Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Tutorial 5 &6

After this 8days, I had a great learning from my group. We find information together, share it and discuss about our views. Group work is always great as everyone have different perspective and discussing about our view will enable us to know what others thinks. Example is the "Factors that lead to the growing popularity of twitter" activity, we realise all of other group members have different opinion towards twitter. Some do not like twitter but some prefer to use twitter instead of blogger.

As an individual contributor, I have learn that we can add on to the information on what others post and even delete information that are not true anymore. By posting on Wiki, we can allow everyone to learn more and even fill in some missing information that we could not find.

One of the most challenging experience I had is finding information to put in. Since many people has taken this CDS and do this topic, a lot of information is taken from the websites and put already there. I realise most of them are really hardworking and put every result the search engine generates.

I will encourage the next batch Wiki Groups to use Wiki often and add in whatever information they find.

I will definitely use Wiki for research in my own diploma, it will be a good platform to share information with everyone on how to create different animations and web design or even gadgets for itouch and computers. We could also learn from others too.

Monday, March 29, 2010

Tutorial 3 &4

Using twitter in class has enhanced my learning in EIR, when searching for my topic(Discuss the role of design in the global go green movement) on twitter it did not generate anything useful as not many people twit about that topic.



However blogs are so much more useful, huge organisations like Google has their own blog talking about the global go green movement they participate and even try encourage us to join them. Example Earth Hour 2010. Google alone joined many events that people all over the world are involved too. Twitter is more for everyone to see while blogs are more personal and talks about themselves only. Therefore if a blog have alot of followers we can conclude that the blog is credible. But for twitter, its easy to have tons of followers who just follow for the fun of it. In my opinion, I prefer blogger than twitter. Emotions can also be felt more when typed on blog than twitter, as short twits by people cannot amplify their feelings.

Professionals may also have blogs and talk about specialise topics. We can get informations from there as long as we can confirm they are from some trusted organisation or hospital if you are finding infromation on medical stuff. For twitter, we can use it for research purpose too, followers may reply to what u ask however we must check whether it can be trusted or not.

In conclusion, I think blogger is better than twitter as blogger can increase my knowledge better and let me know more about what i want to find out and reading people's reflection will also let me understand what problems they are facing.

Reflection 10

My metaphor that I want to use is "Consistency".
After hearing the past experience of from our DPA seniors that EIR was a super easy CDS and can score A as long as u study. I was hoping I could slack a bit and still score an A but it seems impossible, we have tons of work to do. Doing last mintue will just make you produce sloppy work and get a borderline pass. Only when I do my work everyday, I felt less stress. It will be hell if you had to complete 11 Reflections and 2 Reports in a day. This CDS teach us stuff that are good for future use too. Before this CDS make us research on search engine, I have no idea that Boolean Operators even existed. Subject directory, meta search and invisible web were like alien to me, unheard and unseen before. Once you research more about search engine, I realise that I have been wasting time finding information as boolean operators would bring you straight to the results.



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





Sign the EIR 1-Minute Autograph at http://www.uirblogger.blogspot.com/






Saturday, March 27, 2010

Reflection 8 &9



My dream holiday is to go to Japan and see the cherry blossoms during spring, it is really very nice but rare. It usually blooms in april and it only blooms for 7days which means its super rare. I am going to Japan this april to try my luck whether i get to see it or not. No one can predict when would it bloom. If I get to see it during my first visit to Japan, i must be really very lucky.





The technology in japan is amazing, they have tons of cool gadgets and even the toilet have sprays to spray ur butt once you are done with ur business in the toilet. They even have a huge maket selling all kinds of computer parts you want buy. Japanese have a different culture which i may find it hard to adapt. They are also the creator of anime and manga which is really very nice, i watch different anime daily as only one episode comes out every week. They have castles still being preserved. The beauty there is wonderful. Thank to the CDS we took a few week back, it taugh me some basic japanese and how to interact with them and not offend them when eating as their culture is different. I'm sure this will help me during the trip as i can easily ask them how much does it cost when buying something. Though i do not like japanese food especially the raw ones, i have no choice but to eat it as i am going there with a tour group and cannot choose what food to order.


The website i have choosen is the official japan national tourism organisation, http://www.jnto.org.sg/



Firstly i will evaluate using accuracy, since this website is manage by a department which is work for the japanese national tourism organisation, i am sure the information will definately be true as, Japanese government would not like tourists to get misleaded by the false information.


For purpose, the website just want to promote japan and attract us to book an air ticket and visit their country. When we visit their country, we spend money there which help the japan economy


For accessibility, the website is available to anyone around the world as long as you have internet. When visiting the website, people do not need to register or make an account just to see the information about Japan.


For coverage, the website covers alot of stuff, from transporatation to attractions to accomodations to essential stuff etc. They have lots of links for you to click so that you will find what you really want. Even better is that they have english translation when you click links that a japanese based. This will allow no communication gap between people who are interest in going Japan




Friday, March 26, 2010

Reflection 7

After much pondering, i decided to use currency to evaluate stomp.com. This is because stomp is about citizen journalism which is about the latest and current news seen by people and not reporters. Imagine seeing news on stomp that is not up to date and old, no one would bother to even visit stomp.com. Lots of people visit there to find out about the lastest news around singapore which reporters did not report on. Citizen journalism consist of a few criteria, authority which is how reliable is the news, accuracy which is how in depth did the stomper talk about the news, coverage which is the information and content provided by those stompers and lastly currency which means how new and up to date is the news.

Sharing my views via wiki may be a great way of sharing and discussing about information with other people from all over the world, everyone view stuff differently so you will get all kinds of perspectives. Therefore we could think and evaluate those we think its true or check about what others say to believe. Since wiki can be shared among everyone, informations will not be bits and pieces, it will be more like a whole. Debating among people that share information may be possible and good as it will help us get the real fact but it may also cause conflict among people and start scolding each other. I hope everyone that post on wiki will be nice even if some post fake infomation, others can try to correct it and not scold them.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Reflection 6

This is the first time i am using an invisible web database at http://spark.tp.edu.sg I think it is more effective to search the invisible web database than search engine, metasearch and directory if you are finding information of a specialised topic. Since invisible web database are a collection of information collected by non organisations and professionals. This means that the informations are highly accurate as it is maintained by trustworthy governements departments or organisations and maintaining an invisible web database is very expensive. Since not everyone in the world can access it, informations found from the database is is less likely to be fake. The information may also be alot better as it is not stored in any search engine database or the web.

I think I will use the invisible web for my diploma which is interactive media informatics because i may not know how use the programs that we are suppose to use in order to create animations. Therefore i am sure that the invisible web can help me out as search engines and meta search only talk about programming briefly as those links they provide are just forums or small websites. Informations found from invisible web will be more specialised and also written by professionals and its also up to date as people are paid to maintain it.

The wiki experience was amazing! It allow me to share any resources, pictures, links and information i found out with others that are interested in the same topic as me which is discussing the role of design in the global go-green movements. Knowledge will be shared among people, I may even learn stuff from their information they put up as sometimes people will miss out important bits of valuable information when searching the web as the results may not be generated. There are alot of benefits about wiki but the disadvantage is that anyone can edit and provide information that may be false and untrue. Providing false information will just mislead people.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Reflection 4 &5

In my opinion, i think the amount of benefits for using many different search facilities are too many. For example, google search their entire database and generate results related to your keywords, Boolean operators can be use and advance search can help narrow down the amount of results as tons of results will always be generated. Meta Search may be the best search too used but as its results are from all the top search engine. However there are disadvantages too. The disadvantages are that results generated may be advertisments and there may be too little results generate. Therefore you may not find what you really want. Subject directory are also quite useful as for examples as the results are arrange in hierarchical style from A to Z or subject catergorized E.g. Apple, Banana, Coconut, Durian

I think site feed is good as i may not remember the address of other's blog. Site feed also allows me to jump to another blog without typing the address. This enables me to visit more blog or even view strangers blogs which is quite interesting sometimes.

The thing I like best about collaborating on wiki with other students working on the same topic is that we can share valuable informations with each other. Some of the information they found may not be known to me. Therefore we could share the informations and fill up whatever missing information with do not have. Thus the work will be very complete without missing stuff. Lastly anyone who reads wiki may also learn more as anyone around the world can view our research topic.