Week 2 25th January

Today was a total failure. 1 hour of class time was wasted on trying to get online, log on students' blog, and create new blogs. They could not get online, and when they do the connection doesn't stay long. When they got into blogger, the could not log on. Those who wanted to create a blog faced the same problem. I'm not what's the problem but I'm guessing the following:

• the internet connection is bad at the lab
• too many people from the same location trying to get into the same site, thus it is jammed up

If this goes on then I'm doomed. I either have to look for another lab with better connection or have them to blog outside of class time.

This problem might dampen the student's excitement (if there's any) towards the use of blog in this class. It can influence their entire perception towards blogging till the end of the semester. Then that is bad for me. I pray to get to God to help me.

Week 2 24 January

I continued with implied main idea, working at paragraph level and longer passages. Only 22 students were present, 4 were absent. Two boys had conjunctivitist, 1 girl is suffering from tonsilitis and 1 boy was MIA. It seems that he is often MIAing. Recalling back his face the boy does seem reserved. Had the students write the main idea to some of the paragraphs and 1 girl wrote an excellent one which really impresses me.

I later distributed the Motivation to Read questionnaire. Most of the students have created their own blog and hope tommorrow's class will go on without any technical glitches. Insyaallah.

The class room was hot and humid, anyhow it was a sign that it was going to rain later and it did.

1st week 17 & 18 Jan 2007

I started my first class on the 17th of January at 2.10 pm till 4. pm in room 314. There were 24 students in the class, 2 were absent. Six of the students are males and the rest are females. This tells something about the unequal proportion of males and females at our university and particularly in the teaching profession.

Topic covered was implied main ideas. I distributed the student profile questionnaire. Upon skimming through the questionnaires, 1 did not fill in the part which ask them whether they have read, commented and own a blog. Another wrote her name instead of her age in the 'age' section. I wonder why?

I told them about the blogs that they will create and use for the class. However, a majority of them did know show any form of excitement. A few look worried and I assumed that they may have some fear of the computer.

Thursday, 18 January 2007.

Class was at S110, INTEC computer lab. I thanked God that this lab was available at this time throughout the semester. I would like to thank also Saki for letting me use the lab 'dgn tidak banyak songeh'. Tuhan lanjutkan usia and murahkan rezeki Saki. Amin.

In briefed the students on some facts about weblog and showed examples of blogs owned by Malaysians. Later I showed them how to create their own blog using Blogger. Things did not go well today because the students could not start creating their blog. They tried many many times to submit their information and it kept redirecting it somewhere else. I assume that blogger is jammed up with application from 24 students at the same time, or the internet connection at the lab could not handle it, or the problem with internet connection due to the Taiwan earthquake has not completely gone back to normal. So this is one problem ( a technical one) that anyone may face when trying to integrate technology (particularly the Internet) in the classroom. Luckily, the intended treatment of the study is not due yet.

Thus, I told the students to create their own blog outside of the classroom over the weekend. I hope they would really do it and have better luck this time around.