Last Day!

Yesterday was great. The team works effectively and we shared our idea with the lecturer. He gave useful insights on the type of teaching methods that we had demonstrated, giving guidance to better articulate our teaching methodology (the use of new media) in our presentation. The day ended well with the team coming together to enhance the slides. Today we would be wrapping up the summary page and deciding on the different aspects of the presentation that each of use would be sharing with the class.

The greatest takeaway for this one week is the introduction of the potential of new media tools in the worldwide web. Previously I was pretty much confined to picasa for web albums, social network on facebook/ MSN and blogging on blogger. Similarly I wasn't expose to other search engines except google, youtube and yahoo. The use of specific search engine e.g blogging sites using technorati is good.

That's all! All the best to everyone for today's presentation and have a great weekend ahead!

A short day but fruitful one

I have only attended the first half of the morning. Dr Szuiker shared some interesting pointers about "how people learn". I thought it is good as he did not dwell too much into the theorectical psychological aspects of learning ( which would have been rather heavy for the morning) Instead, he shared simple pointers such as drill and practice, expository teaching, mastery/apprenticeship, learning by examples, learning by doing etc.

The rest of the morning was spent discussing on our final project requirements and deliverables. There were a lot of ideas, and I must admit we could have been more effective in putting across what we want. Nevertheless, I am also glad it is no longer a individual project.

Amazingly, my teammates were very efficient in the project work. Thanks to their effort. I am going to do some catch up with them (the Gen Y !!..haha) and make sure I will do my part too!

"Forced" to do reflection?

I usually cherish these moments of the night, doing things such as random surfing on the net. It is seldom that I work or do serious stuff at this hour. After much procrastination, I decided to do the reflection for Day 2.

The day started with an introduction into blogging using commoncraft.com. When blogging first begins its popularity, I use to blog often especially the 7 months that I had spent in a military school (was super bored). I learnt 3 "ground rules" to have a blog that is more attractive for "viewership"
a. have a focus area (e.g. on people, hobby, places, babies, food etc)
b. useful recommendations on related topics
c. pictures!! pictures still speak a thousand words
After today's lessons, think I will pick up blogging again (nowadays, get so tired after handling 3 kids at night, that my mind just want to be a blank after they sleep).

The rest of the afternoon was spent doing a mini collaborative project using applications such as delicious.com, google sites and wiki. The main takeaway is that information are just too much, and it is necessary to scope our search when collaborative work is required. This will prevent time wastage on unreliable information. In any case, depending on the security concerns for the contents, I feel wiki is the least protected while google allows more privacy settings to be adjusted accordingly. Thus if you have a more sensitive contents to be shared, using google may be a much safer bet. Delicious.com is good too, its strong point would be the "tagging" function to allow easier search among the network. I haven't been using all these for my own work. Hopefully one day I get to use them for my own needs or interests!

The last thing I would like to mention is the use of appropriate search engine. Dr Szuiker shared on the use of a blog search engine www. technorati.com. Although there are not much success in finding a blog through this website that is closely related to our work, Dr Szuiker is able to highlight some good pointers on blogging. This is refreshing to me as I always think of blogging as just "rattling" about the daily affairs. A few takeaways in additional to those that I have earlier mentioned:
a. technorati authority rules take into account of the different users that commented on your links i.e. it is good to reach out to more ppl. this could be done through having more links in your site or register yourself to be "found" in search engine.
b. Tagging. not too sure how we could tag our own blog but he did shared about the importance of tagging to make searching more meaningful and accurate.

That's all!

It is time to give it some posts!

Encouraged by Dr Szuiker, I will fill in a few entries on this site on his lesson. The first day started off not too well with the projection devices not working till much later. However, he had managed to bring his points across in other ways. In the process, he shared a few interesting sites such as https://www.dropbox.com/gs;
http://commoncraft.com/.

The 1st link is useful as files can be conveniently loaded up on the website for use elsewhere. However, I was trying to compare this to a common server (be it in the school/home)which also allows us to have remote log on. One of the main disadvantage of using online server is the SPACE. In the end this space would be used up and $$ is necessary to expand the storage. In addition, the website also have rights for these information uploaded. I remembered getting rather upset with one of the photo storage websites as the website deleted all my albums just because I did not spend $$$ to buy their online products. I have my doubts about storage online....

The day ended with a video on new media literacy. I thought the approach of the lesson is rather interesting and it does get the point through: collaborative learning! The lecturer simply gave two clear instructions. Watch the video and fill in the facts and applications that you could draw from it onto a spreadsheet. It was amazing how the class "got their act together" from a chaotic "chopping" of spaces to a systematic way of contributing the deliverables. I see potential of the use of this tool in our working environment. However, what I thought it is significantly missing is for individuals to "talk" about their points. i.e. the quality of their contributions would be dependable on how good are their written English. Not that helpful considering the fact that the backgrounds of our soldiers could be very different.

Two main takeways from the video that could be applicable for our work environment. Firstly, the need to recognise that students nowadays are always multi-tasking, thus we have to be flexible in our teaching methodologies and gain their attention. Secondly, when internet sources are used for lessons. We have to be mindful of the reliability of the contents used for classes. Proper guidance should be provided to minimise the use of unreliable information.

That's all!