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.