Recently I chatted with a classmate who is working at the Curriculum Development Centre. She was disappointed with most teachers who seldom apply what they have learned in workshops in their classroom teaching. A couple of months back, I came to know from another classmate of mine who is a teacher saying that they were taught how to construct crossword puzzles in one workshop. However, the method is too time consuming and complicated. Because it was a group work at the workshop, she did not know exactly what to do and leave it to one particular group member to complete the task.As my educational crossword book series will be out in the market soon (in the printing process, finally!), I was thinking of sharing my method with teachers (or tutors, educators, parents etc) on how to construct good quality crosswords within minutes. I've been planning this idea for a week now and finally came up with something. I'm going to run this workshop in February at the Faculty of Education, University of Malaya and will be charging a very low fee (to cover training materials, rental and software installer).
My crosswords are not the typical puzzles you normally see in newspapers or educational magazines. Mine are more specific and encourage students to pick up important terms that cover all topics that they are going to learn that year. I've been using crosswords in teaching Bahasa Melayu and believe me the result is amazing. I was thinking, instead of keeping the method to myself, why not share with teachers. I believe teachers will apply what they have learned if the method is user-friendly.If you are interested to know more about the workshop or my crossword puzzles, kindly drop me an email.
As a postgraduate student, there are are many times when I failed to get enough resources to do my assignment particularly things that are related to Malaysian education. Perhaps it is because there are not enough transparency in our education system. Hence, most of the resources are either outdated or incomplete.
Not long ago I got hold of the complete Malaysia's educational plan. It is called Pembangunan Pendidikan 2001-2010. It covers the government plans for primary, secondary and tertiary levels. To download the content page of the educational plan in 10 years, kindly click here: Pembangunan Pendidikan 2001-2010 The text is in Bahasa Malaysia and in pdf format. For more information or if you are interested to have the complete file, kindly send me an email.
In today's The Star newspaper, the ministry of education again stressed that they will stick to their decision to lift the ban of handphones in schools. Like many other policies, I believe MOE will change their mind one day. Wait till we see headlines on major newspapers, perhaps something like misusing mms clips to humiliate/againts teachers or other students (reminds me of squatgate), parents complaining about mobile phone and service providers coming in and out the schools (like workbook sellers), statistic of missing handphones in schools in Malaysia per year.It is definitely not a wise move by the MOE. They are indirectly creating more problems to teachers. Now teachers have to ensure students' phone etiquette, theft or missing handphones, etc. Even students are prone to greater peer pressure now. Good for researchers though. Now they have good research problems for their theses writing or research projects.
Personally, I against the idea of allowing students to bring mobile phones to schools. I believe schools have enough public phones and in case of emergency, the school management or teachers will be able to contact parents immediately or vice versa. I certainly hope that there will be no misuse of mobile phone by students to go againts their teachers and other students. Imagine secretly capturing photos or videos while their friends are being punished or teachers punishing or scolding their students, then put them up on their blogs or distributing them through mms. School management must be very strict on this matter and not to allow students hiding behind their desks sms-ing while the teacher is teaching in front of the class. Also never allow them to disrupt the class(es) or any part of the school with those irritating ringing tones.
