Locate websites providing information on the hypermarket available.
Check the websites before lesson.
Procedures:
Ask the students which supermarket or hypermarket they love to go and why.
Divides students into four groups and assign each group with a hypermarket (Carrefour, Giant, Tesco, Mydin).
Distribute handout 1.
Assign the students (pair per computer) to search for the price range.
Students asked to sit in groups and discuss their findings.
Asks students to examine the data and find the strength of the hypermarket that they were assigned to base on the price of items that the supermarket offers.
The students are going to have a debate on which hypermarket is the best. The debate takes place in the class itself.
Decide which group has the most powerful points during the debate and decide which hypermarket is worth to go for shopping.
Follow up activity:
Teacher asks the students to write a complaint letter regarding price offer by the hypermarket.
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was born in Transkei, South Africa on July 18, 1918. His father was Chief Henry Mandela of the Tembu Tribe. Mandela himself was educated at University College of Fort Hare and the University of Witwatersrand and qualified in law in 1942. He joined the African National Congress in 1944 and was engaged in resistance against the ruling National Party's apartheid policies after 1948. He went on trial for treason in 1956-1961 and was acquitted in 1961.
After the banning of the ANC in 1960, Nelson Mandela argued for the setting up of a military wing within the ANC. In June 1961, the ANC executive considered his proposal on the use of violent tactics and agreed that those members who wished to involve themselves in Mandela's campaign would not be stopped from doing so by the ANC. This led to the formation of Umkhonto we Sizwe. Mandela was arrested in 1962 and sentenced to five years' imprisonment with hard labour. In 1963, when many fellow leaders of the ANC and the Umkhonto we Sizwe were arrested, Mandela was brought to stand trial with them for plotting to overthrow the government by violence. His statement from the dock received considerable international publicity. On June 12, 1964, eight of the accused, including Mandela, were sentenced to life imprisonment. From 1964 to 1982, he was incarcerated at Robben Island Prison, off Cape Town; thereafter, he was at Pollsmoor Prison, nearby on the mainland.
During his years in prison, Nelson Mandela's reputation grew steadily. He was widely accepted as the most significant black leader in South Africa and became a potent symbol of resistance as the anti-apartheid movement gathered strength. He consistently refused to compromise his political position to obtain his freedom.
Nelson Mandela was released on February 11, 1990. After his release, he plunged himself wholeheartedly into his life's work, striving to attain the goals he and others had set out almost four decades earlier. In 1991, at the first national conference of the ANC held inside South Africa after the organization had been banned in 1960, Mandela was elected President of the ANC while his lifelong friend and colleague, Oliver Tambo, became the organisation's National Chairperson.
Robert Godwin-Jones
Virginia Commonwealth University
Article reviewed by:
Zainatul Afzan Razali
Summary of the Article:
The article is mainly about emerging writing online. The article promotes the amenities, the tools and programs available online that can be use to the enabling, documenting and assessing writing online. Teachers can assess students’ writing development skills via students’ blogs (free writing) and formal writing that posted online.
The first part of the article discuss the ways to enable writing online through web browsers, such as The Zoho Writer, offers interesting features such as the basic editing, formatting and the ability to save the documents to the server. These web browsers are supported on mainstreams browsers and mobile devices. The only issue in using these browsers is the onpaste function that occurs when user copying form Microsoft Word to the browsers. The emerge of the free text editors that are more simple and user friendly enable users to store and share their works with friends and received feedback immediately.
The second part of the articles talks about documenting the writing online by electronic portfolios or e-portfolios. The advantages of using e-portfolios are it is shareable and it can include other works such as multimedia files and presentations. There are various e-portfolios tools and services that are free online, for example Geocities and WikiSpaces, help users to store their works to the server. Taking the e-portfolios to a new level, a system is developed to integrated e-portfolios with blogs that can enhance students’ skills. E-portfolios can help to combine the formal and informal writing and allow users to determine the way they present it.
Last but not lease, for all the hard works of writing and documenting their works, users or students need to receive feedback on their writing to enhance the quality of their works. There are a range of online tools and services such as spellchecker.net that check the spelling and grammar and programs such as Automated Essay Scoring programs that provide formal assessment and score that build as grammar checkers and processing the natural of language that can help teachers in ESL and EFL with their work load. However, there are also programs, for example John Lalande’s ECCO –error correction code, which allow the teachers to enter codes in marking the students’ writing electronically. The codes provide indirect feedback and students must solve it themselves. The weaknesses of such programs are its only focus on grammar error and vocabulary usage and don’t focus on the essay structure and communicative oriented criteria (targeted audience and cultural context). To over calm these issues, peer review can provide feedback that help students to improve their writing.
Reaction:
The idea of promoting writing online (academic writing or free writing) is a brilliant way to make works easier and it can help save the paper from wasted. Not all students love writing but they do like blogging. Teachers can use this alternative to urge and support students to write. Teachers can assign students to write their homework in their blog if they prefer it that way. With technologies nowadays, it can make students’ be less pressure as they can access internet anywhere and by the phone. This make the writing assignment flexible as students can start “blogging” their essay anytime and anywhere they like, without being stuck in their dull room at home. On top of that, students can present their essay creatively, using different fonts and colors to make their essay more attractive to be read. I believe that that can attract students to writes instead of regular pen-paper writing. This can be possible to be conducted in Malaysia education system, targeting the urban students and also rural school that have internet facilities.
With grammar and vocabulary checker programs and tools developed and are available for free, it can help our students to be independent and responsible for their own writing as students can use the programs and tools offered to check their essay. Students can edit their essay before hand it in to the teacher as final draft or post it in their e-portfolios. Again, students can check their essay anytime and don’t have to wait for days to wait for teachers’ feedback on the grammatical errors and vocabulary.
The use of e-portfolios can help teachers to keep track with students’ works without loosing it as the works are saved to the server. It is also easier for teachers to asses students’ progress and works and provide feedback as teachers does not need to carry the hard copies of students’ works everywhere. Teachers just need internet access to perform their duty, providing feedback. As been practice by Dr Izaham, I love the idea of posting our assignments on the blog. I save paper and ink and it is very simple just with one click, my assignment is already sent.
In my point of view, the ideas of promoting writing online can be implemented into Malaysian education context. Other than the advantages of using the programs that help to reduce teachers’ workload with the assistance of the essay checker, teachers also can understand their students better as teachers are not only be reading the academic writing but also the free writing available in students’ blogs and their e-portfolios. Other than assessing students writing skills development, teachers can gain more understanding towards students’ personalities that help teachers to tackle students’ attentions in class as teachers can relate the lessons with students’ preference.
The idea of having e-portfolios in Malaysia can be execute and will bring benefits to teachers in all Malaysia. As stated in the article, the e-portfolios can be access by every internet usage. The idea of portfolio is to gather students’ work in a “folder”. Thus, teachers with lower proficiency level and poor writing skills students can access and download the high-quality essay from the e-portfolios and made it as sample in class as materials that can aids the teaching and learning process. This opportunity also can be use by the poor students who decided to be independent by assessing the good essay and learn form it.
The issues of privacy and the copyright will arise with the establishment of e-portfolios. For that, teachers must take a prevention step to it and be a moderator of the hosted sites and monitor all the available e-portfolios.
Personally, I love the program such as Automated Essay Scoring program as it can really help to reduce teachers’ work load. Teachers can simply utilize the program to check students’ writing. On the other hand, to use such program, I need to add addition comments on the writing style, essay structure and communicative oriented criteria such as targeted audience and cultural context as been stated in the article. The idea of having open review that allowed other readers (peers) to give feedback is also a good way to solve the problems and create the social interaction between students. Sharing ideas and comments can generate critical thinking and various perceptions. I love the idea so much as the students can help to enhance and improve each others writing skills. If I choose to practice this method later, I will definitely be happy as it promotes students centered learning as I allowed them to be independent and of course the method can only be apply with students that have appropriate proficiency level.
As the conclusion, it is not possible to have an interactive yet assessable way of teaching and learning writing. In the modern world that internet usage is an important medium of interaction, socialization and self-expressions, there is no doubt that the idea of having not just writing but any teaching and learning process online can be put in practice as the development of programs, tools and software that make teachers and students works and tasks easier and faster.
Here is my electronic work sheet…. It is simple but I think it can be fun ifit can be use in the real classroom… I’ve designed the worksheet based on the short story, The Pencil by Ali Majod. I usedbright colors in my worksheet to attract the attentionand createexcitementfor the form 1 students.., I am proud of my self asI successfully managed todraw my own huge pencilto be included in theworksheet…. :P
However, it took me days for me to discover how to post my work in the blog.. heheeeee…. Well, there is always first time for everyone… this is my first time using blogger and posting a picture in it…. Yey!!!!!
assalamualaikum...hello.. bonjour.... sawadikap.... je m'apple upssss.... im zana.... my full name is Zainatul Afzan bt Razali.. im from Sentul, K.Lumpur.. there is nothing much about me that i can share with you.. i am just a regular girl with a dream of having lots of money to be spend.. :P ... i am so in love with baking,cooking and sewing...
now lets talk business... about computer.. well, i can say that i am good in typing as i have start using computer since i was in standard 4... i usually play with the computer in my mother's office whenever she brought me to her workplace on Saturday... my mum taught me about the basic of computer as she was the clerk and she was and still good at typing and using computer... i gain more skill in typing when i started to join MIRC, the chatting space when i was in form 1... i was force to type faster as chatting with people was soooo "interesting" to me back then.. (today i am so sick with people who misused the chat room, especially desperate men talking about "the stuff"... oh please! get a life man!).. and i also joined the computer class available in my secondary school to learn basic in using microsoft words and became the "pengawas pusat sumber teknologi sekolah", helping the instructor teaching other students the basic of using computer or spesifically, microsoft word...so basically... that is how i learn to use computer....
As a student, of course, the software that i know is no other than microsoft word and powerpoint... i am still learning to use photoshop, i am a self learning and i am still in the process of experimenting and exploring the software... but in the time being, i edit my pics using the basic PAINT.. heheee.... although it is just PAINt but after i explored the whole software, i discover that we can do lots of editing that aslo can give some bizarre effect to the pic...
straight to the point, i don't have any hardware skill... :P i usually use Ares to download movies and songs.. i also download certain videos from youtube... i always visit cooking site, searching for recipes and for now, my fav are myresepi and AFC websites... now, i am interested in serving sites that teach me how to sew cloths...
during my practical, i did used internet and computer as i download videos to show in my class and search extra and creative work sheet to be used in my class...
