Faci me

After a rather long hiatus from the hubbub of life as a facilitator, i find myself once more thrust into the role, at a rather last minute.

Friends whom i haven't seen for months, some even years suddenly appeared back into my life. The last time i saw them was during the last workshop we conducted...

Once again, JKM took me under its wing and packed us off to Port Dickson to handle a bunch of overeager 13 to 17 year olds.

And i am reminded how much fun... and hassle being a child facilitator is.

GOD!!!

When you want to get them to respond, they shut up, when they should shut up, they can't keep still. Some of them even purposely try to get on your nerves, its like they are asking to be punched in the face....

but being the older 'abang' one has to control one's temper, be cool.. etc.. bla..bla..bla..

right after i was finished with my wshop in PD, i went off to Putrajaya International Convention Centre, for another workshop... this time with a bunch of younger kids, 9 to 12, under Rumah Bakti Petronas.

So there i was, with a fairly vague idea of what to do, once more finding myself having to handle 30 or so overeager kids, all wanting their say in our 'Wants and Needs' activity... thankfully i had a lot of help from the Petronas peopls...

Phewh!

Since facilitating 5 days in a row, i find that i haven't been eating well, and haven't been exercising, which probably has contributed to my face exploding and my general 'God-i-feel-fat' feeling.

Oh well, it all part of the job... which i don't even get paid for... (in all fairness, JKM paid me a token fee of RM 100 for 3 days....at least i got something)

But still, facilitation gives me a high.. a rush.. i call it the faci's high. Its fun to do, scary for the first time but once you start... its hard to not pass up an opportunity to facilitate.

Confessions of a SmartBoard Junkie

Ah yes,

to all my students out there. This post is dedicated to you:

The SmartBoard. That magnificent piece of scientific wizadry which i hope by now has touched your lives quite significantly.

I shall not bore you with long-winded tales of who invented the smartboard, when it came out, etc.. suffice to say, it was designed by some NASA dudes.

But what i will do is to talk about the SmartBoard, in all its cool, funky, educational glory.

Lets take a look at what we have now, in our classrooms in schools and in colleges. What we see is a lot of Blackboards, whiteboards and in private colleges, an influx of overhead projectors.

Nothing wrong of course with these archaic methods of getting the message across but after one has been touched (or HAS touched) the SmartBoard, these outdated methods just seem plain boring.

To illustrate my point:

I see my lecturer scribbling on the whiteboard, but why does he have to rub it off? Cant he open a new page? Move the writing around? Its gone forever!! Never to be seen again!! YikeS!

What is my lecturer doing? Why is he hunched over the OHP? Whats that? He is trying to scribble something on the slides. Oh, i see the words coming out... damn, they are permanent... he can't even move it around... and my eyes hurt...bother.

Oh, he's brought his laptop and projector today. Hmmm....techy... After wrestling with the wires and controls, we finally get a picture, only to be treated to a boring, static powerpoint presentation.

Learning today sucks.

I blame my lack of enjoyment on the SmartBoard really.

If it had not been for the SmartBoard, i would have not really noticed how BORING conventional methods are.

I find it strange that words can't be moved, pictures can't be added and websites can't be linked.....

But that's just me.

A SmartBoard junkie.

*sigh*