Embedding a YouTube Video into PowerPoint 2007

This video is great! I actually tried out the steps and they're perfect. This makes any PPT presentation look really professional. Check it out.

Monsoon History: A Multiliteracies Project

Just before the mid-term school holidays began last year, ELTC invited a group of students to attend a one-week multiliteracies project. The students who attended the course were 16 years old and came from an inner-city school in Kuala Lumpur. They had no prior knowledge in developing a multimedia project, so basically, we began from scratch, which was challenging but fun. Scroll down. Their projects have been embedded below.

The project involves the students composing a video response to Shirley Lim's "Monsoon History". You will find that their projects share some common pictures and a particular video. This is because I gave them a small starter pack of resources to work with. This starter pack had about 5 images and one video, as a form of insurance, just in case things didn’t work out! The other resources, including music and audio, were sourced from the Internet by the students themselves. The entire project, from start to finish, took about 16 hours. Developing a multimedia project takes time! Although the kids struggled initially, they eventually got the hang of it and were totally engrossed in creating their products. Not bad at all for total novices, with very limited prior knowledge.

In the poem, Shirley Lim recollects her past experiences in Melaka, where she was born. She takes us back forty years to show how her family lives, surrounded by two different worlds: the natural world outside and the inside world of the home. She shares her experiences on the atmosphere and situation, where life is unique amongst creatures and natural phenomena. In this poem, she observes her surroundings and expresses how she perceives her Peranakan family within the setting of her home by the Straits of Melaka.

 

Here is the text of the poem, which forms part of the Form 4 literature component. Embedded below are 4 videos composed by the students in response to the poem.

 

Monsoon History

by Shirley Lim

 

The air is wet, soaks

Into mattresses, and curls

In apparitions of smoke.

Like fat white slugs furled

Among the timber,

Or sliver fish tunneling

The damp linen covers

Of schoolbooks, or walking

Quietly like centipedes,

The air walking everywhere

On its hundred feet

Is filled with the glare

Of tropical water

 

Again we are taken over

By clouds and rolling darkness.

Small snails appear

Clashing their timid horns

Among the morning glory

Vines.

 

         Drinking milo,

Nyonya and baba sit at home.

This was forty years ago.

Sarong-wrapped they counted

Silver paper for the dead,

Portraits of grandfathers

Hung always in the parlour.

Reading Tennyson, at six

p.m. in pajamas,

Listening to down-pouring

rain;  the air ticks

With gnats, black spiders fly,

Moths sweep out of our rooms

Where termites built

Their hills of eggs and queens zoom

In heat. We wash our feet

For bed, watch mother uncoil

Her snake hair, unbuckle

The silver mesh around her waist,

Waiting for father pacing

The sands as fishers pull

From the Straits after monsoon.

 

The air is still, silent

Like sleepers rocked in the pantun,

Sheltered by Malacca

This was forty years ago,

When nyonya married baba.

 

 Below is an interpretation by Nur Hanifiza.

 

 

This is Asilah's interpretation of Monsoon History:

 

And here is a response to the poem by Ain:

 

Here is Zulaikha's video response: