Netscape

Designing web pages has becoming much more challenging these days. There are numerous browser out there and although the amount of usage for less popular browser such as Opera and Netscape is comparatively small, it still exist. Hence the workload is more ensuring that web pages work across multiple browser. Here's a good news!

Well it's finally coming true. One less browser on the Internet to fiddle with. Netscape has finally admit defeat and resigning from the www. I am not exactly sure how that made me feel. I guess I should feel happy?

Two and two together

It is sometimes nice to meet a 'name' in real person. Eric, Greg, Maria, Matt and Dr Joe, nice to meet you! (Sorry, I miss the names of the other guys in the group).

New technology ...?

Remember me?

Some of my friends still remember this mini-animation.

Brown eyed girl

Tumblr

got Tumblr?

Another blogging tool out there. What surprise me the most, is that: NO ONE created a blogging tool for students? What's with that? Come on you giant, money-hoarding-ignoramus, do something about it!

:-)

Licensing

You will notice today, I have the Creative Commons licensing logo on my blog. I believe it's only right.





This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

Corey's Hex To Decimal and back again!

This I cannot ignore. This guy have an awesome way of simplifying the formula and presenting it in a simplest way. I have had a hard time grasping the hex part in class. Try converting 1980000 decimal to binary the old fashion way! or even converting it hex?

Kudos to Corey for the great article.

Learning mechanism for the wrong reason

Professor Stefan Sinclair once commented that first year Multimedia Students are more like consumers. eh?

Since the last time he shared with us the "Vision of Students Today", it's been bothering me quite a bit.

I wonder about class format;
lecture twice a week - 40 minutes session
1 Lab - 40 minutes session
web module
a book that will 80% chance not getting read at all
TAs barely helped you (not Calen!)


What do students of today learn if;
1. you are the consumers?
2. provided with a learning tool with the attention span of a 6 years old

I am worried - very worried...

I am going to read about Deschooling for now and explore what else is out there.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH

RADIOHEAD!
A little late for me but I am buying this, NOW! I have to refrain myself from bouncing in class! eeeeee......!

Social Media inside the Firewall

Chris Brogan wrote a very interesting article on how communication tools can be utilized in a corporate setting.

It is not an overtly new concept but somehow using media technology "excessively". Now, I choose the word "excessive" simply because the concept of using media technology permeates throughout your work or work day seems a little too forward. I mean, it is every Communications/Media student's dream job but still a little out there in terms of implementation. He gave an example of usage by a Media Firm and yes, I can definitely see it happening. I can even see it happening in a busy law firm but can you see this scenario in an accounting firm?

There are a few problems;

1. Integration may be a problem to certain technology; however he did point that in the case of an outage, all Israel did was basically 'published' the outage and the update goes to everywhere -Twitter, Facebook, etc etc., you name it. I should also add that producers of communications tool will very well compete with each other therefore you may get an abundance of choice of applications - which lead me to another question; 'which' would you use?

2. Work setting; this form of usage is only applicable to certain corporate institution. Besides, there are a lot of Corporate Institution out there that is not too keen on relying on technology. Of course, in time it will come but still..it takes time.

3. Global communications; maybe he forget that it is almost about 12-13 hours (depends where you are) in South East Asia, therefore communicating with someone across the world may be a problem?

Despite the problems that I listed, I still see this as a great concept! Seriously, wouldn't you want to end your day in bed by reading Google Reader? I loved it!

PDF Converter in Mac

My lab partner was quite curious about my pdf documents and asked how did I convert my documents to pdf files. For those of you who don't know, well you can convert your word document to pdf easy enough. Just go to File and Select Print. There you can save your file as pdf format.

and...

of course there are a lot of variation of free pdf converter out there. Just google it. :D

Gadgets!!

Bounce, bounce. I am happy again. These USBs are so adorable.
It's available here. I love gadgets!

I should just close my big yap

Yes, I said it. I may just get into trouble for speaking my mind. I spoke about Dr Joe's midterm question in webct and I announced in class forum; Prof. Stefan's teaching material. Great, I am turning into a smart-ass, just what I hated.

I should just be a good girl and keep quiet.

The Machine is Us/ing Us.

Google Reader anyone?

I am a skeptic and paranoid by nature so any new things out there,
I will need to know about it. Anyone tried Google Reader yet?

Stats and trend

Browser:
Firefox - 90.6%
MS Internet Explorer - 6.6%
Mozilla 0.9%
Safari - 0.7%
Opera - 0.6%
Unknown - 0.3%

I am happy to report that percentages made my day. For you IE user,
maybe you can email me and tell me what version of IE you're using
(not 4 I hope?!).

OS:
Macintosh - 65.6%
Windows - 33.2%
Unknown - 0.7%
Linux - 0.3%

;o)

what happen when you can't sleep 3 nights on a row...

You got sick, so sick that you can't even sleep. You're aching everywhere and you zombied and muted your environment. I wish I can put life on pause so I can resume it once I am out of this shit.

ah, someone just shoot me right now.

COME JOIN US FOR A: Victorian Tea Party

Sunday, October 21st. 12:00 noon-4:00 p.m.
Where: Joseph Brant Museum: 1240 North Shore Blvd. E., Burlington, Ontario
Who to contact: Sylvia Hentz, Special Events Programmer (905) 634-3556 or hentzs@burlington.ca
Ticket Price: $10.00 adults, $8.00 seniors/students, $6.00 children*
Tour & Tea Program runs at hourly intervals, beginning at noon. Group maximum is 20 ppl
website: http://www.museumsofburlington.com

Step back into the Victorian Era and enjoy a historic experience…

With Queen Victoria as your host, enjoy Victorian scones & delicacies & sample exotic teas. Engage in Victorian customs and games. Step into re-enactments and participate in Victorian activities.

Indulge yourself at a Victorian Tea Party! With your group, be taken on special guided tour through Joseph Brant Museum and engross yourself in the Victorian world through the special thematic exhibit ‘An Assembly Such As This', depicting a Victorian parlour frozen in time. Be officially invited to join Queen Victoria and her Lady in Waiting for a Tea Party! Before joining in, don’t forget to drop off your calling card and ladies, pick up your Victorian hats! In an immersive room complete with music and special décor, settle in around a formal table set for Tea. Enjoy delectable Victorian delicacies such as gourmet scones, tea sandwiches and delicious sweets. Be guided through proper etiquette and customs! Follow the clues to find out what to do next! Perhaps after making one, learn to speak the language of the fan. How about learning the language of flowers? You may chose to play parlour games and kids can make Victorian Paper Dolls. There will be tea tasting, tea leaf reading and you can buy a special custom tea blend to take home with you. Oh, and don’t worry there will be more. You will even have a chance to win a one of kind Victorian Gift Basket!

Dr Joe Kim - isn't he adorable!!

Dr Joe = adorable

Web 2.0

Remember Web 2.0? I had a moment of revelation. (oh wow! how exciting that is for me)

Well think this, web-designers will be out of job.

Rich text application will be available free, easy to use for everyone in the world. It will be like using Microsoft Office (since the majority of public are so inclined towards that interface!) I am not talking about HTML editor that exist out there, I am talking more of a an executable file, browser form, rich text editor program, save it and voila - you have your webpage!!

What should we call it?

Tools on the internet

A little research to distract me from studying:

-Linkedin - networking tool (school and work), a Facebook version for the older group of working people
-del.icio.us - online bookmarking
-Blogger.com, WordPress.com, LiveJournal.com, - blogging=ranting=thinking aloud
-Flickr - online photo sharing
-Youtube - streaming video = entertainment for the bored
-Lastfm, Pandora (no longer available for its NON-US listeners) - music

Brb.

Here's my penny worth of Facebook defacing in moodle.

So after due consideration and mulling over the Facebook question, I decided to venture and get an account with Facebook. Here are my thoughts on Facebook. Viewers’ discretion is highly advised due to its subjective nature. :[


I believe everyone in the class has agreed that Facebook is indeed Multimedia. It has everything multimedia about it, right?

Apart from being a social networking tool, Facebook is a form of digital expression of self. It is highly regarded in comparison to its competition – MySpace. The two have a lot in common but what makes Facebook better than MySpace? For one, you don’t have a bunch of perverts emailing you and sending some obscene pictures of their naked self portrait. You are also bound to limited group of people – colleagues, school mates and not to mention family in the form of past, present and future.

Facebook also is a lot *cleaner* (notice the sarcasm) in terms of its layout and content therein. You are not bombarded with bands that want you to check their once in a lifetime performance that will forever change your perception of music. You can’t change the colour of your page and make it masculine and prettier such as mySpace. Unlike MySpace that is considered to be a webpage for those who can’t afford to have their own website, Facebook is totally ‘elite’ and uniform in terms of its generic layout (how lovely).

Not to trash Facebook entirely, other than being filled with some useless application such as sending iconic gestures ie. gifts and poking your friends, there are features where you could belong to certain groups in my case it will be “The Intro to Psych” group. You could write about anything, post some link, give your thoughts on how mind and behaviour collided in Psychology courses. I still say that this feature is really redundant simply because, this year the Intro to Psych courses have been re-invented and new website pretty much sum it all up. The Facebook group is just another means of getting to the students at Mac. Talking about being redundant, there are so many other websites that offers “photo/video sharing”. If you want to get in touch, hey use the phone or better yet, email!

It is still a tool where you could get in touch with some (SOME) of your friends. It is highly doubtful if I could actually get in touch with my high school classmates. Why is this? Well, it’s geographically challenge, I would say. This product is only applicable to certain countries ie. North America. (Please feel free to add). I would not have an easy time finding a friend that lived in Malaysia about 10years ago who probably had moved to UK. That being said, search capability is limited especially when the town that you lived in and/or the school that you went to is not even listed.

Talking about poking – it’s senseless and pretty dumb. I have a really hard time understanding this feature simply because I don’t get any sensation physically whatsoever. The weird thing is, after a few poking, you sort of laugh and thought, “boy, was that funny!” This reaction is almost baffling – so you don’t get any sensation of any sort but you are still tickled somehow. How fascinating! I then realized that application such as Facebook is what made these "kids" tick. Even lovely, some professors’ are agreeing to this and having to adapt. Is it a question of trend, or is it a question of being pressure to keep up with trend? If it’s really that great, why then wouldn’t educators, teachers use Facebook as a tool in contrast to webct and/or moodle (put moderation purposes aside)?

Lastly, why would I only receive about 2% feedback from the 400 some students in this class?

FYI: Account Page: Deactivate Account.

On a side note; Tobias Schonwetter wrote an interesting-made-me-smile-kinda article on Facebook.

Facebook, oh Facebook...

So here is the latest. Out of curiosity, I posted a question about Facebook in one of the Multimedia class I was in. I post the question for it's multi-purpose reasons I would say.

I have a few good response, that was it! Few, out of the at least 300-400 students in the class? It's pretty sad but then again I am being subjective considering this is a first year course with generally first year students who are mostly overwhelmed with their first year experience?

Seriously, if anyone can talk about facebook as though it is the best thing ever invented, if it's good for networking then why wouldn't teachers/professors everywhere use Facebook instead of webct or moodle? Why didn't I get much more response than expected? If Facebook is such a great tool, why can't we discuss it? What so good about Facebook?

I supposed I could share my photos online or keep it private, whichever I prefer. Do I really want too? Don't teachers find it compelling that students prefer to log in to Facebook at least 3-4 hours a day and only 5 minutes in moodle/webct?

I am baffled, I guess I have to get a Facebook account to find out?

MAMP

I am new to APPLE and even worst, I have this undying sudden urge to install wordpress on my mac. It's sort of that craving you feel and no matter what you do to rid of it, it's still there.

Anyway, I have been researching and reading a little and guess what I found? MAMP - abbreviation of: Macintosh, Apache, Mysql and PHP. I am going to install it within the next few days once I got the moving from Internic hosting done. I'm gonna miss bugging those guys!

I will post more.

ps. I know it's lame but I can't help but getting all excited about mac. Oh, btw check out the download section. If you are looking for freebies and all kind widgets, look it up. For those of you who speak German-check out Eliza! and it is built into every mac. Look for Terminal. Trust me, you will save money from seeing a life person therapist ;-)

Revolutionizing learning technique

"Revolutionize", is that even a word?
Verb: change (something) radically or fundamentally.

This semester, I have the 'luxury' of sharing an auditorium with some 300 other student. It's an awkward situation considering everyone else in the class was between their late teens to early tweens. I can't help but feeling a little overwhelmed and intimidated. Not too mention, these people are pretty loud at times.

A very good friend asked why would I consider Psychology? I thought, well it's a good start to start thinking behind the minds of these age group of kids/children and figure out what they think about learning using computer, be it online or using interactive courseware. I think, I am in the right direction. Intro to Psych 1A03 is apparently a very popular choice as an elective. We have a lot of business students in my class section. I think, there are about 30-40 of us in that class being taught by our tutor - Marija Manijlovic (lovely name btw). It seems that there were over 3000 students enrolled into Intro Psychology every year. Our instructor, Dr Joe Kim who appeared in the Globe and Mail mentioned about how he revolutionized the teaching technique at McMaster. Psych 1A03 used to be taught by Professor Dick Day, who was the famous teacher known for his "35 mins video" teaching method which is now being replaced with online tutorials. What's the difference? Well, we're still watching something of sort but with Dr Joe's method, you have a 48 hour window to access the tutorial online anywhere you can access the internet. There is also class notes through webct, even group discussions. All you need is a computer and internet connection. So, yeah, I guess that's better? This is the first semester that the Psychology Dept. change Professor Day's method. Still I have a great respect for Dr Day's video tutorial technique. He was the epiphany of Intro to Psychology.

Will this new technique work? There's only one way to find out. I pass this course.

Smart School Project

Smart School Project:
Re-engineering the learning tool of tomorrow.

This year marked the 5th year I last leave the Company that revolutionized my ideas today and change my life forever. Edutrend Pvt Ltd was the one of the pioneer Company in Malaysia to develop the Smart School Pilot Project. Being awarded the tender to create 408 English Language courseware was definitely no picnic. But the best part was working for Edutrend and being part in that noble project. Although it was at an implementation stage and everything was being experimentally done for the first time, the idea itself is not new to the world of Education.

I was first assigned to Madam Ng Guat Hong who was the Multimedia Manager. A respectable, yet powerful with charismatic persuasion, she's known to be a slave driver. But no one cared having to work extra because she is the kind of boss you would want to work for. I have great respect for her and wished that I will have the opportunity to work for her again. She has the strength of a pillar and most people in the field knew that if it weren't for her, the English project won't be the first to complete the FAT (Factory Acceptance Test) imposed by the Ministry of Education, Malaysia.



(From left to right bottom: Mdm Shandha Kesava Pillay, Mdm. Elizabeth Lim, Mdm Chua Eok Keng, Mr. Gerald, Mr. Goh (COO of HeiTech Padu Berhad), Ms Helen Sim, Cik Norhaida Mohd Yusof, Mdm Chai Hon Yin, Pn Azlina Che Ani. From left to right top: Pn Sasi Kala Nair, Mdm Molly Matthews, Ms Ho Siew Lan, Ms Margaret Choy, Mdm Ng Guat Hong)

Along with this, I also had the opportunities working with 13-15 teachers who were assigned to the firm as part of the curriculum and content development. Boy, do I ever miss them?! Yes, I have gotten myself some really good advice both professionally and personal. Not to forget the friends that became my best friend for life, which remind me I have to email them.

The Smart School project also were under development by 3 other firm - Science, Mathematics and Bahasa Malaysia, which is the national language. I really don't know the outcome of this project. I heard bits and pieces but I know it's still out there.

It is in light of all this, I've decided to start my own smart school project. It is still a long way to go but I am optimistic, the Smart School Project will be a success. As a matter of fact, it will be my thesis.

To blog or not to blog

I was going to retire from this blog thinking that I don't blog and I will never blog. I really don't have much to say and lacking of social activities and being a private person, I don't see the need to it.

Needless to say, I've decided otherwise today. I am going to write something, mostly what I wanted to post in here anyways--my thoughts on school, multimedia and how I can utilize that towards developing an interactive courseware.

So, here we go. Again.