Stepping into my new school is like entering a serene haven nestled within the embrace of nature's enchanting beauty. The campus is adorned with an awe-inspiring landscape, a tapestry of lush greenery and towering trees that seem to reach for the sky. The pristine forest that surrounds the school creates an almost magical atmosphere, where the soft rustling of leaves harmonizes with the gentle songs of birds. Sunlight filters through the leaves, casting dappled patterns on the winding pathways and inviting benches that beckon students to pause and immerse themselves in the tranquility. Each day feels like a journey of discovery, as I explore not only the corridors of knowledge within the school but also the wonders of the natural world just beyond its walls.

Wishing to blog more from this palce.

It is been so long that I almost forgot that I am a blogger. Nothing to post but just to make other friends who follow me to know that I am still alive.
I will be trying my best to post frequently on my Thesis I am going proposing soon.

Wish me luck!

Group Project Work 2.

Playing and fiddling with movie making software was my interest since long time back. I will not say I did perfection with all those software but have confident in using the applications. I began my basic using window Movie Maker 2.6 sometimes in the year 2006 when our school was supplied with the first computer. Since I was very much interest in these software, introduction to Camtesia Studio to us during our residential class  was much more interesting than movie maker 2.6. With interest and thrust to learn more on movie making, I took opportunity to work with Mr. Penden Dorji, a film director/editor during my break. During my stay with him   I was familiarize  with CS5 and CS6 movie making software and audition 1.5 software. I never knew that my learning on this software would be useful during my DE course. Thanks to my uncle for his guidance and facilitation.

This project works was to be carried out in a group where we were asked to use Camtesia studio 6, record and produce our own Video Tutorial of 15 minutes time on any particular lesson/Topic. we needed to edit and add some of the effects to our video tutorial.

Like the activities we carried while making quiz,  we once again were brought together via various Wiki. Everybody shared their thoughts and finally we had a presentable lesson plan. After the lesson planning and the distribution of the roles, we decided for deadline for compilation of clips which I volunteered and shared my dropbox to all the group mates. I was able to collect all the clips just before two days due submission date.
means. We did defend our ideas of planning lesson plan on our own comfortable topic but unanimously agreed on planning for Diagonals and Symmetry. Lesson plan was drafted by Ms. Sonam Choden teacher at Kuenselphodrang Primary School, Thimphu which was shared amongst our group member through

Although I was familiar with the software, I found it very tough in bringing in all the clips together due to different file format my friends had shared. It took me longer time than I thought I would take. With the little idea I had on using the software Camtesia Studio I was able to upload our immature video tutorial on Diagonals and Symmetry for grade IV.

I am thankful to my team mates for cooperating in making this video tutorial a presentable one or otherwise a good one. Thank you dear friends. 

Group Project Work 1.

“Create interactive Flash-based quiz using Wonder share Quiz Creator. In your quiz there should be 20 different questions having minimum of two questions each form 9 different question types. You have to add animated images, Flash movies and sound effects to polish and enhance your quiz with comprehensive properties”.

As soon as we had this instruction, we initiated in creating a small group in WeChat, namely ICT friends. In this group, still a very active social networking, it is always used for discussion of ICT learning in our schools.

Carrying out this project was fun, we divided “The question Type” amongst our self.

Ms. Lhamo: True/False and Short Essay type questions.

Ms. Sonam Choden: Multiple Choice and Multiple Response.

Mr. Sonam Tenzin: Fill in the blanks and Word Bank

I got Matching, Sequencing and Click map question types when we dived it during our residential class.

This project was similar to the activity we carried out during our residential class. the only difference is that this was to be carried out as a group activity when we are far apart.  Although apart, technology helped us work together, we shared our individual work through wiki, drive and mostly through wechat.

This project work helped he learn how easily we can create a quiz for our children, it was fortunate for me to carry out this activity since this year I am suppose to carry out school quiz competition sometime at the end October.   The quiz unlike last years will be certainly different and I am sure my colleagues and children will enjoy it. With the idea and the application I am sure I will be able to improve on it for further use. 

Day VI 10th July 2015

Blogging and Wiki

Creating a blog for oneself was an interesting experience, I have been blogging since April, 2011 as a part of my online course. Today’s class was to create a blog for oneself, since I already had one and need not create another, I helped my friends and shared my experience to them on how to go about bogging. Our tutors, as I saw were busy with each individual participants explaining every detail of blogging, I felt that my online course was of advantage to me. Thanks to University of Oregon, American English Institute for offering this kind of course.

Today we were also introduced to Wiki and the purpose of it. We were very much eager to learn about it since most of us didn’t have one.  Practical demonstration were show by our tutor on how to create one for our self. A tutorial on how to create wiki was also linked on our vle page. After the detail demonstration we were left on our self to create one and submit the address to the common forum.   The main purpose of creating wiki for this module/session was to share among our groups on the two project work were supposed to carry out.    

Having learnt this application it gave me added strength to carry out my projects and other assignment from where I would be able to get it edited by our friends. I am sure I will bale to share not only ICT assignment but also other assignment I will be carrying.

Hope all of us here enjoy reading and share our ideas through the blog and Wiki and learn many new things.

Day V 9th July 2015

Today’s class was practical session on using Google Drive, Docs and Google Forms. Since I was familiar with Google Drive and Docs, I didn't have much difficulty in creating them again. Taking the opportunity of time, while my colleagues where still having practical session on Drive and Docs, I engaged myself in practicing the usage of Google Forms because I was wanted to more about it.

I regretted not having known this application before, had I known the benefits of this application I would have presented my past project work much more professionally.

With the detail explanation and demonstration I was still not very confident to carry out the activity. Having little idea on this application we were assign with an assignment which carried 10% weight-age of the module.

During the time of submission of this assignment I was very much sure that I had done it correctly, but to my utter surprise the following were the comments I got.

With little resources and Idea I was determined to learn the making of questionnaires using the Google Forms to the perfection as possible. Most of the participant as I seen had similar kind of comments given by our tutor and therefore,  I was very much worried where did we all go wrong.     

Since this activity is much needed for our further studies and might be useful for some I would like to revisit the making of questionnaires once again in detail. I would like to request my readers kindly correct me where possible. After selecting the Google Form I added Title to my questionnaires.  

After choosing background to make it look professional I start filling up the form. Providing my your questions and then choose   type of questions I wanted to use. I wanted to use add page break. While doing thi,s I really had to concentrate on what I am doing because this procedure was were I lost major chunk of marks for the assignment.   When I was done with writing of question for add page break I followed the following procedure;

I needed to customize the confirmation message by either :

·         Choosing link to submit another response

·         Publish and show a link to the results of this         form

·         Allow respondents to edit answers after responding

To share your form you have three options :

·         Share a direct link to your form with others

·         Share your form on social media websites 
     ( Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus)

·         Share your form via email

·         Or embed it in your classroom blog or         
      website

Thanks 

Day IV 8th July 2015

It seems like a lifetime away, but it is been only about five years ago that I have completed similar task of learning ICT and its components. Although I had carried out today’s activities during my online course as I have mentioned earlier, it was a lesson that enhanced my little idea on; Co constructive tools, Google Drive, Google Doc and Google Forms. Unlike my online course I had opportunity to interact with my tutors Mr. Chenga Dorji and Tandin Wangchuk who were available to us almost entire residential class.

The usage of computers in our country is still young, yet we are trying to cope up with financial difficulties and accessibility of computers for all the schools for our country. Having had limited knowledge and accessibility to computer world, we teachers are trying equip our self in helping our young generation compete with other world.

Co constructive tool

The computer are used for manipulating information, visualizing others understanding and creating new ideas. The computer itself is a machine where we are allowed to present our ideas in attractive forms using various application software installed in it. Making use of constructive tools we can corporately construct  and share our understanding of new ideas. We and also use these tools as green board where anyone authorized can co edit the same documents without having to meet individual.

Google Drive:

Without knowing that this as constructive tools I had been making use of this application as I created my Google account since 2009. Our tutor explained and demonstrated how we can keep our documents and important files in this drive and open them at any place at any time.  Making use of this device to work from our desktop was new knowledge to me, I didn't knew this application can be lunched from our desktop and could be directly save in our drive.  The participants were also demonstrated on how we can open Word, Excel and PowerPoint which is stored in this Drive, then save any changes back to drive once we are done with it.

Working with this application is very useful especially for sharing files with items or for accessing our files while getting the benefit from the security and convenience of this Google drive.

Google Doc.

We do not need any kind of software to create this docs, we can create and edit text documents as we browse internet. Many people can work at the same time and changes are made automatically. By creating this documents we can import our desktop documents to make changeable and editable, convert our work to pdf, ppp, html format. One of the interesting thing that this application has is, we can track changes made to our documents and undo anything we wanted. Original files are always stored for future use.    

Google forms.

I am sure this application was there itself when I had my account created but never thought of using it. With today’s lesson we were made familiarized in using this application too.  Our tutor demonstrated on how to go about it in detail. This application helps us in creating survey forms and questionnaires which automatically analyze our data in Google sheet.

The application also provides Select from multiple question types, drag-and-drop to reorder questions and customize values as easily as pasting a list. By using this application we can send professional looking surveys questionnaires to our friends and clients.

After the demonstration and explanation we were asked to create survey form of our choice and share with our tutor. This constructive tool in fact would be very useful for teachers like us when every we wanted to conduct a simple survey and research activities. I therefore, will be making best use of this tools if I ever had to conduct a research or a survey. 

Blog Links:

Let us look at interesting blog maintained by my friends. Since we share the same ship there are lots of things we can learn together.

1. Sangay Dema: http://demasangay.blogspot.com
2. Phub Dem:  http://phubchun.blogspot.com
3. Sonam Choden : http://sonamc56.blogspot.com  
4. Karma Wangmo : http://kartshesonob.blogspot.com
5.  Sonam Wangdi: http://sowandee.blogspot.com   
6. Tashi Zangmo:  http://tzamsompey.blogspot.com   

Day III 7th July 2015

The lesson began with the introduction of “Web Search” whereby participants were familiarized with its benefits and how to go about web searching and what is all about Web search.

My understanding as per our tutors presentation on web search was looking for information on internet that helps us in particular use. He also explained that among many search engines most popular search engines used today are  Google, Bing and Yahoo. The results displayed are typically prioritized by relevance, so those who search the Web can quickly find material that is relevant to their needs. Without a search engine, finding information and resources on the Internet is very difficult, especially when specific servers and domains containing desired information are unknown.

What is internet?

Search engines are programs that search documents for specified keywords and returns a list of the documents where the keywords were found. A search engine is really a general class of programs, however, the term is often used to specifically describe systems like Google, Bing and Yahoo! Search that enable users to search for documents on the World Wide Web.

Since different search engines use different methods to search for the result we were, therefore, introduced with different kinds of “Operators” they were;

• Use of Boolean Operators

• Using AND operator

• Truncation

• Wildcards

• File type

• Site

Boolean Operators 

They are simple words (AND, OR, NOT or AND NOT) used as conjunctions to combine or exclude keywords in a search, resulting in more focused and productive results. This should save time and effort by eliminating inappropriate hits that must be scanned before discarding.

Using AND operators The AND & OR operators are used to filter records based on more than one condition. The AND operator displays a record if both the first condition AND the second condition are true.

Truncation

Truncation, also called stemming, is a technique that broadens your search to include various word endings and spellings. To use truncation, enter the root of a word and put the truncation symbol at the end. Examples: 

child* = child, childs, children, childrens, childhood

genetic* = genetic, genetics, genetically

Truncation symbols may vary by database; common symbols include: *, !, ?, or #

Wildcards:

Similar to truncation, wildcards substitute a symbol for one letter of a word. This is useful if a word is spelled in different ways, but still has the same meaning.

Examples: 

wom!n = woman, women

colo?r = color, colour

Restricting your search using site operators

We can search within a site or a domain by adding the site: operator followed by a site’s domain name to your query. For example, you could search for archaeology site: www.une.edu.au.

To conduct a comprehensive search of all of the associated sub domains of a domain, omit the www and instead specify only the main domain. For example, a search for site:bbs.com would encompass not just www.bbs.com, but also news.bbs.com, sports.bbs.com, and so forth. The site: search operator works even when just the domain extension (like .com, .org, .gov, or .co.uk) is specified. Thus, we can restrict our search to .com sites with site:com, to .gov sites with site:gov, or to .org.bt.  

Restricting your search by format  

we can restrict our search to Word documents, to Excel documents, to PDF files, or to PowerPoint files by adding filetype:doc, filetype:xls, filetype:pdf, or filetype:ppt, respectively, to your search query. If we want a  PowerPoint presentation on How to integrate ICT in subject  Simply query Google for “integrate ICT in Mathematics filetype:ppt”

Towards the end of today’s lesson we were briefed on the benefits of using Google books and google help centre. Google Books is a Google service that makes discovering book content easier for us on the web. It started way back in 2004 and since then its mission has been to digitally scan and archive tons of book.

Google Help centre Help Forums. 

While surfing the nets we often get different result, in order to get the exact information, making a thorough search with multiple search engine is must. Having learnt the use of the search operators I am now able to work much faster  and smarter and carry out online activities smoothly than before.   

As a part of exercises we were assigned with home assignment which consisted of searching Educational web sites. Implementing all the techniques and methods I was able to search more than 10 educational web sites and submit it on time.

Thanks 

Day II 6th July 2015

ICT in Education 

The class began with the video clip on "What does it mean to teach in the 21^st century". The message actually states on how we can be a Teacher in the 21st Century Classroom. The teachers in the classes still  use what can best be described as ‘Lecture’ method of teaching. Our teaching however loud enough, children turn off the teacher broadcasting channel and the  valuable educational ideas are lost as a result of it.
Since we live in this 21^st century world, expectation of two way communication are less. People are expected to find their own solution, but we still have same old aged teaching strategies that confuses us on engaging our digital native children more naturally.  We  are witnessing vast and rapid change in how our children want to learn these days. Technology had not only changed the world around us but also the mindset of children’s educational needs. As a teacher we now (if we want our bread and butter) have to ensure that the learning in the class is fun, used updated interactive strategies to cater to our individual learners no matter where they come from.To keep up the pace and built up our stamina we were therefore introduced  to the following;

ICT as a informative tools.What does it mean?

•  ICT should engage our children meaningfully

• Teach skills in collecting good information

• Teachers are no longer the main source for the students.

• ICT is dominating

• Information: Finding and using information. Choosing, saving, arranging and checking information. Looking at saved work, understanding it and thinking about what could happen if there are mistakes in it.

• Media: Creating videos and flash movies.

• Communication: For example, through displays, posters, emails to friends and family.

• Collaboration: Discussing work to help develop ideas. Talking about how they could improve future work.

• Creativity: Organizing and developing ideas using text, charts, pictures, sound, etc. Planning and carrying out instructions to make things happen and then seeing how well they worked.

• Critical thinking:  Looking at others work and reasoning how the activities were being carried out.

21^st Century skills 

These were some of the points we discussed during the session, the participants of the class were all actually assuming it, if all the schools in our country were accessible with internet and computers. But I was preparing what if all our school children are made available to those technology.   So what would be my role then? It is far more important than just providing the answers to questions. Rather, I need to be able to guide them on how to learn and filter the information so that it is useful and applicable. It will be my job to support my children as they discover their new path to mastering their skills and talents.

What are the skills that can be taught our children through ICT
Some of the points discussed in the class were;
Our curriculum designer are still at work, project like Chigphen Rigphel Project are taking shape, ministry is funding number of IT activities for schools which inspires us for making our children digital entrepreneurs while enhancing learning of science and technology.  ICT are a potentially powerful tool for extending educational opportunities, at our level and at this period we can only introduce basic skills and ideas for their studies and simple class project works.  
Our tutor Mr. Chenga Dorji also gave a brief talk on 21^st century skill, where he mentioned that it is the ability of a person to reason effectively and critically as appropriate to the situation to overcome complex problem based on analyzed and evaluated evidences, arguments claims and beliefs.We being teachers for this century now have to find the way to teach our children how to think critically by being critical thinker and exposing them to critical situation. Find ways to problem solving by presenting our children with problems that they must solve.     

ICT in Education – meaning and definition
ICT stands for Information and Communication Technology. A diverse set of technological tools and resources used to communicate and to create, disseminate, store and manage information. ICT in education focus on understanding computers and the programs. Introducing ICT in our curriculum would help children to understand how we use computers and networking systems available. Children would learn how to gather and use information, present it and share it with others.  

Towards the end of today’s lesson we were introduced to Teacher’s site which meets the needs of teacher during teaching. It is a place where we can learn collaboratively. The challenge for us is the introduction of computers in the schools are yet to flourish and the strategies we are learning might become outdated, as such it is our personal duty to keep our self updated. To facilitate whatever we have on ICT in education, we need to identify the barriers so that they can be overcome and stay awake.

Day I 3rd July 2015

Introduction to the module

The first lesson  on ICT module was short and brief. Our tutor talked on the overview of the module and its assessment mode. We were also asked what ICT actually mean; ICT stands for information and communication technologies. To me it is a diverse set of technological tools and resources used for communication, to create, to disseminate, to store and to manage information which involves computers and internet  and other technology like cell phones and television.

The main focus of today’s lesson was the familiarization of Digital native students versus Digital immigrants teachers.

Who are digital native and immigrants; Digital native are the generation of people born during or after the rise of digital technology  and natives are people born before the advent of digital and who actually doesn’t have anything to do with technology.

The mindset of digital native children in our country are so different that we teachers, who are digital immigrant have the toughest time catching up with them. Today’s children, actually our present students embrace technology so much that they tend to forget our long preserved customs and culture. Example custom of marriage seldom happens, they get married through the technology, like wechat, facebooking, skype and many more.

Tremendous efforts are being carried to train our old aged teachers and administrators who are immigrant to technology to able to meet the needs of digital native children where usage of technology has become exciting and easier for them.

Despite the above discussion, participant in the class also discussed how we as teachers can make the use of their digital brain into today’s learning and teaching.  Since I am a teacher and not digital native have roles to mold our younger brains to fruitful citizen. With the help of this ICT module I am sure to guide our children in making the best use of available technology in our country. 

Proud to be ICT trainee of Samtse College of Education, Bhutan.

ICT are increasingly used in education, we are expected to have adequate knowledge and skills in using ICT  in daily teaching.

With this focus I had strong determination in perusing this course as my elective subject which I got it. In fact I was amongst luckiest to be enrolled in this class because there were many who wanted but couldn’t get it.

A friend of mine who is also a teacher at RUB, Thimphu once said, “Jigme, these days we need to blow our TRUMPET to let others know you.

Hope this trumpet of mine  won’t blow off your ears. 

Thanks 

Jigme Norbu.

Hello my dear friends (specially ICT elective DE Samtse)

It’s been a while since I last posted anything in this blog. I haven’t  had opportunity to add more post to my Blog after my completion of online course (2011) and moreover  I’ve been busy with our daily schedule, school management and with all sort of assignment with due dated hunting me.

First of all I am really excited and thankful about this class and the projects bestowed by our tutor Mr. Changa Drorji which gave  me wakeup call and added strength to continue my Blog post. Thank you very much sir.

Unlike my online class where I interacted with many foreigners, I am more excited to get opportunity to learn more from our fellow Bhutanese teachers who works close in my reach and can be interacted very easily. 

Looking forward to work with you all. 

“Clean School”

Project on Waste Management  

Abstract

Class VI children of Kuengarabten Primary School chose to study waste management as a class project. This article discusses how the project evolved, describes the three phases of the project, and provides the teachers’ observation on the project. It also has photos and video recording taken during the project and children’s sketches are also included. 

Introduction

We have several types of waste produced in our campus every day and all this relates to our school environment and child’s health, the waste problems in and around the school campus must be managed by school itself. Keeping school campus clean is the challenge for our school as it lies in the heart of the village and just under the public ground. Most of our people and school children don’t have awareness about the waste, throwing wherever they like is the common behavior of Bhutanese people. Children of our school collect waste every day during the social work time, but why is it necessary to collect every day? In fact if the children are aware about the waste it could be managed properly or could be reduced if we have imparted the awareness of the waste. If our children are taught basic things about waste and management, they would have positive attitude towards waste. In order to try to change the attitude of our nearby people and our school children, class VI of my school have unanimously agree to carry out this project on “Clean School” we hope after the completion of this project we have achieved what we planned.  

Objectives:

• Increase awareness of waste and its management among school staff and nearby pupils. 

• Encourage and support schools to reduce. 

• Transfer the knowledge gained by children on waste from this project to achieve increasingly sustainable waste management in the home.

Culture the Pillar of Happiness

“Culture is the pillar that drives GNH more than any other. Good thought, good speech and good action and being polite, courteous and respectful – not before high officials or Lamas – beget respect and therefore happiness for oneself.
Most of us want to become doctors, engineers and teachers but none of us express our desire to serve our parents, return the love, affections and support we received from them. This shows the nature and kind of children we are.
If we cannot think well for our parents, we are the least likely person to take care of our country.
How many of say La, Laso, to parents? Our parents deserve our respect. Now a day none but few address our relatives as Acho, Au, Atta, Anna and as a result the sense of affection and care by the elder to the younger – a simple GNH is lost.
Therefore let us respect and love our parents, brothers and sister from the heart, so we achieve one of the simple GN”.

This was the best speech of the week delivered by my daughter Phuntsho Peldon Wangmo of grade IV.
Any comments please.


Thanks

Week 10 : Moment of Truth

Collecting authentic information for evidences was the foremost challenges posed by my study. At the same time, I had to face other challenges such as inadequate references, location of school away from the centre, lack of consultancy, limited time and burden of heavy work load having to teach as well as look after the school administration. In the beginning, I was a bit worried on how would I be able to complete this course, but moral support and encouragement of my colleague gave me added strength to marshal the task that I undertook. The starting was smooth but the course of continuation became harder and harder.
Nevertheless, I was determined to carry out this Herculean task and learn appropriate strategies for teaching our today’s youth. I guess this online course would be able to remove some of the confusion of the ways of our today’s teaching and learning.



Along with course of my online class, every single topic was discussed with my colleagues here, their suggestion were crucial for my study because we are the one who have first hand practical experiences and about using technology in teaching and learning purposes, integrating technology in fact I believe that we the workers in the field know better than anyone else. From the analysis of the teacher’s suggestion I found all most all the discussion I carried during online class are essential and applicable provided we are equipped with sufficient basic equipment.
I have gained a good amount of knowledge and skills by participating in this online class. The thing that I have learnt throughout the process will create a lasting effect in my life because it is invaluable. I performed this study with full dedication, for a good cause and not just for certificate form aboard.
Unquestioningly, this online class helped me broaden my knowledge and change my perspectives of today’s teaching. I believe the teaching skills I conquered during this course, (although late but still gaining momentum in our country) would be meaningful to others. For the reasons, I think this course regarding BUILDING TEACHING SKILLS THROUGH INTERACTIVE WEB hopes to act as an eye-opener generating rewarding discussion among my small school teacher, making maximum utilization of little resource we have and hope to influence other nearby teachers. Finally, in a nutshell, Building Teaching Skills Through Interactive Web will never be a failure but a stepping stone to success.

I would also like to entire participants for providing timely and unfailing support and assistance through the course of discussion and task. I would like to thank my project partner Miss. Nesrine Ourari, Tunisia for going through my draft project report and giving very valuable suggestions and direction. I would like thank her for being my guiding spirit.
Last but not the least; I would like to thank the system of University of Oregon USA for offering their services and experiences of many years. My deep gratitude goes to Professor Robert Elliot for being with us the entire course of time, working with us in odd hours and making the class live, for the many insightful discussion we had. It has been a personal education working and travelling with Mr. Robert.


Thanks

Jigme Norbu, Bhutan