21st Century Teaching and Learning Style

The Prospect of Learning Through the Webs

The Unit which is known the Research and Development of Pre-University takes the pleasure of exploring the world of research and its benefits and in the end takes to providing a support on the line through the setting up of a blog called muetirshadway.blogspot.com. From here, we started our campaign towards the establishment of new frontiers in teaching and learning approach.

The Blog and You

It’s just like learning online although not all the time—it’s actually an option to the present teaching and learning style. One could choose to revise either through the books or printed notes or interact online using the blog—constantly changing and clicking the icons or skimming through the e-pages at the comfort of your seat.

Establish useful links

It’s just natural for a blogger  to establish links to help the administrator to hook as much information as possible from the worldwide web. What you want to do is just there for you to utilize. Once you pay for the internet, make full use of what you pay for—it’s a flat rate which you must not waste.

How to make use of the blog

Get the information that you have compiled in files and folders—unroll them and paste them up in your blog. The students should find them most feasible to use as they do not have to pester their tutor in the middle of the night! What they have to do is to go online and download the materials they need—a piece of cake!

If one wishes to share the materials, just send it to the intended person and alert him through the social links, that’s all. It’s the style of learning you can’t do away with. One more thing is that you get to share what you like with others by choice—nobody will force you to seek information that you do not wish to access! The choice is yours. This kind of learning craze is dominating the globalhood. Why don’t you just hop in and give it a try?

Walking Down the Memory Lane...

I was reflecting the way we had our lessons back in 1970’s. There were nothing closer to our sophisticated LCD, Laptops and the internet. We had to make do with the roll-up screen and the OHP at most. Other than that we had the wooden clamps to mount the pictures. For movies, we had to run the projector—and that was non-interactive.

Having a big, colourful poster about Great Britain in a small corner of the library was a big motivation for us already! (we actually got them from the British Embassy on request).

Our geography teacher would bring the all-time versatile teaching aid, the globe. Then, he would it turn round and round to locate certain countries and that was it. We were more than amazed looking at the globe.Then, we had the Radio Pendidikan (Educational Radio) which aired the programmes on schedules. We then had fun time imagining what the relief of Brazil look like—all from our wildest imaginations!

Learning Online

This is a revolutionary approach or method which seeks a difference in teaching and learning experience for both teacher and students.There are some characteristics found in this kind of approach which trigger and motivate the students to get up and work! What are they?

First, the students love to go online—which means that you don’t have to bring the horse to the river.

Secondly, a teacher doesn’t have to force the students to search for the materials, download, print and present as they don’t like to write much—they love to click more! This means you don’t have to force the horse to drink!

So, mission is accomplished through exploitation of students’ interest.That is what WALL (Web-Assisted Language Learning) is all about. It’s about the passion of children wanting to explore the virtual world of information BUT with GUIDANCE of course!

—WALL smka al-irshad


The Abstract for W.A.L.L.

W.A.L.L. (Web-Assisted Language Learning)

An Alternative Learning Approach in MUET for Form 6 Students in

SMKA Al-Irshad

MOHD ROSLI BIN SAIDIN

Pre-University Research and Development of Materials

SMKA Al-Irshad

Abstract

Learning is a hidden taboo in English classes, I would say. Both teachers and students seem to struggle to find the best ways to bring commitment and interest together. But it seems the only thing that sustains is commitment in trying to stay awake! Not only that, should the lesson lasts for two solid hours, then the teacher will start looking at the clock and wish that the lesson would end. It is undoubtedly that the environment of teaching and learning should come to a compromise—both the presenter and the audience should benefit academically as well as emotionally.

Should we stick to the conventional chalk and talk, the objective of the lesson might not be achieved. Due to this problem, I have suggested an approach where the platform of the whole business is the web; that is a web-based teaching and learning method. I can see that the benefit of learning online as an option is indispensable. Online learning is not only a complementary, it can be a supplementary to the existing approach.

This approach exploits the students’ interest—the passion of logging on to websites, the joy of interacting with media and the convenience of learning flexibility. In other words, you need not force the students to work—just tell them what to do and the magic will do the rest! This time around the master does not have to bring the horse to the river and force it to drink as it is already there and ready to drink! Exploiting the students’ interest in getting their co-operation to learn the way they like to do things is an assumed credit.

Introduction

This project aims at using the web as an alternative source of information. Why the web? The web contains amazing volume of information waiting to be tapped by the users at the accuracy of their purpose or request. The intended instrument here is the blog. http://muetirshadway.blogspot.com/ is the platform for pre-university students to experience what online education is all about.

            Besides supplying direct information, the blog provides some links for the students to visit other websites without opening another homepage. The links should cater to the needs and nature of their studies, which must be relevant and user-friendly.

            The learning style of the students in schools should match their interest. The old method of paper-cutting articles could be a history against copy, paste and edit of the W.A.L.L. type. Who would bother to take the trouble of looking for the articles, cut them out and then design a lesson according to the headlines or what the teacher or students had gathered. Teachers should come out with the lesson plan first and then proceed to looking for the materials needed to support the lesson which means that the web is much more versatile medium to use.

            The net serves our needs specifically. Search is based on the words or phrases keyed in. The specific information is therefore obtained in a matter of minutes or even seconds! This is proven when I was coaching the school debates team. The moment they received the motion, internet was their first consultation.

            The main point here is, the web serves as the powerhouse of knowledge which could be consulted at anytime, anywhere—a strength which we should not do away with.