instructions and there you are...an e-portfolio was born in the cyberspace..namely jamiemanan.weebly.com. I think this site is much better , firstly because I got my name in front of the website, unlike the freeweb where my name is placed after the freeweb. Secondly, there are more nice looking designs to choose from. But.. one flaw... no forum. I got to think of a way or find a new website which has everything. More exploration to do.

Aiming for something unique in my portfolio