The End

It has been 7 longs weeks where we had a consistent time in moulding ourselves in this course. Frankly speaking, in the beginning, I had no interest in this course and find it hard to deal with as I am not a Whiz in ICT . But after reflecting back, in fact, I did enjoy learning this course and has gain tones of  knowledge to equip myself for the future. Everything that was learnt was worth it after going through all the hardcore pain of sleepless nights in completing the assignment within the week. Bittersweet moments were created and it is one of the unforgettable moments of drilling ICT knowledge in my life.

I really want to express my sincere gratitude to:
~ Course Coordinator, Dr. Siti Fatimah Mohd Yassin
~ Lecturer, Encik Mohammad Fariduddin Wajdi Anthony
~ My pair, Aileen Tiong Ling
~ My fellow Course Mates

Without your patience, guidance and support, I will not be able to smoothly finish and learn what I need to learn for the betterment of the future.

Even though it's the end, but it's the beginning of a new journey to freely apply the knowledge about ICT in the future.

Once again,
Thank You.

Week 7 (15th- 19th August) [Task related to Week 7a & 7b)

Welcome people!

Well, this week was indeed a busy week and it's just a few more days before exam. But I am really happy that we have finally concluded the last week (which was divided into Week 7a and Week 7b) of this course.

Week 7a
In the period of 3 days in this Week 7a task, we were required to do 2 assignments, which is Assignment 8a and Assignment 8b. This 2 task were related to Spreadsheet and Microsoft Excel. This 2 media is about the same where data and numbers and graphs can be made here.

Assignment 8a
This assignment requires me to create a one year personal financial management (income and spending) spreadsheet using Calc.
So I had to name all the sheet according to the month starting from January 2011 to December 2011. Our lecturer showed us on how to do the spreadsheet and link all the spreadsheet with the sum using a formula.
Not much problems occurred in this assignment even though initially we experienced some confusion. With consistency, my pair and I were able to finish this in one day. So here's the result!
I was really happy to learn how to do this as it is related to accounts which is a subject that I'm interested in. So in the future, I can use this to do my personal financial planning and keep track on my expenditure.

Assignment 8b
In this assignment, my pair and I had to plan, create and edit a spreadsheet of student score and grade analysis in Microsoft Office Excel. A boost of adrenaline flowed in me when I finally get to learn how teachers in school actually sort out the grades and rank in the class. Years of wondering on how to do the calculation was resolve. All thanks to ICT, it is so much more convenient and accurate to do the calculation. So we had names and the score of the student and used VLOOKUP to refer to the grade of the score, STDEV to count the standard deviation of the class, SUM to count the sum of every subjects obtain by each student, Average to count the average of the score, COUNTIF to count the total number of student for each Grade, and made a graph to see the overall result of the students in all the subject and sort out the ranks of each students.
I really appreciate this input of learning this skill because this skill will help me in the future to count the grades of the student where I will save time, energy and money. Practice really makes it perfect after countless times of doing it and I finally am able to master it for the future.

Week 7b
Finally, the 2 days period of doing the last assignment 9 was about Database using Open Office Base.
My pair and I had to plan, create and edit a simple database for student management information in a creative, innovative and ethical way.

The steps:
So we had to
-plan the data structure of the Student management information
-create 4 separate tables    
·    Student table(use student ID as a Primary key)
·    Parent table (use student ID as a Primary key)
·    Curriculum table (use student ID as a Primary key)
·    Co-curriculum table(use student ID as a Primary key)
-Then my pair and I need to create relationships between the tables by linking the student ID.
-Then use Wizard to create the 4 forms of the student, parent, curriculum and co-curriculum
-Lastly, we need to create several queries from the database and create reports based in the queries.


Truth be told. this database was confusing as I'm not familiar with it. It is also my first time doing a database. But my pair and I were able to finish it after many time of trials and errors. Thanks to our lecturer for demonstrating it to us in the beginning so we will not be lost in the steps. Therefore, we finally learnt how to do a simple database to record student's information about their names, parent name, curriculum and co-curriculum.

Overall, I am over the moon with all these assignments done! It was a roller coaster ride throughout all the weeks, however, with patience, guidance from our lecturer, my pair- Aileen and course mates, I am able to finish it in time. One thing about this ICT course is that it never failed to impress me to learn new things. I'm really happy that this course is completed and I have gain tremendous knowledge this week to equip me in the unpredictable future as a teacher. 

Week 6 (8th-12th August) [Task related to Week 6]

Hello and Welcome Back!

The class started off this week by receiving 2 assignments that was needed to be done. Again! I'm excited to learn something new since learning is an on-going process. So the task received was regarding about effective presentation skills using Impress and make a courseware using powerpoint. Both of these will be related back to our Assignment 5 and Assignment 1. 

Assignment 7a

Based on Assignment 5 "Critical Web-Research Skills & Positive Web Behaviours", my pair(Aileen) and I will need to create a presentation kit using Impress by following the guidelines for a creating a good presentation. 

With Open Office Impress, my pair and I started to create the presentation. We had a tough time as we were more familiar with Microsoft Office Powerpoint. Though both of the multimedia software looks the same. But it is not. It was time consuming for this task to explore the features of Impress. To look on the bright sight, it was indeed something new to learn. After much patience and stamina, it was finally done! This can be viewed here.

Assignment 7b

This assignment was to develop a multimedia courseware for assignment 1 using Microsoft Office Powerpoint  which include all Multimedia elements such as video(to be created in Windows Movie Maker), a GIMP image, and an audio (to be edited using Audacity). 

This was really new to me. But I was really keen in learning this as it requires creativity and innovation. Our lecturer showed us how to edit an audio file which was extremely interesting.

So, I started by opening Windows Movie Maker and downloaded a few youtube video that was related to our group's topic. I cut one part of the youtube video that can be used for our video. Next, we also choose a (Maksim) song to be edited in Audacity. We edited the volume and cut some parts of the song that was too long as an introduction. I used Paint to create some slides in the video so we can insert in Windows Movie Maker as pictures. Thus, compiling it together with the audio was a really interesting thing as both the video and the audio went well together. When  the edited youtube video was inserted in, the audio volume was lowered to our desire. After completing the video, we inserted it into the courseware in Powerpoint.

For the courseware, i downloaded the GIMP 2 to create a GIMP pic to be inserted into Powerpoint. After countless times of watching the tutorial video, i finally manage to create one. 

And thus, the courseware is done after fulfilling all the requirement. 

Conclusion

Although it was a tough week and exams were getting nearer, however, I really enjoyed this week when doing this assignment. Impress presentation was time consuming but I'm grateful for learning the features because it will at least prepare me a back-up if one day my Microsoft office powerpoint occurs any problem. I really want to thank my pair, Aileen for contributing more in assignment 7a. Without her, i would be lost in the woods. Thanks to our lecturer too for always giving his best in guiding me to do this week assignment. I had an enjoyable time when editing the video with my partner. I was excited too when everything was compiled and was successful. This week has impressed me well to learn new interesting stuff about ICT. Really looking forward for the coming week. :)

Week 5 (1st-7th August) [Task related to Week 5]

This week has gone by peacefully and smoothly. All we need to do was to read up and understand 2D graphic software and finish Assignment 6a and 6b.

So I got a deeper understanding about 2D graphic types, graphic or images file format, RGB & CMK, Paint, Shapes and smart art Power Point. GIMP(OSS), google draw, Open Office Draw after reading and had some fun in discovering it by venturing out myself.

Assignment 6a

We had to plan, design and create a brochure using Microsoft Publisher. The content is related to the topic for assignment 1, 4, 5 which is about Thinking Skills and ICT. We also had to use some graphic images to make it more interesting. As this is also a pair work, Aileen and I brainstorm on what to write and figure the appropriate design. After doing it together, we were done within one day! :D

Assignment 6b

Next, we had to plan, design and create a booklet using bookfold function in Microsoft Word. The content is the same with the topic related to assignment 1, 4, 5. And again, after discussing with one another, we eventually did our part and finish it off nicely within a day as well.

Conclusion

I’m really happy about the co-operation between my pair-Aileen and I as we have successfully finish our assignment within this week. We had no problem in doing our brochure as I had previously created one before last semester. We had a little trouble about finding the bookfold at first, but our problems were solve after discovering Microsoft Words. Learning this is in fact good as it help churn creativity and innovation among all of us. Both of us gained a new experience this week. I’m hoping for another fun activity to be our assignment in the upcoming week to come. 

Week 4 (25th-31st July) [Task related to Week 3b & Week 4]

Another week has come and gone again. But, i have experienced an interesting week with gaining new knowledge and experience. Happy? Well, I am. :)

In this week, we had to do Assignment 5. This time, we required to do some online questionnaires for a survey research on the same topic in assignment 1 & 4 which was Thinking Skills and ICT.

a. Survey Monkey:-

My pair (Aileen) and I had to create 10 questions for a pilot test. First, we need to sign up at Survey Monkey. Then we created questions with one answer only. In the beginning, it was really confusing, but after typing more questions and ticking the answer in this site, it was pretty easy after all. Practice makes perfect? It does! :D

b. Google Document:-

So Survey Monkey was just a pilot test. But this time, it’s the real thing. We need to create 30 questions in Google Document: - [10 multiple choice questions, 10 checkbox questions and 10 sale questions.]

We first brainstorm questions on what we want to ask about our topic. It wasn’t an easy task as we need to create 30 different questions about our topic. After that, we typed out the questions in Google Doc. We then send the questions to our course mates e-mail address to test their knowledge and receive feedback from them.

Using the same questions that we sent, we also printed out 10 copies and ask volunteers to answer the questions.

It turns out that in order to record and analyse simple data, a simple survey like SurveyMonkey and Google Doc would solve the problem. But for a bigger survey, we need to learn a computer aided quantitative data analysis called SPSS.

c. SPSS:-

I copied from a friend of mine the SPSS program. Later, we transferred all the results which were answered by our course mates online and volunteered under graduate in our institute. It turns out to be helpful in analysing each questions and it can calculate the frequencies of the results and percentage of each given number. It can also transform the data into a graph.

d. Report:-

After analysing the data, we need to write a report about our findings.  Our report must be in a journal article format. We took a long time to do this journal and I felt that next time, we could arrange our time better to complete it in a shorter time.

Overall, this task is not an easy task for me as it is challenging and confusing. It is also my first experience dealing with this new program which requires several cooperative programs in order to complete the whole search-(SPSS, Spreadsheet, Google Doc, Open Office) But after several support from my friends and lecturer, I finally got through with it. Time management and teamwork are also important in order to complete the task. Thanks to Aileen too for being a wonderful partner to keep things in order. I would also want to thank all friends who have answered the questions in order to complete the survey and journal. Reminiscing back, this week has really drilled me with a new experience that will definitely help me in the future. I am really grateful for learning this and hope to apply it effectively next time.