Second week of learning how to use the IWB

Yesterday was the second lesson of IWB that we attended. Indeed, the feeling of excitement to learn to use IWB has never vanished from myself since last week. During the first session, our lecturer, Prof Madya Dr Raja Maznah had shown us some interesting activities that can be implemented in a primary ESL classroom, using IWB. I felt this session was so resourceful. This was because, one day before we had this lecture, my group members were trying to plan and consider the type of activity that can be taught using IWB. But, still, we could not visualize it in our minds. But after this session, we felt so happy that our doubt was being cleared and we felt more confident to create one.

But different from what we had last week, we didn't get the opportunity to operate IWB this time. Instead, we got the chance to operate this SMART notebook through computers. But i think this second session created advantages for us as we could interact with the assistants if there were any problems or to clarify doubts about IWB if there were any, while exploring it ourselves. So, i took this opportunity to explore the functions and what so ever being placed in this notebook so that i would get familiar with it, thus making it easier for me to develop an activity using it. T hese included how to use spotlight, how to change the colour of the pen, how to hide one word and disclose another, and how to hide pictures and words.

But one biggest thing that i learnt in this session was how to make 2 words ungrouped. Maybe this sounds silly to some but this was quite a big thing to me. Actually, i had opened a blank page and put two emoticons next to each other on this page. So, below each emoticon i wrote the feeling each expressed. But however, when i wanted to change my writing into font, somehow these two words were recognized and grouped together. So, i tried very hard to ungroup them but it turned out that all the alphabets were grouped individually.So, my friends and i were trying to figure out the solution. After we had given up on it, then only we sought the help from the assistant. And the assistant came up with the simplest solution that i never thought, which was to write those words so far away, so that the smartbook would never recognize them as one word! So, actually i really wanted to laugh at myself but this was a part of the learning process. We would never learn unless we make a mistake. And also, sometimes when we learn something so complex, we would easily forget the simplest and most logical thing in attending it, because we will push ourselves to try and see everything in a complex manner. Have you ever experienced this before?