Thank you Astro!

2 days ago, my school received the Kampus Astro set. The set comprises a flat-screen TV and an ASTRO decoder with PVR (personal video recording) features. There are about a dozen channels to choose from, notably The Discovery Channel, Discovery Science, Animal Planet, National Geographic, History & Disney.

I was so psyched to try it out! I hardly do any listening activity in class. It's such a hassle to bring your own radio from home. I think I only did it once this year and even then the listening activity couldn't be carried out because the power socket in the particular classroom was faulty. If I downloaded something from the internet, then I had to carry my laptop, speakers and extension wire as well. I didn't mind it so much before, but after 2 sets of speakers were damaged from all the carrying to and fro, I do mind... hahaha

So, having neglected listening activities for a long time, I was really excited to utilise Kampus Astro. A teacher has recorded the show, "Don't Tell My Mother That I am in Iran". A few of us teachers watched it yesterday and enjoyed it. I decided to show it to my students later so I drafted some questions while I was viewing the programme.

The show runs for an hour. But since you can fast forward the ad breaks, you can watch the whole show in around 45 minutes. So (theoretically), in a double-period lesson, you can watch the whole show and still have time for other tasks. You can get your students to copy the questions first, provide them with some background info on the show, hold discussions after viewing, or elicit their feedback on the lesson.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to do any of the tasks. My double-period was spilt into 2 with recess time in the middle. So 10 minutes was wasted waiting for them to arrive at the Multimedia Room and another 10 wasted waiting for them to come back from recess.


I guess the lesson could only work if the show was interesting enough and this one is. The host managed to showcase fascinating things about the country which challenge the commonly-held view of many. You really have to see it for yourself! The show features a mullah and his rapper son, an American basketball player who plays in the local league, women taxi drivers, a Tilawah competition, Iranian Jews, and paintings by Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock.

The show also got the students to ask about the Islamic Revolution in Iran, why Iran is in conflict with Israel, what are mullahs and synagogues, etc.

When time is up, the students requested to see more.

That's nice, isn't it? Hopefully, that's an indication that they had enjoyed the lesson :)

So I'll end this post with my heartfelt thanks to ASTRO.

Errr, is it possible for us to have another set?