Practical 10

Using your favourite metaphor, describe the most important lesson that you had learnt in your EIR journey.

To me the EIR journey is like an uphill battle. When I first started my lesson it was quite hard and rocky, just like a climbing the hill. When climbing the hill from the very bottom part it is difficult. This is similar to my journey when i fisrt started my EIR, it was quite difficult and I cannot catch up. However when we reaching towards the end, it become easier and more managable.

Tutorial 5&6

Tutorial 5&6 (Activity 2 – Individual Blog Activity (Reflection on Wiki Experience)

1. What is the significant learning experience for you working in a group?

To me personally, working in a group is a very beneficial and it’s an effective learning experience. Subsequently, sharing all the different ideas that we had in mind with each other, my group manages to generate excellent and creative answer and we learn from each other. I get to understand my other group mates better when working with them. Not only that, my group mates also helps to correct me when I am wrong and I learnt from there.

2. As an individual contributor, what have you gained from this experience?

As an individual contributor, I have leant that it is very important to be responsible and do my part and contribute to the group. Basically, working in the group I manage to speak out and give quite a number of relevant ideas. At the same time, I leant a lot of new information and interesting facts too from my group mates. I try to provide as much information as I could.

3. What is the one most challenging experience you had?

To me the most challenging experience is to be aware that what I wrote is not exactly similar to my group mates. Subsequently, for the research article that we are doing  Dead Sea Scroll “Cyber Bully” ) the issues mentioned is not a lot and is largely similar if we were to do individually and then collate as a group work.  Thus we might end up writing the exact similar thing. However the only solution for that is rephrasing what we wrote to our own style and then collates all the individual work and edits the part that is similar to one another.

4. What advice would you give to the next batch wiki groups as they start a similar project?

I would advice the next batch to cooperate well as a team. As that is what I leant from my group mates, by co-operating with one another, we get to generate more creative and interesting ideas and information. Secondly I would say plan on who doing what and start early on the project to avoid late work as it would affect the marks for the whole group.

5. Would you use Wiki for research in your own Diplomas? Why?

I would say yes definitely. Firstly I must say there is a lot of information and ideas that I could benefit from wiki. A lot of interesting and fresh topics that is discuss in wiki. In addition, taking Gerontological Management Studies, I need to do a lot of research and mostly it’s about social issues, such as youths, ageing people, modern technology and more. Thus upon taking this CDS and knowing about Wiki, it definitely benefit me in the future when I need to do research.

Tutorial 3&4

(Tutorial 3 & 4) Activity 2 (Blog Reflections)

a.     How has Twitter (micro-blogging) enhanced your learning of EIR? Compare this with your blogging experience using Blogspot.

Twitter has enhanced my learning of EIR by making me learn to write my opinion or views in short sentences but with all the meaning that I intend to put in. This is basically because twitter has limited word capacity. Subsequently, twitter also allows user, like me, to view people personal life, gain knowledge, get beautiful quotes and more.

b.     How can you use Twitter and Blogspot for research purposes?

I can use Twitter and Blogspot for research purpose if I seek to find personal opinion and views from different people about the research I am doing on. Subsequently, twitter and Blogspot is an effective way to connect to people thoughts and believe, as that is where they usually put their honest opinion on things or   life.

Practical 8&9 (Activity 2)

Practical 8&9  "MY DREAM HOLIDAY"

My dream holiday is Dubai. It is the place that I want to go so badly. I will explain why I love and it is my "Dream Holiday" in the later part of the post.

Below are unique famous places in Dubai:

Subsequently, the unique structure of the Palm Jebel Ali (Palm Jebel Island)which consist of a trunk, a crown with 17 fronds, and a surrounding crescent island that will form a water-breaker. It feature themed hotels, three types of villas (Signature Villas, Garden Homes and Canal Cove Town Homes), apartment buildings, beaches, marinas, restaurants, and a variety of retail outlets and many more entertainment place.

View of the Palm Island:

Palm Jebel Ali Royal Haskoning

                                                    

Inside the hotel

                                                                  

The Desert:

From Secondlife I manage to get to the Burj Al Arab Dubai Tower  :

Subsequently, the experience of being in Dubai in secondlife is not really interesting for me. Basically the reason for that is because I am not used to the place and I get lost quite often. In addtition , i kept going to the same place over and over again. However it is nice to know that I can explore Dubai virtually.

 In order to find out more about Dubai, I started my search by entering Google, to search for the Official Dubai travelling sites, which showcase the places of my Dream Holiday.

 Google Display Result:

Dubai Official Website:

http://www.dubaitourism.ae/Home/tabid/36/language/en-US/Default.aspx



1.   b)  Subsequently in order to get the best right facts about my Dubai from the site, I evaluate the site using Authority Accuracy as the most important criteria. Personally, it is crucially important to get a reliable and trusted site for any kind of information that I aims to get. Moreover, I want to get information about my dream holiday, I must get the right and accurate information about the country. Subsequently the website that I had come across is the official Dubai Tourism site. The website is from by the Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DTCM), the DTCM’s Chairman is UAE Vice President and Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. Its Director-General is Khalid A. bin Sulayem. This information is from the “About Us” section in the site.

Subsequently, I can get a lot of interesting and great facts about Dubai from this site. The reason is because the DTCM is responsible for the licensing of hotels, hotel apartments, tour operators, travel trade companies and travel agents. Its supervisory role also covers all touristic, archaeological and heritage sites, tourism conferences and exhibitions, the operation of tourist information services and the organisation and licensing of tour guides. Thus with this, it shows that all the information that I need to know is stated in this site.

(C) Basically, my dream Holiday is Dubai. Since young, I wished I could live in an Arab country. I do not really have a specific reason for it but the interests just develop naturally in me as I grow up. Probably the reason for this is because of influence from my family, my parents like to expose to me about the beauty of Arab countries and the people. To me Arab country is an interesting and unique. The culture, tradition and the people are very unique in their own way.

However the age I decided that Dubai out of all the Arab places, is the place that I need to visit at least once in my entire life is when I was 13 years old. I started to know about the beauty and interesting parts/ places of Dubai then. My cousin, who had migrated there with her husband, often talks about her wonderful experiences and the beautiful places that she visited whenever she gave us a visit here. Since then, Dubai had captured my heart even more. Furthermore, interestingly Dubai has four seasons too. Dubai is also known as one of the most successful and luxurious living country in the world. It’s very nice to know how they had developed so fast and manage to capture theworld’s attention towards its country.



Practical 7

Activity 3 (Blog Reflections)

a. Which criteria did you use to evaluate Stomp.com? Why did you choose these criteria? What lessons have you learnt from this activity?

I choose "Accuracy" and "Currency" to evaluate Stomp.com. I choose these criteria as I want to evaluate whether Stomp.com, posts articles/ stories that are accurate with evidence and whether the articles/ stories are current or not. I have learnt from this activity, that Stomp.com stories/ articles that are posted mostly by Singaporeans, are accurate as the facts given are proven with evidence -(such as photograph of incident taken/ investigation conducted by police). In addition, Stomp.com articles/ stories are very current, Stomp.com updated their site, almost every day to display the "Hot" news on the homepage of the site. Besides that, the stories/ articles that are posted, people would comment on it instantly.

b. If you were to create your own version of “Stomp” in relation to your research topic (e.g. ethics on cloning, genetically modified food etc)

 i. How would you apply Citizen Journalism differently?

I would apply Citizen Journalism differently by a few ways. Firstly, I would make a category entitled, “Youths” and the sub category would be “Youths Spending Habit”, basically, any ordinary citizens who are interested to talk about my research topic “Trends of Youths Spending Habits” through surveys that they conducted or even opinions could share it to the public through the site, Stomp. However the stories/ articles that they shared must have a facts, attention-grabbing titles and content and the news deliver should be easily understand by the public/ regular people.

   ii. What topics/services will you include to ensure that your “Stomp” effectively address the implications for teaching and learning of Citizen Journalism mentioned in the article.

Basically for me, I would include youths forum in STOMP.COM, in which any article, news about youths only could be discussed at the forum. To me this is an effective way of interacting and more information would be gather from a forum instead of just posting comments on the article. Moreover, looking at the current STOMP.COM comments of each article from the public, most of the comments are irrelevant as it is abusive and quite rude. In the forum, there will be an automatic filter of abusive and adult explicit words. This is to ensure that STOMP.COM is taken more seriously I in which problems/ issues could be discussed and improves and not just for public entertainment.

c. Add a comment/remarks on any one of your classmates EIR Blogs

I had visited Sharon Wan blog, which is http://eirsharonwan.blogspot.com/.

My first impression of her blog is very well designed and attractive. Subsequently, she designed her blog that manage to capture my eyes. What I meant is the color and her blog is kept simple but sweet. Not only that her blog post is also very organized and in sequence, her practical is updated based on the practical and the dates. I can keep on reading her post as she manage to make her post not too lengthy and at the same time very easy to understand. Overall I would say he blog is well done and probably to make it better she could include more pictures in her blog to capture more readers attention.

Practical 6

Activity 4 (Practical 6)

a. Do you think it is more effective to search the invisible web (databases)
than using search engines, meta-search or subject directories? Why?

Personally, to me it is much more convenient to search using the search engines or meta-search as compared to the invisible web (e.g EbscoHost). The reason for this is search engines, meta search, offers much more useful information and quite current one as compared to the invisible database that i uses such as EbscoHost.

However one of the invisible database that i use, which is Newslink, various  taken from the different types of Newspaper, is very effective as it did offer quite a number of articles that is closely related to my research topic as follow:

b.     Will you use the invisible web (databases) for research in your own respective Diplomas? Why?

I would keep my options open to all. I would definitely use the invisible web

for research in my own respective diplomas. The reason for this is because, I

have experience and been tasked to do quite a number of research for my

other subjects using only the invisible database to pick an article that is

related to my research topic. Furthermore, the articles/ journals in the

invisible database are no doubt, all reliable and is made convenient for

students as some of the invisible web, provides u the citation and other useful

tools to help us in our work.

c.      What have you learnt from your wiki experience during this practical?

I have learnt that wiki is a very good and convenient way for me to improve

my research / findings as I progresses from each tutorial/ practical. As I

had collected some useful information from this practical, I am confident to  

share it with the rest of the students at  wiki.

d.     Comment on at least one of your classmate’s blog post.

I would comment on one of my site feeds friends blog post, Lim Zixi, which is
http://eirzixi.blogspot.com/. Basically I am interested to comment on her SecondLife
HKPOLYU post, which is posted on the Thursday, November 18 2010. 

The reason I choose this post, because interestingly, we share some similar opinions and
thoughts. Subsequently, Zixi stated that she do observe mannerism and behaviours. Well, I
think that what she say is true, writing short- form, to the HK students is not really a good
thing as they did not understand and could cause misunderstanding. Basically that's what
happen to me, I am too used to chatting using short form with my friends and I did that
too with the HK student  and he repeatedly ask me to repeat what I say and at one point of
time, he says he don't understand my questions. Other than that, Zixi had started her
conversation with the HK student similar to me, which is the HK students approaching us
as we were quite lost when we got there. Subsequently, as for  the challenging experience, I
am lucky that my HK mate, understand English relatively well, as compared to Zixi, as that
is her biggest challenge. Whereas for me the biggest challenge is the destination places from

one place to another. So I guess, that's all I wanted to comment about my friend , Lim

Zixi blog post.

             

Practical 4&5

a. What benefits do you get when using different search facilities to search for resources related to your topic?

Basically i get quite alot of benefits when using different search facilities to search for resources related to my topic. Some of the benefits include the different kind of informations from different articles/journals that I would get from the different search facilities. This is mainly because the different search facilities offers different kind of information and journals/ articles from one another. Other than that, different search facilities also function defferently. Thus by using all the different search facilities I get to choose which search facilites best suits my preferences and is easy for me to search for articles that are closely related to my topic.

b. How do you feel about using site feeds in your blog?

To me using site feeds in my blog is a way tp get connected with my friends through the site feeds with their blogs. It is a good way as I need not type in the whole hyperlink if i wanted to read their blogs.Other that that, site feeds settings also offer numerous options for post and comment feeds on my blog.

c. What do you like best about collaborating on Wiki with other students who share similar research topic as you?

Personally, I felt that the best about collabrating on Wiki with other students is the sharing of information and also displaying the different ways/approach to doing my research topic. It is a good way to see how other students are doing a different thing as compared to mine about the same research topic. This show the students creativity and flexibility on doing the same research topic but with many different approach/ work displayed at Wiki.

Below are the example of work of other students doing the same topic:

 Beloew are the example of my work contribution to Wiki: