Assalamualaikum…hi everybody… 

This would be my last posting for language and information technology subject. I’m hoping that this only a starting to me for the next steps towards more and more posting onwards.

1. Do you think that blogging activity improves your writing skill?

Yes, the blogging activity did help me in improving my writing skills. As we all know, blogging is something that we frequently have to update all the new information and make an editing in time to time; so, as a result it does help me improving a lot in writing. Mostly, when we want to convey a massage or information necessarily we have to make sure that the sentence structure is accordingly in terms of to make sure that our content is meaningful and understandable. Consequently, we will be familiar with the sentence structure that has a proper position. For example, before this I only write an essay or a short story by using only a piece of paper and not doing it frequently as a result I’m always make a same mistake again and again with only a little of improvements. Besides, in blogging generally most of the idea that we have to elaborate is something that have a complex and comes in a compact information; in that cases to shorten the idea we have to make an summarizing for each information that we were responsible to do so. First, we have to search the main idea then find some example and lastly create a new passage or text that contain a complete and understandable information without  missing any important idea. By doing this such activity, we now know how to make an appropriate summary. Furthermore, not forgetting in blogging we are not narrowing only in the same scope, we will as hard as we could doing something that can interact people read our blogging; on that matter, we did searching for a new and fresh information. As a result, I do get lots of new vocabulary and know how to use it semantically.

2. Do you think that blog is a useful learning experience for you?

The blogging activity gives me lots of useful experience and it also enjoyable and effectively helps me in learning language study. While completing a task I need to search information due to the internet as well as in the books; and for that matter I have encountered the technology world repeatedly which make me really enjoy and feel free to get new information. As we all know, internet nowadays is everything. We can get everything only by typing a key word then the internet engine will search the information for us, in only a few seconds we will get the information immediately. What an enjoyable work that we have do, there is no a word difficult anymore in finding a new information. Other than that, we do learn a new skill like how to make a multimedia slideshow or video, how to upload all sort of things and many others new things. Blogging is a great an effective way to all students to develop themselves in things that relate on ICT technology. Let us keep on blogging in order to make sure that we are always standing still in this development country.

3. What do you think that you need to know before you can complete the blogging activity successfully?

In completing a blogging activity we need to plan properly what we want to do first. First, we need to search information due to the internet and find it in a magazines or books, for example like the task concordance; we have to find out the article about concordance and make an analysis. After that, we will filter all the information that we have found and choosing only the important idea which has a relation to our task; then afterwards we can post it to the blog. Sometimes, there’s  a task that we need to write it in the Microsoft word first then after that we can post it, it is necessarily done by this such procedure because we want to make sure that the sentence structure and the word order in an appropriate order because as usual in the blog there’s no grammatical checker inside it. We need to come up with a variety of ways in order to finishing our task. Other than that, commonly the blog space are already consist a variety of features that they provide to the consumer to use it in order to make our blog is more interesting and enjoyable to use. There are the features where bloggers can use to complete their blog are like a variety of templates, a video, an audio, picture, slideshow and many more features. Before I’m using all the features I have to make sure first what are the criteria that we have to identify are like the kind of the video and pictures whether it is allowed to upload or not. Overall, before you want to make any changes on your blog learn first from the provider which they provide an asking space to the bloggers.

4. What are your problems that you face using blog?

Problems are always occurring while completing each task. For the second posting we were completed a task which the task is about the computer assisted writing. In that matter, we have a problem in finding a suitable article and URL address in terms of making about how computer assist us  in writing. Other posting that make us encounter lots of difficulty are the 3^rd posting and the 4^th posting. For the first time I thought that using an online journal is easy, but when I’m starting searching information through that medium unfortunately it is not as easy as I think, yet it is so hard to find information according to what topic that we want to search. I think it is not because the online databases didn’t provide an enough content it is just me myself don’t have the skills on how to find the information. Whether we have to use keyword or just browse the first clause or sentence that we want. Alhamdulillah. I did learn a lot from it. Now I know how to use the online databases in the right way. In addition, not only having a problem while posting a task, I also having a problem in designing my blog by using a templates and putting a picture or a slideshow. Sometimes, I have to go to others sites in terms of searching a new templates or slideshow URL to decorate my blog. It takes a couple of days to fulfill the things that want to do. This all challenging process is actually does help me a lot about the used of ICT skills in present our space with the creative way.

5. Will you tell your friends, recommend to others about blogging?

Honestly, blogging is an interesting activity so absolutely I will tell my to those who love to write and fill free to share some information and about themselves to other people. Due to the development of ICT world nowadays everyone are using this kind of virtual medium to express themselves in terms of many purposes. Not to crucial that I say, each person in this world must have their own space to develop themselves and to make  sure that they always feels curious about what happening around them. Only by entering this kind of space people can give and share whatever they want and sometimes there’s also use the blog as their personal journal which they might consist it with every sort of things that might be interesting to people out there to read.

6. Now that you are able to blog online will you continue using it even after the SKBP is over?

Definitely I will continue blogging even after the SKBP is over. What a waste if I didn’t educate myself to use this prices opportunity to explore more about the ICT world. By using this blogging sites, I can continue my relation with friends who are also blogging, sharing interesting information and story, make a trigger to express a new topic, this is the space where we can as medium to discuss about any issue among bloggers, also can use to help people out there who asking or having a problem than we can combine others blogger information and discussing material to solve the problems. As I know that this medium is a good an affective way to improve my writing and thinking skills why not if I’m keep using it for my own beneficial as a language student. It has train me to develop my thinking skills trough many sorts of things especially in developing in the ICT knowledge. What I want to advise to those who want to start blogging is make sure that you are discussing or write the topic that have a good content and people can get a beneficial information from your blog, if not there’s the features in blog where people can leave their comment and maybe give a negative feedback due to the article that we have post. Whatever is it, blogging is an enjoyable activity an fun to write online because our posting will be read by all the people around the world, isn’t it great.

Thanks to dearest Datin Norizan because give me this precious opportunity in helping us develop ourselves as a language students…may Allah Bless u…

(Set 1)

Score: 20 out of 35  - 57% 

My Experience Taking Online Test

Assalamualaikum…                                                                       

Last Monday all of Ba ELS have to subscribe and do the UJI ICT test posted in e-warga and complete the online test for ASAS LEVEL. As what I could understand is the test being doing in terms of to test our ability in reading comprehension skills as well as to test the competency by using a virtual style of test.

Alhamdulillah…all of us can finish the test according to the time which limited only in 30 minutes and have to submit the answer at that time as well. This is not my first time doing this such style of test, normally I like to take an online test within a variety of purposes like test my social skills level, test an IQ level, test an aura calculation and others interesting method. But the Uji ICT and Electronic Malaysian English Competency Test (EMEC) test is completely different; honestly online test make me really in chaos, I don’t have enough time to think and comprehend the text or question because we need to stick to the time limit before the time end. If I can recap back while the online test being doing, almost 5 to 10 minutes I’ve used to answer each questions. And of course I couldn’t make it according to what the test wants. But, I have learned something great from it, the test make me wonder about the important of competency in dealing with ICT technology. As a result before you want to deal or use this kind of test make sure you prepare yourself mentally and also get more information about online test like what are the rules in each test, know the main subject that the online test provide, and the most important think always alert on the time restriction. InsyaAllah…we can answer the test online in appropriate manner.

The advantages that I have found by doing this such style of test are it can keep all the data and information safely about the content and the personal information due to the candidates. If we want to compare to the conventional style it is hardly to organize and take care all the information safely because it comes with the actual material like include a boundary of paper which need a safe place to keep the paper and important data. Consequently, a large budget must be prepared for the needs of security. Different from the virtually style, everything is completely safe and cheaper in terms of the fees.

Besides, in terms of the time the more quickly of course the online test style because; first, the online doesn’t need any material like a pencil or eraser during the test session, it only necessarily need a computer. If any correction that we want to make, just use the mouse and click at any of the corrections. Due to the time management the online test is more effective because the test can give an immediate feedback and result which we don’t have to wait in a long period like what the paper test did.

Nevertheless, the conventional test also has its own significant why it still being used until now.

In my point of view, I think that the paper test can make us more focus and less depression because we can use the paper and make any note on it and we also can free writing which make us more comfortable while we are taking a test. Besides, sometimes we also can keep the paper perhaps for the use or revision for the next consumption. In addition, we have enough and more time to answering each question because normally this kind of test did provide longer period.

Somehow, both style of test did have its own significant and also have the practical use by itself. For example, if the test want to evaluate our skills due to competency and normally relate to the ICT technology the appropriate way would be the online test different from the conventional test it would be prefer more to the test that evaluate something that more complex and need the use of others material like calculator, pencil and so on. Whatever is it, online test does make us more competent and gives us extra information about the ICT world.

windowsmobile.doc

This 4th posting is discuss about the concordance and how to use it in the text analysis. We have been given this task to explain about how the concordance software can help us in doing an analysis on the text base on the purpose of the text analysis.

What is Concordance?

CONCORDANCE

 According to Brittannica Encyclopedia, concordance is define as literally agreement, harmony, hence derivatively a citation of parallel passages, and specifically an alphabetic arrangement of the words contained in a book with citations of the passages in which they occur.

A concordance’s function is basically to bring together, in other words, to ‘concord’ passages of text which show the use of a word. It’s a type of index arrangement, working in a similar way to the verbal index found at the back of textbooks, in other words, it searches for instances of a word or phrase and comes up with each case of it. Whereas an index in the back of a book will show words in alphabetical order but only refer to them, the concordance will show each instance of each word together in the context from which it came.

The term ‘concordance’ is usually applied to literary and linguistic studies, but it is an extremely useful tool which enables students to access a piece of text non-sequentially or to study the ways in which it uses language. Concordances are not only used for literary purposes, but also as cross-reference systems for computer programmers, which enable teams of programmers working together to keep track of all references to, for example, a variable name, across all the files which make up a project.

A concordance is particularly useful for studying a piece of literature when thinking in terms of a particular word, phrase or theme. It will show exactly how often a word occurs, or even if it does not occur and so can be extremely helpful in building up some idea of how different themes recur within a poem and how they relate to the rest of the poem. So if a question is asked about a certain theme or the use of certain words in a poem and what their place is within the poem, it is easy to see how often they come up by looking at the concordance. This is particularly easy when it comes to computer concordances, all you have to do is click on the relevant letter of the alphabet, a list of words will come up and it is easy to scroll down until you find the right one. From there, you can find out all occurrences of that word in the poem in question.

So, a concordance is a bit like a computer; it will find things for you, but it will not do the thinking, you have to do that. What it will do is to get you on the right track when, in this case, it comes to deeper analysis of a piece of text. Most useful are interactive concordances, such as the one here in English. An interactive concordance will also find answers to specific queries and produce lists of all instances of words or phrases, but the advantage is the speed and the fact the concordance will find all words, not necessarily possible in textual concordancing.

Using Concordance For Content Analysis

Software for Content Analysis – A Review

Will Lowe

wlowe@latte.harvard.edu

Introduction

Software for content analysis divides, according to its intended function, into three major categories. The first set of programs perform dictionary-based content analysis. They have the ‘basic handful’ of text analysis functions, involving word counting, sorting, and simple statistical tests. The basic handful are described in the next section. The second set contains development environments. These programs are designed to partially automate the construction of dictionaries, grammars, and other text analysis tools, rather than being analyzers themselves. Development environments are more similar to high-level text-specific programming languages than to freestanding content analysis packages. The third category contains annotation aids. While an annotation aid can often perform some automatic content analysis, it is intended more as an electronic version of the set of marginal notes, cross-references and notepad jottings that a researcher will

generate when analyzing a set of texts by hand. The next section describes the basic handful of text analysis functions, and the rest of the paper provides brief descriptions of twenty-one content analysis programs. Some recommendations are made in the conclusion.

1.1 The Basic Handful

The basic handful of functions consists of word frequency counts and analysis, category frequency counts and analysis, and visualization.

Word Frequency Analysis

Word frequency analysis provides a list of all the words that occur in a text and the number of times they occur. More sophisticated methods split the text into subparts, e.g. chapters, and create frequency lists for each part. Lists can be compared either visually, or using a statistical test such as _2, to see if their are significantly more mentions of particular words in one part than another. Another common use for the subpart procedure is to compare different sources addressing the same substantive question to measure how different their treatment of it is on the basis of the sorts of words they use. Statistically this procedure can sometimes be reasonable because the counts from one source are compared with the total counts for all words over all the sources; significant differences may then track differences of emphasis across sources1. Some packages make use of synonym lists or lemmatize before the analysis in order to merge word counts. Lemmatization removes the grammatical structure from the surface form of a word, leaving only the stem; words are then counted as identical when they share a stem. For example, a lemmatizing frequency count would treat ‘steal’ and ‘stole’ as the same word. Lists of lemma and synonyms are naturally language specific. Word frequency analysis is the simplest form of content analysis. In fact most operating systems (e.g. Unix/Linux, Mac OSX, and recent versions of Windows) have utilities to perform basic word counting and sorting built in.

Category Frequency Analysis

Content analysis programs almost all allow the user to specify a dictionary. ‘Dictionary’ in this context means a mapping a set of words or phrases to one word; the one word is the label of a substantive category and the set describes the words or phrases that indicate the tokening of the category in text. As an example, the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) dictionary maps the word set {ashes, burial*, buried, bury, casket*, cemet*, coffin*, cremat*, dead death*, decay*, decease*, deteriorat*, die,

died, dies, drown*, dying fatal, funeral*, grave*, grief, griev*, kill*, mortal*, mourn*, murder* suicid*, terminat*} to LIWC category 59, death. The asterisks are ‘wild-card’ characters telling the program to treat ‘cremating’, ‘cremated’ and ‘cremate’, as all matching cremat*, and thus all mapping to category 59. Category counts allow a slightly more sophisticated analysis because they allow the user to provide a more explicit model of latent content in text. The implicit model of text generation is that the author of the text has some message expressed in terms of categories, and that this message is ‘coded’ into English when she writes. Coding entails picking any one of a set of English words that represent that concept, perhaps constrained by grammatical or pragmatic criteria. If the content analyst can recover or construct the word set used by the author, it can be placed in a dictionary and used to decode other texts. According to the LIWC scheme the sentence “Her suicide caused him to consider his own mortality” refers to the categories of ‘death’ and ‘metaphysics’ twice, ‘social’ three times, and ‘causation’ once: Her–SOCIAL suicide–DEATH/METAPH caused–CAUSE him–SOCIAL to consider–COGMECH his–SOCIAL own mortality–DEATH/METAPH. But according to the implicit model of LIWC, “He thought of his own death only because she killed herself” is an equally good instantiation of the underlying content because it tokens the same categories the same number of times. Of course many other sentences them these categories too, and many of the are quite unrelated in meaning. When a text is reduced to its category tokens with respect to some dictionary the same statistical analysis can be performed as with word counts. For most applications of automated content analysis, a word is reduced to a vector of category counts. Different texts can be compared either across within each category, or more usefully, by looking at high-dimensional distance measures between the complete vectors associated with each text. Most information retrieval programs, e.g. Google, will make use of a similar vector representation of texts – each query is converted into a sparse category vector by coding it as if it were a very short text, and this vector is compared geometrically to all available other vectors to find the nearest, that is, most relevant text to the query.

Visualization

 When a text has been reduced to vector form, either by counting words or categories, it can be visualized. Two standard methods provided by most content analysis programs are clustering and multidimensional scaling. Cluster analysis is no doubt familiar, but the multidimensional scaling bears some discussion. It appears that most scaling procedures packaged for content analysis perform metric rather than non-metric multidimensional scaling. This means that the programs are looking for the linear mapping (for visualization purposes it will be a plane) that passes through the vectors and captures most variation in their positions when they are projected onto it. Metric methods therefore enforce linear structure, which may or may not be reasonable. More computationally intensive methods are non-metric, and consider not the positions of the vectors but their distance ranking to one another. Non-metric methods attempt to preserve ranked distances in their mapping to the plane, and thus allow more non-linear structure to appear in the final visualization. Why does this difference matter? It might appear that visualization functions are an advantage in a content analysis program, and this is may be true for preliminary data exploration. But researchers will most likely end up putting their data into a regular statistics package at some point, perhaps to get a more sophisticated statistical analysis. Since most modern statistics packages have very sophisticated visualization functions, the visualization will almost certainly be better performed then. This will also be desirable in the case where the content analysis package does not (or will not) document the exact clustering or visualization routine being performed.

 Other Basic Functions

Several programs can generate concordances, sometimes described as KWIC (’key word in context’) analysis. The table below is a selection of lines from a small window full concordance for the word ‘content’ in the paragraphs preceding this one.

Although computing concordances is not really a method of automated content analysis, it can be a very fruitful way to examine the data in the process of designing a content analysis; one example use for concordance analysis would be to quickly discover, without having to read the entire text, that the presence of a particular word occurs only in a subset of its possible substantive roles, even when we might expect it to be more broadly distributed on purely linguistic grounds (e.g. that taxes are only mentioned when the text is talking about lowering them.)

Concordances are also useful representation for discovering sets of words that co-occur reliably with the keyword, and thus might be natural choices for dictionary word sets.

Finally, with the addition of some minor annotation capability the researcher may manually code each instance as being of a particular category, either as part of a ‘training set’ for subsequent automated analysis, or simply as quick confirmation that, say 75% of mentions are of a particular type. The principle advantage of concordances in all these roles is that they lighten the reading burden of the researcher, so she can work with a larger volume of text.

2 Content Analysis Programs

 This section describes twenty-one content analysis packages. They are divided into dictionary-based programs and development environments. A final section describes the two most popular annotation aids. Where possible each section states the platforms that the software runs on, the licensing scheme, the accessibility of the code-base and whether it is able to work with non-English language text.

Licensing cost has been distinguished from the accessibility of the code-base because although many packages are free to use, their code is not available. Being able to see the code is useful if one needs to know exactly what is going on when the program performs more complex analysis. In this respect the software is effectively proprietary. However, since there is no tradition among Windows and Mac users to make their code available even when the software is written to be given away, it may only be convention that makes the code-base inaccessible. That is, individual authors of free software may happily provide code details on request. This will certainly not be the case for the commercial packages.

2.1 Dictionary-based Content Analysis

CATPAC

—Homepage: http://www.terraresearch.com/catpac.cfm

—Operating Systems: Windows

—License:

Commercial $595

Academic $295

Student $49

—Code base: Proprietary (executable only)

—Languages: English (ASCII only)

Despite the bold claims of the manufacturer:

“CATPAC is an intelligent program that can read any text and summarize its main ideas. It needs no pre-coding and makes no linguistic assumptions.”

CATAC performs only the basic handful of functions. Visualization involves cluster analysis and multidimensional scaling. Cluster analysis can be interactive. CATPAC also apparently allows three dimensional visualizations with appropriately colored glasses.

CATPAC seems adequate to the basic handful. However the user interface is weak and the http: //www.galileoco.com/pdf/catman.pdf is atrocious.

Computer Programs for Text Analysis

—Homepage: http://www.dsu.edu/˜johnsone/ericpgms.html

—Operating Systems: MS-DOS

—License: Freeware

—Codebase: Proprietary (executable only)

—Languages: English (ASCII only)

These are a set of utility programs run from the DOS command line. They cover the basic handful except for visualization, and are designed primarily for literary analysis.

Concordance

—Homepage: http://www.rjcw.freeserve.co.uk

—Operating Systems: Windows

—License: $89 + $10 handling fee. $40 per subsequent license.

—Codebase: Proprietary (executable only)

—Languages: English, Chinese (See http: //deall.ohio-state.edu/chan.9/conc/concordance. htm)

 Concordance is marketed as a way of producing and publishing concordances for literary texts (See for example http://www.dundee.ac.uk/english/wics/wics.htm) However the program also performs a superset of the basic handful of word analysis and category analysis functions, including regular expressions and lemmatization. (Lemmatization involves reducing all instances of a word to its stem.) There appears to be no visualization option. The most appealing aspect of Concordance is its potential for processing text in languages other than English

(see http://deall.ohio-state.edu/chan.9/conc/concordance.htm for more detail).

It is not clear from the manufacturer’s information whether reason Concordance can deal with Chinese is because it processes all text in Unicode, or because it has been specifically designed for Chinese scripts. If the underlying processing model uses Unicode then it is reasonable to expect support for other languages. If, on the other hand, it is an ad-hoc extension then Concordance is likely to be less generally useful.

Understanding of Concordance as a Content Analysis

 Concordance is the software that can be use to make a text analysis throughout variety kinds of text. Most of the purposes in doing an analysis are to find out the word order and what kind of sentence structure in each text. There are lots of software that can be order or can be download at online for free.

 The uses of concordance nowadays are really important due to any aspects of uses. For example in the education sector, it is easy for the student to make an analysis in their assignments or in project paper; they doesn’t have to search manually just click at the search in concordance software and everything that is needed will come out in just a seconds. Same as in the other sector which might be use especially in the aspects of management and organize data.

-This task was done in pair with Syahirah Bt Said

THE IMPACT OF USING ICT TECHNOLOGY  IN EDUCATION  

References:1.      Education full text; Wilson web; ICT and Education2.      MSN Encarta; distance education; ICT and Education; Measuring The Impact of ICT Use          in Education.3.      www.cnet.com; ICT in Education.4.      ProQuest Dissertations & Theses; Knowledge Maps: ICTs in Education5.      EBSCOhost; The Impact of ICT on Learning and Teaching6.      SCOPUS; Impact of ICT.

 Computer-Assisted Instruction and Writing

Download this document:  Microsoft Word | Adobe PDF

What Is Computer-Assisted Instruction?

“Computer-assisted instruction” (CAI) refers to instruction or remediation presented on a computer. Many educational computer programs are available online and from computer stores and textbook companies. They enhance teacher instruction in several ways. Computer programs are interactive and can illustrate a concept through attractive animation, sound, and demonstration. They allow students to progress at their own pace and work individually or problem solve in a group. Computers provide immediate feedback, letting students know whether their answer is correct. If the answer is not correct, the program shows students how to correctly answer the question. Computers offer a different type of activity and a change of pace from teacher-led or group instruction. Computer-assisted instruction improves instruction for students with disabilities because students receive immediate feedback and do not continue to practice the wrong skills. Computers capture the students’ attention because the programs are interactive and engage the students’ spirit of competitiveness to increase their scores. Also, computer-assisted instruction moves at the students’ pace and usually does not move ahead until they have mastered the skill. Programs provide differentiated lessons to challenge students who are at risk, average, or gifted. *

What Does CAI Look Like for Writing?

Computer-Assisted Writing Instruction

Computer programs for writing help students with developing ideas, organizing, outlining, and brainstorming. Templates provide a framework and reduce the physical effort spent on writing so that students can pay attention to organization and content.The example at the right, similar to the program Inspiration, demonstrates how a student has organized her writing. Her topic is the Chesapeake Bay. She thinks about three main ideas for her topic: food, fun, and jobs. Next, she adds supporting details for each of her three main ideas. Now she can compose her paragraph. Programs like Inspiration or Kidspiration are fun because students can use pictures, change the shape or colors of the circles, and change the chart into an outline.

Computer Programs for Writing

Word prediction

• Student-specific programs that identify words that student uses repeatedly; when the student types the first few letters, the program lists frequently used words that start with those letters
• speeds up the typing process

Speech-to-text

• student speaks into a microphone and the program types the words
• program must be “trained” to the student’s word pronunciation and speech style
• student must be taught how to use the program
• increased speed from thought to text

Text-to-speech

• student can hear what she has typed to check if it says what she wants it to say
• good for editing

Spell-checker

• helps student identify misspelled words
• automatically corrects words if the teacher set the program that way

Thesaurus

• offers student other words that mean the same as the word he or she is using
• adds variety to student’s writing and increases student vocabulary

Word processors are excellent tools for students who find handwriting tedious. Often, students with disabilities have difficulty with all the requirements for the writing process. They have trouble organizing their thoughts and then retaining those thoughts long enough to put them on paper. Their handwriting must be neat enough and their spelling and grammar correct enough to convey their message, tasks that they may find difficult. But before word-processing can save time during the actual writing process, students must know how to type and how to use the computer. Typing speeds may be slower without proper instruction in typing; slower typing may lead to less quality and shorter length in writing assignments (MacArthur, 2000; MacArthur, Ferretti, Okolo, & Cavalier, 2001). If students cannot type fluently or must search for letters and numbers, the process may be slower than handwriting. Examples of computer programs that assist students in the writing process are listed in the box at left. If students are taught to type early in elementary school and taught to use these programs, the writing process can become less frustrating. This is not to say that students should not be taught how to spell and to use proper grammar. Students can learn to use these programs to increase the speed from thought to paper to make the process less stressful for them. It can increase their vocabulary and their attitude toward writing. Students with disabilities may actually find they enjoy the writing process.

How Is CAI Implemented?

Teachers should review the computer program or the online activity or game to understand the context of the lessons and determine which ones fit the needs of their students and how they may enhance instruction.

• Can this program supplement the lesson, give basic skills practice, or be used as an educational reward for students?
• Is the material presented so that students will remain interested yet not lose valuable instruction time trying to figure out how to operate the program? Does the program waste time with too much animation?
• Is the program at the correct level for the class or the individual student?
• Does this program do what the teacher wants it to do (help students organize the writing, speed up the writing process, or allow students to hear what they wrote for editing purposes)?

Teachers should also review all Web sites and links immediately before directing students to them. Web addresses and links frequently change and become inactive. Students might become frustrated when links are no longer available.Writing programs are beneficial to writing instruction because they allow students to learn in a variety of ways and can speed up the writing process. With proper training, students can learn to focus on the message instead of the mechanics.

References and Resources

Castellani, J., & Jeffs, T. (2001). Emerging reading and writing strategies using technology. Teaching Exceptional Children, 33, 60–67. Graham, S., Harris, K. R., Fink-Chorzempa, B., & MacArthur, C. (2003). Primary grade teachers’ instructional adaptations for struggling writers: A national survey. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95, 279–292. MacArthur , C. A. (2000). New tools for writing: Assistive technology for students with writing difficulties. Top Language Disorders, 20, 85–100. MacArthur , C. A., Ferretti, R. P., Okolo, C. M., & Cavalier, A. R. (2001). Technology applications for students with literacy problems: A critical review. The Elementary School Journal, 101, 273–378. MacArthur , C. A., & Graham, S. (1987). Learning disabled students’ composing with three methods: Handwriting, dictation, and word processing. Journal of Special Education, 21, 22–42. Vaughn, S., Schumm, J. S., & Gordon, J. (1993). Which motoric condition is most effective for teaching spelling to students with and without learning disabilities? Journal of Learning Disabilities, 26, 191–198. Wong, B. Y. L. (2001). Commentary: Pointers for literacy instruction from educational technology and research on writing instruction. The Elementary School Journal, 101, 359–378.

Web sites *

http://www.suite101.com/links.cfm/teaching_computers#top ― This site has information and programs for teaching typing and other topics. Although it is directed toward parents, teachers will also find it useful. http://www.inspiration.com/home.cfm ― This is the Web site for Inspiration and Kidspiration, which are organizational writing programs. http://www.brighteye.com/texthelp.htm ― This site reads text out loud and gives students a word predictor, a homophone locator, a thesaurus, a spell checker, and a dictionary. A Word Wizard guides students to the word they are looking for. * The programs cited in this discussion are based on research; however, it is not the purpose of this report to evaluate the rigor of the research supporting the programs themselves.* Few Web sites are dedicated to computerized writing assistance.This strategy is identified as a Promising Practice. View the Access Center Research Continuum.For additional information on this or other topics,
please contact The Access Center at accesscenter@air.org.

The Access Center: Improving Outcomes for All Students K-8
The Access Center is a cooperative agreement (H326K020003) funded by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs, awarded to the American Institutes for Research 1000 Thomas Jefferson St. NW, Washington, DC 20007
Ph: 202-403-5000 | TTY: 877-334-3499 | Fax: 202-403-5001 |
e-mail: accesscenter@air.org website: www.k8accesscenter.org  

Want to know more about computer assisted writing, just click here….

computer assisted writing

http://www.ericdigests.org/pre-928/computer.htm

www.bowiestate.edu 

http://computersandcomposition.osu.edu

Software of Computer Assisted Writing:
http://www.softwareforstudents.com/SoftwareMainPage.htm

www.daedalus.com

www.softwareforstudents.com 

http://www.whitesmoke.com/landing_flash/grammar.html?d=3&a=2&r=0

http://english3.fsu.edu/writing/?q=book/export/html/285

This software will help the English students in a very effective way because it contains not only the writing skills, also completed with a sounds and helps student to develop their writing and thinking skills where students can learn more easily and with full of fun. Hopefully you will enjoy this new writing space…

18/02/08

Yvonne Yoong

Once known as the “cradle of condominium civilisation”, Miami in Florida, the United States, is now producing blueprints for modern residential and commercial highrises and hotels that could determine the shape of things to come all over the world.Ever since the 1980s TV series Miami Vice shone the spotlight on Miami Beach’s pastel Art Deco rehabs, there has been a surge in demand for the city’s architectural styles that capitalise on lifestyle aspirations.“Miami has become a brand. It has a buzz,” said a recent news feature in the Miami Herald.“People have a strong image of Miami as cutting-edge … it’s almost like you’re prequalified if you’re from Miami.”With the trend leaning towards “snazzy Miami designs”, it said even Los Angeles in California is looking to put up Miami-style buildings in its skyline.That may be why the daily said its native architects are highly sought-after all over the world, with many saying they are “not limited anymore to being regional practitioners” and that they can now “explore all over”, thanks to the exposure they attained in the Sunshine State’s high-rise condo boom.The magic, said Miami Herald, can be attributed to the fact that the city’s unique architectural expression smacks highly of “understanding lifestyle”.“Our architecture, especially the residential, is about lifestyle … it’s been that way since the founding of the city,” the feature said.“It’s always been about this kind of allure; it’s Eden. It’s about pleasure and fulfilling desire.”

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 READING FOR INFORMATION

             Reading comprehension can be defined as a process of  receive or take in the sense of (as letters or symbols) by scanning; to understand the meaning of written or printed matter; to learn from what one has seen or found in writing or printing. In the context of using reading comprehension for getting information, the reading materials must have character of explaining, reveals, and introduce new ideas. This article was written by Yvonne Yoong in online New Straits Times sites, the articles mentioned about the United States plans in producing blueprints for modern residential and commercial highrises and violets that could determine the shape of things to come all over the world. With the trend leaning towards “snazzy Miami designs”, recent news said even Los Angeles in California is looking to put up Miami-style buildings in its skyline. In conclusion, Miami styles for the world are all about pleasure and fulfilling desire. 

This 1^st posting is completed by Maisarah Abdul latif (A118886), Syahirah Bt Said (A119613), and Azlin Hazreena bt Zahri (A119485).