Tenth Post: Practical 8&9

My dream holiday location is a place where I believe many people including myself would like to go to. The place I am referring to is the Land of the Rising Sun, Japan.



Being exposed to different elements of Japanese culture such as animation, music and food, I grew up thinking that Japan was a magical place where only good things could be found. As I grew up, I lost interest in Japanese culture a slight bit but I would definitely not give up a chance to go to Japan if I could. Currently at this point of time in my life, I still enjoy the occasional indulgence in Japanese food. However, Japanese animation and music still holds a huge part in my life.

If I was able to go to Japan, one of the things that I would definitely look for upon landing is the food. Although Japanese food can be found almost everywhere in the world, only their own authentic food can be found in Japan itself. Sashimi and sushi prepared by master japanese chefs are almost too difficult to find anywhere but Japan.

Being on the topic of food, I would no doubt head to Hokkaido as their seafood has been always known to be on a different level and to be able to eat the seafood dishes freshly made is definitely an opportunity that I would not want to miss.

Besides the food, Hokkaido also has very good weather (almost everywhere else does when compared to Singapore). During the summer, it is not as warm as the other parts of Japan due to the fact that it is near the sea and during winter, it gets very cold. I believe that Hokkaido is definitely a great place to experience the four seasons that Japan has. Not only is there lesser people due to its surburban location, the lack of any industries and buildings of sorts would definitely make the air there much cleaner, making the trip there somewhat more fresh and less "urban".



Another place that I would like to visit in Japan is the capital, Tokyo. As an avid lover of Japanese music, there are two places in Tokyo which I would definitely like to visit if given the chance.

The first of these two places is the Tokyo Dome. Although it is mainly a location for baseball games, many of Japan's biggest musical acts have performed there and it is considered to be a benchmark for a good music artist if they are able to perform at the Tokyo Dome.



The second place that I would like to visit in Tokyo is the Nippon Budokan. Unlike the Tokyo Dome, the Budokan is a place mainly for large scale music concerts although it was previously built for martial arts competitions. Even famous music acts from abroad have performed in the Budokan. Like the Tokyo Dome, it is a dream for Japanese music artists to one day perform at the Budokan.



The last place that I would love to visit in Japan would be the "Electronic City" of Akihabara. Akihabara is a city within Tokyo famous for its many electronic shops. In recent years, it has also been known for being the center of gaming, manga and anime culture. As I am a big fan of animation and manga, I would love to visit the different shops in Akihabara to gain a first hand experience of how much different it is from Singapore.




The website I used to gather information on Japan is http://www.japan-guide.com

The different evaluation criteria I used to evaluate the webite are as follows:

Purpose: As my purpose was to find a website that provides relevant and detailed information on travelling in Japan, the website served the purpose as I was able to gain the relevant information I needed. Not only that, the website has clearly stated purposes at http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e440.html which states that their purpose is to "deliver comprehensive, up to date information on travelling and living in Japan, first-hand from Japan."

Coverage: As I wanted information on the different cities in Japan, it was important that relevant as well as plenty detailed information was required. The site provided very detailed information for each of the different states as well as the different sight seeing options you could find. This is definitely very good information as it gave me an idea on how the travelling would occur for the different parts of Japan.

Currency: The website provides up to date information on the different travel itineraries for different travel plans as well as new places of interest that have come up. For a person interested in travelling, the frequent updating of information on this site is definitely something that is very important.

Accessibility: This site is very easily found on search engines as key words such as "Japan Guide" can easily allow the site to be returned as a relevant link. As such, people will not worry on losing the site as it can be found very easily.

Presentation: The website is organised well and people will definitely find it easy to surf in the website as the different information are divided into different categories such as food, sight seeing and many more.

Ninth Post: Practical 7

For the lesson on Practical 7, the first task we were handed was to read an article on citizen journalism and basically write down what we thought it was. As everyone's opinions were gathered on the white board, it was then used for the second part of the lesson which was to evaluate STOMP (www.stomp.com.sg) as a citizen journalism site and whether, by following the three guidelines made which were based on our opinions, it was a site which promoted citizen journalism well. In the end, the various groups formed for the activity gave somewhat similar opinions about the evaluation but provided different materials for the content which made it very interesting and funny as well.

Well, for the reflection, the criteria for evaluation that I would use to evaluate STOMP would be, Purpose, Coverage and Usability. Coverage is important to use as a criteria for evaluation on a citizen journalism site like STOMP as the articles and opinions submitted by the many users would cover a very wide range of topics. Also, as STOMP is a citizen journalism website, people would also post about things happening in their daily lives. With this many things to post about, there would no doubt be an abundance of stuff to find in STOMP and therefore, it would successfully cover the criteria of Coverage.

What is the purpose of STOMP? Well, as a citizen journalism website, it should no doubt be allowing of users to contribute articles and comments to be one of them. The criteria of Purpose used to evaluate STOMP is to ensure that it fits the bill to be a successful citizen journalism site. With all the different articles and comments that fit the criteria of Coverage, the Purpose of the site is definitely covered as well as people are allowed to post their articles for a definitive purpose of sharing their experiences as well as feelings with the people who visit the site.

Usability is also used to evaluate STOMP as it is important for a user-based site to be easy to handle. Even if the system is the best in the world, poor usability would deter people from using the system to submit their articles and stuff as they would have no idea on what to do in order for it to run. On this basis, STOMP definitely covers usability well as their site is well setup and allows users to go to different sections without much hassle.

From this activity, I have learnt that it is important for different websites to be evaluated thoroughly as it would give myself as well as other visitors of the site a better idea on what the site has to offer and whether it fulfills what it has said to provide. As such, the different evaluation criteria definitely serves a very large purpose as well as a wide range of assessing any given site and whether it is a good one.

Sharing views on wiki is no doubt an activity that is enjoyable as you get to pen down your thoughts on a single subject and share your opinion with others. It is more enjoyable to read through what others have written though, as you get to get a small idea on how their mindset is different from yours based on the same subject. Not only that, you would also get to learn more from what you have missed and others have pointed out. Wiki-sharing is therefore, a very meaningful activity which should be done more often so as to bring out the relevant thinking skill in everyone, as well as to ensure that everyone gets to share and no one is left out.

Eighth Post: Tutorial 5&6

It was yet another week of e-learning as Tutorial 5 & 6 were given to us. It was basically a continuation of the work we were given prior the holidays so that we could complete it during our break from school. What were were supposed to do was to create our own wiki entry, as a class, on the topic of "Discuss the ethics of using the internet to advocate issues related to homosexuality".

For the class, it was an important start of something new that we have never done before. We had worked on our own independent research topic's wiki with other people who were also doing the same topic but we had never come together as a class for a project such as this. As such, it was a real significant learning experience as we were able to interact with each other in various ways (e.g. volunteering for the different parts to be done) in order to proceed with the task.

As an individual contributor, I have learnt that definitely no one can complete such a major task on his own and it is with cooperation with others that our research will be able to be completed. As such, we managed to help each other by posting and editing the different additions by others so as to make the entries more meaningful and relevant. Also, it is important that we, as individuals, be responsible for our own sections as that would be the only way that the task would be able to completed on the whole, with the contribution from others as well. That is why our own small individual contributions would add up to be a great one in the end.

The most challenging part of the project was to wait for the entries of my classmates so as to ensure that they managed to complete what they had to do. It was not so much of impatience but rather worry on whether they would be able to source for the required information. But as time passed, more and more began to add in their input and that rather dulled my worries and made me feel more confident that we would be able to complete it.

For any other class who want to make their own wiki project, it is important that they sit down as a whole and discuss the important issues before hand such as methods of contact, different sections to be done by different people and such. That way, that will solve any communication barriers they might face during the project as they would be able to contact each other for help.

Would I use wiki for research in my own diplomas? Definitely. Like any other search facility, wiki does provide alot of information especially since it is done by the public, for the public and many others would correct any errors they find from the entries from others, making it a somewhat "trusty" source for research. However, wiki alone would not be enough as reference to other articles and materials from different search facilities would enhance the researching.

Seventh Post: Practical 6

For practical 3, we were tasked to make use of the "invisible web" and compare the effectiveness of it in comparison to using the usual search engines and meta search engines. To be honest, I really think that searching via the invisible web really got me more relevant results than the other search facilities as I did not have to filter through any unwanted pages. Not only that, the content of the results were also mostly, although some were similar to previous results, very detailed and gave plenty of information on my topic on cyberbullying. This could be due to the fact that the invisible web contains many specific databases ranging from academics to medicine to science which makes the searching easier as the user can define the database that he wants to search within in order to make the returns more relevant.

I would definitely use the invisible web as one of the various search facilities when I do research within my own diploma in the future as it is a very useful tool to extract information from, especially information that cannot be found on normal public search facilities. With the use of invisible web along with other search facilities, there is no doubt that the information needed would be easier to search for and any reports that need to be done would probably be completed with ease due to the amount of research tools available.

Another part of practical 3 was collaborating via the eir rawkz wiki page. We were supposed to work on our research topic, along with others who were doing the same topic as well. Although I did not manage to provide much information into the wiki space during the lesson itself, I could see the importance of working with others.

Firstly, the information that one missed out could be included by others as shown by the amount of updates by different people. Next, collaborating with others makes the task less tedious as you do not have to do everything by yourself. Instead, various people can do different parts to make it more varied. It was also interesting to see how others formatted their own area of the page to make it more personalised and interesting. All in all, cooperation with others in terms of collating information on the research topic definitely makes the process a whole lot more fun and easy :)

Sixth Post: T1&2

As it was e-learning on that week, we did not meet up together as a class to go through with our cds. Instead, we were given the freedom to participate in the activities that we were supposed to do, online. We were asked to login to ole blackboard to participate in a discussion with the topic being, "Briefly explain how internet enriched your social and academic life. Illustrate your answer using 2 internet resources you had learnt in EIR. For research purposes,do you think internet can replace the existing hard-copy materials available in the world today? Why?"

The topic stimulated my thinking as I always took the internet for granted but never really gave it much thought to how much it has helped me in my life. With that aside, posting on the blackboard was a really enriching experience as I have never used blackboard before and I feel that it really has a good system as we can do it at the comfort of our own homes instead of attending classes physically. Indeed, posting on blackboard was a somewhat liberal experience as we were able to write down what we thought on the topic as well as comment on others' opinions on the topic. I wouldn't really say that it is better than face to face conversations but it is a good alternative, especially for e-learning.

As mentioned above, comparing to face to face conversations, posting online has almost the same benefits as we are able to comment and give others our thoughts on what they think. However, posting online allows us, in my opinion, to be somewhat more brave in our responses and it would allow us to give better productive comments as compared to face to face conversations as we might be too timid to speak up. Also, to reiterate the point, online discussions are definitely more convenient as it can be done almost anywhere, as long as you have a desktop or laptop or some wifi gadget.

All in all, the online activity provided was definitely meaningful as it allowed us to generate our thoughts on what we might take for granted in our daily lives. Besides that, a change from our usual classroom activities was no doubt a fresh one as e-learning gave us the chance to experience a new dimension of classroom activities, out of the classroom.