KINDY TALK FREE WORKSHOP
5 June 2021- The Centre for Modern Languages’ Kindy Talk Team successfully organised a 3-hour free online workshop on Using Technology for Early Childhood Educators via Google Meet from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. with 17 early childhood educators, many of whom are from Kuantan and 3 as far as from Selangor and Kelantan.
The workshop began with a sharing session by a guest speaker, Mr. Zulkiflee Ismail, Sales & Services Manager at Delta Engineering Services, a company involved in the oil & gas engineering activities for turbine maintenance, marine mooring system and subsea equipment. This is followed by an ice breaking session with P.M. Dr. Noor Raha Mohd Radzuan using Padlet, a hands-on workshop with Dr Wan Jumani Fauzi and the Heart Intelligence session with Dr Anita Abdul Rani completed the workshop.
During his sharing session, En Zulkiflee, answered the question that had been niggling on everyone’s mind, “What has a speaker from an engineering company got to do with a programme like this?” He emphasised the importance of English language in International Business particularly now during the pandemic, and especially in negotiation contexts, in which poor grasp of the language leads to getting bad end of the deal. It is worse in bilateral negotiations when representatives with weak language grasp let go of certain rights and agree to deals that are not advantageous to the country. That is why he believes that exposure to English at a young age is very crucial, hence, the huge responsibility of the daycare educators to equip themselves with the proficiency of the language. Delta Engineering Services Sdn Bhd through the University-Industry Matching Grant scheme has contributed immensely to the building of our younger generation by sponsoring a Kindy Talk Workshop organised by the Kindy Talk Team in September last year. He fully supported the programme and hopes that Delta and CML could collaborate more in the future.
In the Icebreaking session, Dr Raha used Padlet to start off the getting to know the participants session. And to establish the current practice done by the early childhood educators. Many were not doing online classes yet as they were still operating for frontliners’ children. Some were using Zoom and some were using Whatsapp to conduct their lessons.
In the following ‘Using Technology for Online Learning’ session, the participants were introduced to Jamboard and other interrelated online learning tools in an interactive session with Dr. Wan Jumani. Participants were exposed to how they can creatively engage young children during online teaching and learning session using Jamboard. Never had they thought children could do colouring, or matching or drawing activities with them as though they were in a face-to-face classroom. They were then given the opportunity to carry out their hands-on mock-teaching activity using Jamboard.
Finally, during the Heart Intelligence session, Dr. Anita Abdul Rani reminded everyone of the importance of their roles here in life and their respective roles as daycare educators and how their noble calling help in developing the young children to be good Muslims.
All in all, the programme managed to get the participants excited to create interactive activities to be conducted in synchronous online classes with the children, something they had not done before. It is recommended to remind the participants to use their laptops, rather than their phones for such hands-on workshops. It is hoped that the Kindy Talk Team would do more programmes like this as such programmes are timely and relevant.
By Dr. Fatimah binti Ali, Dr. Wan Jumani binti Fauzi & Mardhiyyah binti Zamani
