a). i.

Organising a seminar such as ‘Change through Creativity’ was a valuable

experience, not only to me, but the whole group as well. You can learn a lot
theoretically, but without pragmatics and real life application, the knowledge that we
gained might turn out to be meaningless. We were very lucky in this sense as the
lecturers provided us with a perfect platform in applying everything that we learned
theoretically into something beneficiary such as this seminar. Organising a seminar
gave us a new insight on the details and ‘how-to’ that we fail to gain in classes nor in
our working environment. Participation and organisation are two different things, as
we only do the former more than the latter. This gave us an exposure on how to
actually organise a seminar, from forming a committee to delegation of works.

Similar to any other works, mistakes tend to happen. We made some mistakes,
but with proper guidance from the lecturers, and the great teamwork shown by this
group, we successfully organised this seminar. That is what professional development
is all about, learning from our mistakes. The guidance and teamwork helped me learn
a lot and experience first-hand the things that we learned. We also learned a lot from
each other. Discussion and observations among peers gave us an insight on how to
not only develop ourselves, but on how to help the development of others. This
experience is very valuable, not only for my professional development, but for my
career as well. The knowledge that I gained during the organisation of this ‘Change
through Creativity’ seminar will definitely add to my skill set in being a better teacher.

ii. Attending and presenting in this seminar was a hands-on experience for
everyone involved with this class. We get to experience first-hand on how to present
in a seminar. Personally, this was my first seminar where I actually presented a paper.
There were jitter bugs, but because of the mock presentation that we did a day before
made me a bit comfortable and confident in presenting my paper.

Before the actual seminar took place, a lot of groundworks were done. We had
to form a committee and delegate works between us. We also did a lot of discussion
and brainstorming in order to prepare ourselves in answering questions as well as
correcting our mistakes. This in turn helped me in developing my thinking skills.
Knowledge is a huge part of professional development, and we gained abundance of
that through attending this seminar.
 A seminar acts as a two-way communication, where you have to present your
paper as well as listen to others. And by participating in this seminar, I managed to
develop my communicative skills as well. This in a big way helped my professional
development. The skills on how to ask relevant questions and giving out constructive
comments where some of the important skill set that I’ve obtained through attending
and presenting in this seminar.

2. Writing workshops are very important, more so when you are a teacher and a
teacher-researcher. Any research that has been done need to be well documented for
present and future references. To be a good writer, there are several aspects that
need to be mastered. By attending this writing workshop, we can obtain these aspects
rather easily.

First of all, it taught me the correct way of writing. Writing comes naturally to
everyone on this end of the field, but to produce a good paper needs some particular
skills. By attending this workshop, I got to learn the ways of writing a legitimate paper.
Writing a paper without proper contents and organisation will lead to a waste of time
and also making the paper worthless. This workshop taught me how to write a proper
paper starting from the title until the conclusion. Organisation is part of professional
development as well.

This workshop taught me how to brainstorm and come up with quick points and
ideas during writing. One of the common problem a writer will face is writer’s block,
where the writer will have difficulty in getting the ideas out into words. Sometimes, you
will get stuck in the first page for hours before starting your work. This workshop taught
me the ways of getting my ideas out and organising it in word in a short period of time.
Organising ideas into words are a very important skill in being a teacher, thus promotes
my professional development as well.