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.