An apple a day keeps a doctor away! 
Hahaha, that is how exciting and relevant an apple can be!
I am talking about both - apple as a fruit as well as a gadget anyway :D

Never in my mind that I will one day jump into an Apple Teacher's wagon. It is not because I have less interest in using Apple gadgets; no, in fact, I had my second Macbook Pro last year and started using Macbook Air in 2014. I was also blessed with an iPad Pro provided by the faculty to assist my teaching & learning. 

I think the only reason why I didn't even give myself a chance to explore an opportunity to become an Apple Teacher (AT) was merely because of my ignorance. I thought that choosing not to become one will give no harm to me as an educator. Due to hectic daily activities and tight working schedules, I intentionally put it aside. 

Anyway, thanks to Dr. Fiza, who contacted me last week, asking whether or not I am interested in becoming AT. Well, her small request made me said YES. And I didn't take long for that. Spending about 2 hours in front of my lappy, I navigated through the page and tried to understand the requirements. It was relatively straightforward to the point. So I took all the quizzes in one go. As a result, I received both AT awards for Mac and iPad :D

So, what does it mean to become one? 

From my point of view - although an AT doesn't make you obliged to conduct any training or sharing sessions, the least you can do is to convey a message of how convenient it is to work in an 'Apple environment'. 

I am a big fan of Mac, not because it is 'Apple' brand but having used it since 2014, I am pretty confident to conclude that Mac is the best tool everyone should own - it is slim and light, and more importantly, it offers a longer battery life compared to other laptops. Keyboard-wise - it is pretty durable! If your work demands you to create a pile of presentations, try Keynote! 

iMovie comes with handy features as well. One can compose interesting movies without learning too many technical aspects, as iMovie is pretty much easy to use. 

As for Macboook Pro - the one that I am using now - I am in love with its sound quality. Imagine listening to Spanish guitar music while working on a journal article on Sunday! It gets me immersed in my 'me time'! 

I admit that I use Mac a lot more than iPad, and I believe that iPad is not a laptop replacement. But I cannot deny that iPad itself can handle everything that a laptop can do. As in Mac, you can also create slides and movies using Keynote and iMovie on iPad. Ah, not forgotten about Pages. If you don't use Canva as I do, Pages can offer many templates for graphic works. 

** There are lot more things you can do with both - I am just highlighting a few significant ones 

So peeps, do not hesitate to own yourself a Mac if you are looking for a satisfying tool. I am not saying that I do not recommend you to choose  iPad over Mac, as it depends on how you plan to use them. If you are a multitasker, a Mac will suit you well. But if you are looking for a handy tool, iPad should be the one. The choice is yours! :)

#appleteacher #mac #ipad

Alhamdulillah, despite a long and hectic daily schedule, our ODL team and I managed to spare a little time for our first workshop under ODL Essentials for SMEs Series! 

Creating Learning Materials using Screencasting Technique - We picked up this topic as we are aware that many SMEs need to develop their teaching materials. Screencasting is a simple technique that everybody can apply to create video-based learning materials. If you have presentation slides in your laptop folders, it is time to add some value to them! Using the existing slides, you may enhance the interactivity by adding your explanatory video - and I bet students will appreciate it more! And if you want to show the 'how-to' process, especially when using any tools on your machine, the screencast technique will work wonders! 

We will continue providing this kind of support to all ODL SMEs. For this first workshop we have about 90 attendees and hoping to have more participants in the future insha-Allah .. 

See you when I see you guys! :) 

It has been a few months back since I talked to Dr. Rosni regarding the invitation.  She called me asking for having a session on how to manage research while we are in the midst of a pandemic crisis. Everybody is working from home, thus limiting a face-to-face meeting, which also affected how research data can be collected.

Two simple tools, yet powerful to help researchers focus on their research content and management, are Wakelet and Trello. In this session, I shared my experience using these tools and how they significantly assisted me in getting going on time. 

Thanks, KUIS, for the invitation! Hopefully, this will benefit all!