Where is your username registered?

Have you ever wondered if someone out there either has the same name as or is posing off as you?

I happened to stumble upon this website, Where is your username registered?, that gives a really insightful look into who on earth is using your favorite account id on some other website that you have never registered for.

That said, it may not be possible to get those who have taken your ideal id charged with identity theft. Nonetheless, it serves as a good reminder to "chope" your place in cyberspace. If not for yourself, at least you can make sure that your friends won't get conned by a clone of yours. Cheers!

a wix experiment... in progress

I was trying to rebuild my site on wix... looks good but am having problems with the rss feeds and cbox... here's a preview below.

Wix.com

speeding up my eee pc

For the sake of privacy (as I am tired of having strange unknowns follow me on twitter), I have disabled the twitter feed in my previous post.

Recently, having completed all my assignments, I have been fiddling quite a bit with my eee pc in a bid to improve its performance without actually reformatting it. The previous additional and removal of several programs for work purposes, coupled with inherent flaws in win xp has left my eee pc rather weak with slow boot and shutdown times.

After trying several alternatives, here's what I have tested and proven to be useful:

Regedit
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1590&page=32
Follow the instructions and edit your registry so that win xp kills applications fast when shutting down.

Bootvis
http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-5034622.html
Run a boot+trace using Bootvis so as to optimize your boot time. Typically, this method can shave about 10-20% of your boot time.

Have fewer start-up programs
Adobe Reader and Windows Live Messenger are some programs that you probably won't need at start-up, so strike them off your startup list.

Modifying your desktop appearance
Turn off large icons, use windows classic, disable themes... just be old school and forget aesthetics.

Twittering...

I haven't been updating in quite a while because I feel uninspired and am being buried under homework (by the way, this is NOT retribution). It's easier to twitter and given my latest twitterfox add-on, I may just twitter from Firefox as my way of updating you. See below. All you have to do to see me micro-blogging without ever updating my blogger blog is to keep refreshing this page for the twitter updates below.

REMOVED by owner
I have since decided to remove the twitter updates for privacy reasons... but you can still follow me by joining twitter. :)

Foxkeh, the Firefox mascot!

Foxkeh is the mascot of Mozilla Firefox, which I think is a much better and far more customizable browser than Internet Explorer. For websites which refuse to yield to (i.e. load properly in) Firefox, there is always a magical add-on called IE tab. Cheers!

部落格宣言

有人说我很少更新部落格，叫他们快闷坏了。

在互联网方兴未艾，web 2.0科技仍未诞生的时候，人们如果要记录生活点滴，不外乎拍傻瓜相（傻瓜相机拍的相片），偶尔写写日记，纯粹是个人作息，自娱却未必娱人。或许曾经经历过那个年代的朋友们，还会怀念发泄给自己听，无需潜意识过滤千百种每日记事可能引发的突发状况的单纯岁月。

如今，部落格或许是你们宣泄的平台，或许是你们交友的管道，但绝对不是私密的堡垒，也不是捍卫个人主权的地域。所以，曾几何时，因为一些原因，我觉得，我已经失去了blog的动机。更何况，如果我的生活就是那么平淡和自我的话，又怎么可能和日新月异的娱乐新闻和社论版相媲美呢？

如果觉得一个人不论写什么、怎么写，都能引起兴趣，那充其量只是窥探隐私的心作祟。有人说过，多达八成的商业秘密是在公用厕所里头泄漏的。就算在最封闭，最隔离的空间里头，只要有人，就会有八卦。无心插柳柳成荫，无意说语语成谶。后面那句是我补上的。

我当然不是说浏览和经营部落格是种罪过，因为我也脱不了这宗指控。只不过，对于尤其敏感的行业而言，部落格像是一个露天厕所。使用者自卫、自危。

（原本要介绍我的新科技玩具。。。怎么写了一大堆不相干的。。。）

还有一个月的课

实习完后，回到xx学院自己当学生，觉得生活和工作的节奏都很难调整回来。倒不是课业多得可怕，只是两个环境的步伐就是不一样啊。。。

日子过得再怎么浑浑噩噩，也过了将近两个月了。很快就会收到到学校报到的通知了。不知能否如愿？

无论如何，人生有时候就是事与愿违。只能期望对得起应该对得起的人，希望不会被人心和人性的软弱所吞噬。

Akeelah and the Bee

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond imagination.
It is our light more than our darkness which scares us.
We ask ourselves - who are we to be brilliant, beautiful,talented, and fabulous.
But honestly, who are you to not be so?

Help me win a free wiki!

I am trying to win a free upgrade to my wiki, which sadly was used only for reflective purposes during my teaching practice. Hopefully, if I do win the free upgrade I'll use my wiki more constructively. : )

华文学习资源

偶尔会找些网上的学习资源给你们,详情请见tagboard，谢谢！

Forgiveness

Humanly speaking, forgiveness is easy to receive but hard to give.
Forgiving is an uphill struggle that will require God's help.

凝视胡一刀：《雪山飞狐》的多元复调（教育学院作业）

以下是我自觉比较满意的一篇小作业，特此和各位分享：

《雪山飞狐》中有一位终究没有出场的人物——胡一刀。虽然《雪山飞狐》结局推向一个困境：“胡斐到底能不能平安归来和她相会，他这一刀到底劈下去还是不劈？”，困境牵涉的是出场最多的胡斐、苗人凤、苗若兰三人，可是金庸在《飞狐外传》后记中却称胡一刀为《雪山飞狐》的“真正主角”。虽然胡一刀仅仅在第四回、第五回中，通过小说人物宝树、苗若兰、平阿四先后的叙述显现，可是他却因为成了凝视（gaze）的对象、成了权利论争（contestation of power）的中心，而格外突出。

胡一刀，是胡斐的亡父。原本要化解胡苗范田四家的百年宿怨，却阴差阳错还是和同样义薄云天的苗人凤比武争斗。最后死于后者刀下，却是因为宝树和尚（当年的跌打大夫阎基）心怀不轨，在苗人凤的刀锋上抹了毒。

二十七年前这段因缘，就通过了多重观点叙述，而且观点先贬后褒。一个粗言秽语的假和尚、一位秀外慧中的少女、一个脸带疮疤的仆人，三个再不能不同的人都是“雪山”（辽东乌兰山玉笔峰）上山庄的远客，分别在这一日于这个场景里叙述了自己对胡一刀的不同认识，尤其从称谓可见一斑。宝树先开始讲述当时目击胡一刀的种种，不仅不屑地称他为“恶鬼”，“早知道不是好人”，还不合情理地说胡一刀被苗人凤点中大穴，笑谈片刻后，“两人在桌边一口气干了三碗烧酒。胡一刀哈哈一笑，提起刀往自己颈中一抹，咽喉中喷出鲜血，伏桌而死。”然后，苗若兰受父亲苗人凤耳濡目染，对“胡一刀伯伯”倒有几分敬重神往，还说胡一刀“逝世的情景，却与大师（宝树）所说大不相同”，其实是中了剧毒身亡，“胡伯母”还开解苗人凤说：“咱们家大哥固然不知刀上有毒，谅你也不知情，否则这等下流兵刃，你两人怎能用它？”平阿四后来更道破当年他的救命恩人“胡大爷”其实交待阎基转告苗人凤四家恩怨、杀父之仇、闯王宝藏三件事，以化解胡苗两家误会，阎基非但没有据实相告，还在刀锋上抹毒。

《雪山飞狐》固然是一部第三人称的小说，叙述的内容包括以上的人物、情节，可是这些人物被叙述者叙述的同时，也在叙述胡一刀的事迹还有过去的种种。这不仅仅是多重的叙述结构，也是多元复调（polyphony）。巴赫金（Bakhtin）谈陀思妥耶夫斯基（Dostoevsky）小说时，就以复调作为喻说（trope），并解释“复调”为多把独立的、平等的声音，各为主体，并不为作者的意识形态服务。《雪山飞狐》第四回、第五回论胡一刀的三把声音确实如此，因为它们都从该人物的观点出发，带有人物的语言特色。这时候，三把声音也跳脱了全知观点，个别从自知观点叙述胡一刀。

复调，也因此有戏剧张力。这两回侧写胡一刀，不但全知观点缺席和运用大量的人物对话，还把人物叙述胡一刀的时间和场景限制于这一天和雪山上的山庄。高度集中的人物、故事、场景，通过个性化的对话演示的冲突，营造了戏剧性的张力。山庄，是舞台。文本，是元舞台。读者凝视小说人物，小说出场人物凝视未出场人物。被叙述的胡一刀，是各个主体凝视的客体。他被凝视，如福柯（Foucault）的临床凝视（clinical gaze）和全视（panoptical gaze）所形容的那样，看者看被看者，而拥有权力（power）和知识（knowledge）。看者借由看胡一刀，展开了权利和知识或真理的拉锯。看到“真”的胡一刀、“真的”看到胡一刀，也就掌握了话语权利（discursive power），也就为看者的那一套“真”相正名。女性主义者劳拉.穆维（Laura Mulvey）的名篇《视觉快感与叙事电影》 （Visual pleasure and narrative cinema）就从弗洛伊德（Freud）心理分析的角度，总结出叙事电影中男性看、女性被看也被客体化的观点。可《雪山飞狐》写胡一刀的章节颠覆了这样的逻辑。尽管读者最后能从阅读文本归结出胡一刀是豪迈粗犷的大侠，胡一刀却也是双重受害者——在故事中被害、在叙述中也必须被误解方才被了解。

这是《雪山飞狐》的另一反讽。胡斐至少还能和困境面对面，而上一代的胡一刀，只能被误会所困，由误会所述。一代豪侠，纵使武功难逢敌手，纵使正直仁义，最后还是保不了自己的命、保护不了妻儿、也连为自己说话的机会都没有。

（1383字）

参考书目

金庸，《雪山飞狐》。见《金庸武侠全集评点版》（中国：文化艺术出版社，1998）。
Huang, K. (2008). Looking at Hong Kong: Jin Yong's Return of the Condor Heroes and Chang Cheh's Brave Archer and His Mate. MA diss, National University of Singapore.
Mulvey, L. (1993). Visual pleasure and narrative cinema. In Contemporary film theory, ed. Antony Easthope. London; New York: Longman, pp. 111-124.
Wellek, R. (1980). Bakhtin's view of Dostoevsky: “polyphony” and “carnivalesque.” Dostoevsky Studies, Vol. 1. Retrieved 20 May, 2008, from http://www.utoronto.ca/tsq/DS/01/031.shtml

小便条（写作时切勿参考我的格式！）

亲爱的小朋友们：

虽然只是短短一个多星期没见，可是好像已经过了许久。岁月如梭，似乎很能形容快乐的时光如何飞逝呢。
最近看来有不少老师也因为有要务在身，没能给你们上课，相信他们心里也时时牵挂着你们的进度。你们可要好好地利用他们不在的时间，为即将来临的考试未雨绸缪。
我接下来何去何从，相信一两个月内就知道了。希望有机会回到你们的学校，看你们开开心心地上学，和你们吃午餐jalan-jalan。

黄老师

Offense will come...

I have recently been reading a book about offenses, no offense. Upon returning to my current institute of study I realize that there is still rooted in my heart a deep sense that I have been and still am offended, to the extent that I pretend that nothing is wrong yet refuse to re-establish contact with those whom I shall euphemistically title "the rest." Even if my teaching practice were a honeymoon that foreshadows none of the toil that will await my return, should it be granted, I still miss my TP school very much.

I think (but intellect does not suffice to describe many human maladies) that my pride is why things have gone wrong with me remaining offended after the offense.

It will only do me harm to nurse the offense further with a damning recollection of offenses. So hence I shall cease.

Teaching Practice Statistics

This is a long post that will perhaps rival any auditor's report...

Teaching Practice Figures
Number of weeks spent: 10
Number of Hacks sweets consumed: lost count
Number of Wangwang consumed: lost count
Number of Roches consumed: 24 x 3 = 72 :)
Number of students taught: 34 + 18 = 52 =))
Number of serial absentees: 2-5, depending on the weather and day of the week
Number who told me that they improved: 3
Number of KFC trips: 3
Number of trips to kopitiam behind school: lost count
Number of CTs: 3 > 2
Number of Relief Periods: lost count
Number of classes allocated: 2 + 1

There are some things in life that cannot be quantified nor captured in material form. In the meantime, make do with these pictures which try to convey my sense of gratitude for your friendship all these weeks:

Objects of Recollection (done very quickly on Photobucket, apologies if some pictures were left out because of connection errors while dragging and dropping):

Last Class with 3N23 :)

TBC.

The most memorable moments were getting a tin of Cesar beef (on top of a lovely photo frame) and Ms Ker barging in with the CLB students. Malu-ating... the farewell for this class turned out quite differently from that for the 1E2s, and candy snatching, which was a prevalent sight in earlier days, reprised itself in multifaceted ways.

Lots of absentees, which really is a pity.

A big thank you nonetheless to everyone!

Last Class with 1E2 today :)

Will continue on this after I'm back from the toilet/ am free...
Thank you class!


I was going through the stack of feedback forms from 1E2... 6 students did not submit theirs and 1 submitted his/hers without a name... Anyway, I really enjoyed reading all your comments, though I must say that there are a lot of cuo4 zi4 (but for our common sake, I shall spare all of you the labour of doing correction for this.) There are some common themes that emerged - my too small voice, poor classroom noise management, etc. I agree that I must work on these.

Glad that a number of you enjoyed my less than desirable guitar playing and singing... I will be making a fool of myself for your pleasure again tomorrow, so stay tuned!

An Honest Self-Appraisal

I've just finished reading one student's reflection on my teaching. I must say that, rather than feel upset about her candid remark that my CT does a better job than I do, I feel exactly the same way. Then again, the purpose of Teaching Practice is not to overtake those who have gone before me. Rather, it is to learn from them, but I fear that my training is far from complete - there will still be trials and new disciplines to master in the years ahead, as it is for Padawans training to become Jedis.

I also have this trembling sense that I am still struggling to find my identity in this profession. I am as confused as ever albeit more certain about certain certainties. Then there is the uncertainty surrounding my posting that will not lift until months later. Can I shape an identity despite shifting environments, or will/must the way I project myself depend on the habitat I am in?

The Third Last Class, and counting...

Today marked my third last class with 1E and 3N, as well as my first solo invigilation attempt in this institution. It was with a bittersweet taste that I conducted class amidst their usual clamour of organized disarray. With just 4 more days to go before the end of my Teaching Practice, not merely do the matter of grades loom ahead of me, but also ambivalence towards whether I will be missed.

Catharsis and Updates

What level of teacher-sharing on a blog is considered ethical and not self-endangering?
The Twitter updates below my cbox are what you should really read because it may be updated more often than my blog, usually with cryptic one-liners. Thanks!

I construct my own fonts online

http://fontstruct.fontshop.com/

Fontstruct lets you build your own font from scratch using preloaded parts. It's like Lego for fontbuilding, minus the price tag and the technical challenges.

Pre-Teaching Practicum Notes

Translated from my Chinese transcript:

TP

• Number of teaching periods should be reasonable (16-20).


• Should assist in and observe CCA activities but not act as I/C.

TP Portfolio

• It should include lesson observation notes, self-reflection, comments from CTs and NSC, lesson plans and samples of marked assignments.

Observations in Week 1

• You can also request to observe classes by other teachers and in other subject areas. Take the initiative. These can help you in classroom management.


• Take observation notes and file them in your TP portfolio.

Lesson plans

• 5 detailed lesson plans per week. For TP purposes, one lesson plan should cover one period's worth of class. For consecutive periods, you can write 1 or 2 lesson plans, depending on the learning objectives for that class.


• Mail NSC the lesson plan at least a day before observation.


• Lesson plans are compulsory for observation periods.


• Lesson plans for other periods that fall outside the 5 are optional, subject to CT's requirements.


• Learning objectives: should be specific, measurable, clear and workable.


• Activities: should be relevant to learning objectives.


• Every lesson should have a clear introduction and conclusion.


• Attach to your lesson plan materials and resources that you will use.

Execution

• Note time management. Are you able to execute your lesson according to the schedule?


• You can include notes on foreseeable reactions from the students. Be prepared for contingencies such as equipment breakdown.


• Group work can be implemented as long as it is feasible and effective for the learning objectives defined. It has to be carried out tactfully. Details like the mechanics of grouping should be considered.


• Use differentiated instruction.


• Have activities that students will accept and which meet your objectives.


• Give clear instructions and use appropriate teacher talk. Note enunciation.


• Minimize interference. Use a portable mic if necessary.


• Use concrete classroom management measures, but discuss them first with your CT. Adopt his/her class rules for starters.

Observations

• NSC will observe best class and average class.

Tips

• Are students "naughty" in every class or only during Chinese?


• Establish your personal image. Use both the carrot and the stick.


• The students' interests should be your priority.


• Remember students' names, especially of "problem students."


• Use the Premack principle in conjunction with alternative teaching methods such as games and student-proposed activities like karaoke etc. You can also apply peer pressure this way to restrain aberrant students.


• Put your heart into your lessons and make your lesson vibrant.


• Be joyful and find satisfaction in your work. Don't let defeatism seep in.

Important notes!

• Send timetable to NSC and print a copy.


• Be present when NSC visits school to meet P, SCM and CT. (week of 23/6)


• 1st observation: 2nd week of July


• 2nd observation: August


• There will be a 1-2 week gap between the 1st and 2nd observation.


• Be proactive, humble, enthusiastic and willing to change.


• Evaluate yourself after each observation.

Googling myself

I googled myself to get some information for my resume. In the process, I discovered that this site has been indexed by Google and so is its mirror. For some reason I found weird Google ads on my blog, but couldn't find them when performing site administration. Anyway, they are gone now... weird!

More writing samples from me that I never knew existed:

RJC2000PRELIMQ4

“The Internet’s early communalist enthusiasm for open-source software-which is free, unpatented and uncopyrighted- has now given way to a land-grab. Internet companies are rushing to patent their ideas.” The Economist, July 2000

• 
  
  a. Explain the likely market structure which economic theory suggests would exist in industries where patents are prevalent. [12]
  
  

• 
  
  b. To what extent is the above trend bad for the consumer? [13]
  
  

Part a

Economic theory suggests that an oligopolistic market is likely to exist in industries where patents are prevalent. An oligopoly is a market structure that falls between a monopoly and a monopolistic market, and it refers to the situation where a market is dominated by a small number of large powerful firms.

Like in the case of internet companies rushing to patent their ideas, the oligopolistic market is characterised by barriers to entry as well as interdependence of firms. Barriers to entry may be natural or artificial. Patents are a form of barriers to entry as they create secrecy of knowledge characteristic of oligopolistic firms producing differentiated products. Patents offer legal protection.

Other barriers to entry include brand loyalty. For example, the established real player and winamp software have a large following and are hyperlinked to many other websites, and thus a new software may need great innovation and first impact to rival the number of downloads these famous names receive.

Also the extensive research and product development may raise already high start up costs in industries where patents are prevalent. For example, the software counter-strike allows internet gaming and LAN games, and has new betas published frequently, and thus other companies will need to have equal, if not better, variety and quality in their software to rival that.

Besides that, in an oligopolistic market structure, products are differentiated, and secrecy is generally maintained. Generally, non-price competition is adopted and supernormal profit is made. For example, internet companies like SingNet and Pacific Internet have long avoided price competition, until StarHub introduced free access. Pacific Internet decides to attract eyeball s to avoid direct price competition.

An important characteristic of an oligopoly, here patents are prevalent, is the interdependence of firms. This may well lead to the formation of a formal collusion (a cartel e.g. Organisation of petroleum exporting countries OPEC) or a tacit collusion. Firms tend to adopt similar pricing, advertising and marketing strategies. For instance, both winamp and real player offer a free download with the option of purchasing a better full version of its product online. Due to tacit collusion, firms are likely to base prices on barometric firm price leadership – following the most representative firm at a particular point in time, or base prices on dominant firm price leadership – i.e. a firm that has the greatest influence sets the price and all others follow.

In an oligopoly there exists price stickiness, which may be explained by a kinked demand curve, showing that if a firm raises its prices, then other firms are not likely to follow but if prices fall then other firms are likely to follow suit. However, this does not explain why the kink occurs or why the initial price was determined such. The costs of updating the WebPages etc. and other menu costs incurred may explain price stickiness.

Part b

To some extent, the evolution of the internet into an oligopolistic market is bad for the consumer. First, an oligopolistic market relies heavily on advertising in a bid to avoid non-price competition. Advertising in itself may be a form of directly unproductive activity, and therefore is a misallocation of resources. Furthermore, advertising may be a form of irritant to consumers. For instance, pop-up advertisements that appear when one accesses a certain website. Advertising costs may be passed on to consumers indirectly too.

Second, the rise of oligopolies in an internet market where patents are prevalent may lead to the presence of X-inefficiency such as a breakdowns in a Hotmail account etc. X-inefficiency arises when the firm gets bigger.

Third, this above trend may increase the difficulty of new firms breaking into the market due to the higher fixed costs, the patented designs and so on. For instance, a young entrepreneur may find it expensive to start a new internet firm and patent his designs, when his competitors may include Netscape and Microsoft. Thus, innovation is limited and consumers may lose new choices.

However, this trend of moving towards an oligopolistic internet market may not be entirely bad, for instance, large oligopolistic firms earning supernormal profits will have funds for research and development to upgrade their existing products, and these improvements in product quality will be passed on to consumers.

Also, oligopolies provide a range of differentiated products for consumers to choose from. For example, one may choose a Netscape or Internet Explorer browser and equip it with a variety of other supporting software such as macromedia etc.

Third, oligopolies earn supernormal profits and the copyrights and popularity of existing firms may encourage entrepreneurial spirit t break into these contestable markets. For example, the establishment of meshworkz was encouraged by the boom of internet gaming and the underutilisation of internet gaming capabilities. Such new firms will benefit consumers by providing them with greater variety of choices.

However, considering that the oligopolistic market is potentially allocatively inefficient as price may exceed marginal cost, thus creaming off consumer surplus and leading to welfare loss, it may be seen that the trend of internet companies rushing to patent their ideas is no perfect blessing. An oligopolistic market, like any other market structure, has its good and bad.

Huang Kailin

A03A

19/25

Notes on DISC

I am a high DC, which explains why I do not like having no options. When dealing with a D-student, give them options, even when the final outcome is likely to be the same as what you have predetermined.

For instance, instead of, "We are going to work on this topic," say, "We have a list of topics, and this is the one that the majority have chosen to work on."

Discovery of the Day: MediaFire

http://www.mediafire.com/

Free file hosting... looks simpler than Yousendit!

Education Studies Elective

This is the one I am interested in. I quote from the Jan 2008 PGDE(S) Handbook:

QED581 Differentiating Instruction for Able Learners
The promise of an ability-driven curriculum and that all students will learn is mere rhetoric if teachers lack deep knowledge of learners and the pedagogical skills necessary to help learners of diverse abilities. There is a need to help teachers better understand the traits and needs of high-ability learners and to make needs-based curricular modifications and
instructional decisions in mixed-ability settings. This course aims to help student teachers develop an overview of the conceptions of giftedness,
understand the psychology and needs of the precocious student and develop appropriate, differentiated approaches to meet the learning needs
of these students in mainstream classrooms.

My other choices, in order of preference, are:

QED560 Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL)
QED576 Developing Creativity in the Secondary Classroom
QED582 Teaching Students with Behavioural and Learning Problems

Is It Okay To Be A Technologically Illiterate Teacher?

Read the full post here. This is the winner of the most influential post at the 2007 Edublog Awards. One of his key arguments is that it does not matter if you are a digital native or immigrant - you must be technologically literate to teach.

Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Strongly recommended by my NIE senior and NUS peer, especially for those who will be going to neighbourhood schools, and who may be interested in other uses of drama in teaching.

Giftedness

Taken from Wikipedia:

Generally, gifted individuals learn more quickly, deeply, and broadly
than their peers. Gifted children may learn to read early and operate
at the same level as normal children who are significantly older. The
gifted tend to demonstrate high reasoning ability, creativity,
curiosity, a large vocabulary,
and an excellent memory. They often can master concepts with few
repetitions. They may also be physically and emotionally sensitive, perfectionistic, and may frequently question authority.
Some have trouble relating to or communicating with their peers because
of disparities in vocabulary size (especially in the early years),
personality, and interests. As children, they may prefer the company of
older children or adults.

Reflection on the course that has concluded, but not the last you’d hear from me

Form-filling...

SCLP-related

What were some major changes to my SCLP?

The removal of our introductory video and changes to our web header image.

Why did those changes take place?

To prevent ourselves from inadvertently distributing copyrighted material.

How did I contribute to my group's SCLP?

Some project ideas. Did the website (using edublogs' templates) and its header (using GIMP), the spliced introductory video and the titles on the demonstration video (using misbehaving Windows Movie Maker), flubbed role-play in one-half of the demo, the links and anchors on the pages... and I forgot or rather never bothered to test our page on Internet Explorer all this while! The change has been made on our online site for progeny... but in line with my personal policy, all pages, SCLP or not, should be best viewed in Firefox. Get IE tab to resolve IE/FF conflicts.

What did I learn as a result of creating an SCLP?

I revisited  Scrapbook with joy. Actually, Guilian did help clarify a lot of my ideas on scaffolding and the assessment process. So yes, I think one of the strengths of our SCLP is the excellent scaffolding. Yay. And of course, lots of practice with Google Docs, GIMP, html and pretending to be a student.

What did I learn from QED522? (What was the first thing that popped into my mind?)

I've wanted to raise this question for sometime now... but I always thought Dr. Black was the one killed, and Colonel Mustard... he's just one of the usual suspects.

Student-centered learning will not kill the teacher. I actually think it gives teachers more room to play and students more motivation to learn. From the mercenary point of view, I have learned pedagogical approaches and received/created opportunities to polish rusty ICT skills, so my list of skills has expanded.

I  am still thinking unashamedly about free laptops...

Almost final, plus a note on valedictorians

It's almost the day of submission and I feel compelled to write a redundant post to remind myself of things that need to be wrapped up.

1. Capture my SCLP with a depth of 2, so that comments on "student" blogs will be saved as well for offline viewing.


2. Export the captured SCLP package to another directory for checks before burning it onto a disc.


3. Finish up our final storyboard on GIMP.


4. Export our lesson plan and clean it up for burning.


5. BURN!

I just checked the results of the NIE Valedictorian poll... a grand total of 45 votes were cast, making the outcome very representative, but the graduating cohort will have their valedictorians no less. The tribe has spoken, kind of. It just makes me doubt increasingly how well online polls that carry no perceivable benefit for the voter can work. Behavior modification does take some time and study to function in full bloom.

Maybe it’s good to sell fish once in a while?

This post has nothing to do with selling fish, actually, but I figured that it will probably have a total readership of about 3-4 people. Enough of the idiosyncratic crap that I think I understand.
How to export a web-based SCLP for offline viewing in your browser (instead of printing everything to PDF for further painstaking annotation) - my way:

1. You must have Mozilla Firefox installed. (Switch if you are using IE.)


2. Find and install a lovely extension called Scrapbook. Restart FF to complete installation.


3. Go to the homepage of your web-based SCLP, then right-mouse-click, "Capture Page as..."


4. To capture not just the page you are on but also the pages that it links to, and the pages those pages link to, you need to select a Capture Depth of at least 1.


5. Wait for it to save, grab a Kit Kat, have a coffee, or go for a toilet break.


6. Check your Scrapbook folder for the saved package. If saved correctly, the links will be relative, so they should work offline as they do online.


7. Smile to yourself, use Scrapbook to annotate the saved pages if you like, then burn a copy for submission.

*NEW* Additional instructions to myself:

• Give the folder an English name.


• Locate the file named "index" to start browsing offline.

Kanji of the Year, Word of the Term, Streams of Consciousness

Just like the Japanese pick the Kanji of the Year every year since 1995, I wonder what would be our Chinese or English word of the term?

Looking up the etymology of "overkill..."

What would happen when, days/weeks/months/terms/semesters/academic years/years/decades from now, a student/colleague/peer/superior/anybody stumbles on/finds/is directed to this blog? Will this change anything or make anything or do anything or be anything? If I have the intention of retaining this learning/sharing blog as a teaching/sharing blog, how will it evolve?

I need to go to the toilet, and that is a sensitive topic in some schools, where you need to take a short/long journey to another washroom, which is as good as announcing that you have business to do. Better still than students, whose honest and deceptive requests for toilet breaks may all be ignored as excuses for wanting time out in the open, not time-out. Better that than body damaging restraint.

Better direct than convoluted maneuvers, or direction perceived as convolution. A blog is more bulimic than it is anorexic, for whatever goes in is regurgitated, perhaps not in their original glory but rather in a perverse re-rendering of its contents, toxic or otherwise. An edublog is medicated, sanitized, sanctioned. Foucault: the medical gaze is dehumanizing, separating body from soul in its regard. And we live in a panopticon.

Cathartic catharsis. The beginning of the end, and the end of the beginning.

Metacognition, and the beginning of the end

Just a week to go before QED522 concludes in all its splendor. Some thoughts, as honestly as I can represent them, before my own subjectivity subjects my consciousness to oblivion.

Copyright: I guess working in the Writing Centre only acquainted me with how not to plagiarize in a written paper, but Prof Tan's comments on possible copyright infringement in our SCLP were really a positive eye-opener. Functioning under the paper-citation logic, I had thought that it would be okay to create a montage of clips as long as the sources are cited somewhere. After all, the way the montage is put together is "original." However, this is only half right. We were alerted by Prof Tan to the fact that putting such a video up online will still make us liable of distributing copyrighted content.

I am sincerely grateful for his helpful firefighting suggestion that we show our painful Windows Movie Maker product in an offline class instead. For a while the thought of possibly having to kill my video horrified me.

Affordances: Yes, it makes sense to edit an image with software like GIMP or Photoshop. I was so thankful that I used many layers in the source file for our original header image, which contains copyrighted images. With the help of exactly two mouse clicks, the potential infringements are now out of sight, and I have added some new design elements adapted from free fonts and royalty-free images, without killing the healthy bits of my header. Cheers!

Polling: Private opinions made public beneath the guise of confidentiality. Democracy, the allusive ideal to attain to, almost always a test of how well publicity and imaging/image sway the vote. As it is with every other election. I always doubt the integrity of polls.

Appraisal: If peer appraisal for teachers is going to be launched at its full, we may just end up playing Survivor every other day. Like Tina from the Second Season, to survive we will have to lie low until one by one the rest are eliminated. Does school have to be Battle Royale?

Threat: There are just a few more months to Practicum and several more months to school posting. I am happy to be perceived as a threat, and just sad that, as two friends and NIE seniors have already told me, that it is better to be less of a perfectionist in my work, in case I am seen as spoiling the market and get peer reviewed negatively. Since when did this culture of preferring imperfection over and above one's best effort become the mainstay in the nation's education training ground? I really do not think metacognition should be applied for the purpose of consciously downgrading one's work just to upgrade one's public standing. It is simply obscene.

Niche: I now (or, for now) think that the best way to protect myself, my sanity, my integrity, my quality, my output, my longevity, my hopes and my dreams in this line would be to find this impenetrable niche unique to me.

Teacher: As much as this statement may disgust, I am first a teacher, then a Chinese teacher. We do not want to be politically incorrect by being racist, Occidentalist or Orientalist. We do not have to be politically incorrect to the extent of finding Chinese teachers who use English like drinking tea, and who cannot let a day go by without playing with some ICT tool, an anomaly and a cyst.

Pleasure: At the risk of sounding like a boot-licker or even more incorrect and incongruous, I really, really, really enjoyed myself in QED522. Easily the best taught and most fun course I've taken in NIE. I blog and I play in my sandbox because I like it, and am motivated. I am at the center of everything, because I am not just a student, but the student at the center of student-centered learning, which respects the individuals we are.

I am who I am, because I am made by I AM and an image of that which is I am.
Yes, the above issues will still haunt me in the school(s) I will be posted to. But Rule#1 says, there are no ghosts. Amen to that.

SCLP development thus far - it’s almost the end of the module!

We are almost at the end of the road that leads to new ones. For the past week, Guilian and I have been discussing the peer evaluation, critiquing, and blogging mechanism for our SCLP.

For instance, she helped me sharpen my thoughts on the rubrics design by asking whether it would be better to just have a common set of rubrics for "Agents" and "Guides" since many criteria overlap. I thought however that having two sets of rubrics would be clearer, since the tool I advocate using (Forms on Google Docs) does not allow us to redirect students to different questions based on their answers (e.g. "If A, go to Q5").

We did have some cordial disagreements over the best ICT tool for peer evaluation rubrics. Aesthetically, I agree with Guilian that there are many free online survey tools that can do the job much better. She also managed to locate some sites which provide pie charts and other graphical representations of the survey results. My reasons for sticking to Google Docs' Form tool is that it actually links the survey to a Google Docs Spreadsheet which not only lists all collected responses so far, but also timestamps every response i.e. there is an automatically generated column that displays the time at which each set of responses was received. By adding fields for the names of the respondent and critiqued student, we can also match each set of responses to their owner, unlike other free online surveys where this is not possible. Furthermore, you can keep customizing your form without having to create a new one.


At present we are happy that we are developing an SCLP for e-learning (thank you, Prof Tan, for the idea) that can also be adapted for face-to-face classes. Having an SCLP that resides online also allows many other possibilities for future expansion, not the least through hyperlinking to other hypertexts.

GIMP layer effects test

Font: Bleeding Cowboys

Email etiquette…

Not that I am always correct and polite, but here are some common examples of bad email etiquette:

-Replying to queries with "Hi" without addressing the other party (it's too informal, impersonal, and impolite). I just got a reply like this to my query regarding the recent PBP. It does not help that the reply is vague and ignores what I said as well. This is what I hate about writing to a email address like ***_RU_*** - sometimes you get good and clear replies, sometimes you don't.

- CC-ing the entire school when a message only concerns PD tutors of level X/CCA or whatever ICs. Not recommended, but always advised and done. Why? For the purpose of cover, if you like, as Just Follow Law states it. Another example: why does one teacher's email about a spoilt school laptop have to be CC-ed to at least 2 HODs on top of the TAs?

I really think I am very cynical and critical of late. The most productive and destructive time to blog. Does this even fit edublogging? Perhaps not.

Do not upload your notes only the day before class at an unspecified time!

The affordances of Blackboard have been exploited, sometimes forcing us to be on standby more often than necessary.

Since whatever they are uploading has been prepared long ago with much dedication and care, it does not do them any justice either to surprise us with late uploads (or, uploads they preloaded, but timed for late appearance on our student page).

Personally, I also hate it when an upload I have just downloaded is overwritten
later by a newer version but without any announcement. What kind of
signals are they sending? That it is better late than never, and always
better to be just in time than early?

Even if we can learn anytime, anywhere, we should not be coerced into non-learning, time draining tasks like this all the time, everywhere. Please do not make self-serving assumptions about students' computing habits.

Grade Curve vs Grade Inflation

I have been wondering for some time whether NIE awards grades by criterion-referencing or norm-referencing. While in a certain class the other day we were told that the former is used, so that different tutorial groups in the same module are assessed with a consistent set of guidelines, I have also heard otherwise that NIE practices the grade curve.

NUS has been known to use a combination of absolute results and relative standing to derive a student's final grade. There is a moderation process that goes on behind the scene. It has been said far and wide that there is also a curve of some sort for EPMS, which means the bulk of grades given will have to be average, even though the grade descriptors for different bands are meant to correspond to how far the education officer exceeds or falls short of expectations. In other words, we can't have an entire school exceeding expectations on all counts? Of course, correct me, an untrained teacher, if I am wrong. It seems as though we cannot do well unless we also do better than everyone else, not just ourselves.

The kind of compensatory measures (read: norm-referencing on a parabola) practiced in our education/education employment system fly in the face of grade inflation in the United States, which some say are a result of professors guarding their tenured positions against negative student feedback.

To be on either the extreme of loyalty to a grade curve or to feel-good grade inflation would not conducive to learning, however. While using grades as extrinsic motivation/pressure is not ideal, it does seem to be the case with extreme practices. Nonetheless, grades need to be worked out properly so that assessment of learning/work can be executed for learning (QED520's A/P Chang distinguishes between assessment of & for learning).

All the more do we as educators and those being educated need to rethink the issue of grades.

Long Gruelling Episode with Video Editing

Just had a long grueling episode with video conversion and editing software, plus a bad encounter with (surprise, surprise!) Adobe Download Manager (which is used for downloading trials from Adobe) that crashed my computer several times without my initial suspicion.

What happened was that it took me some time to realize that I would lose control over my desktop every time I tried to launch a file or resume a download from Adobe Download Manager. It was bad, I lost all my Mozilla Firefox bookmarks and extension settings. At first I even thought FF was corrupted and reinstalled it. IE also has a problem now... it does not really run.

After a little more research I think it's Akamai Download Manager that screwed up big time... 

Fingerpointing is easy in cyberspace 

Mindmapping tools online (free!)

Some free online mindmapping tools that you may wish to try out.

• Mindmeister: Can be used with its accompanying widget/browser extension Geistesblitz, so that you can submit ideas to Mindmeister immediately for mapping.
  
• Mindomo
  
• Bubbl.us:Cute, adorable, intuitive. Controls for changing bubble colours and adding nodes are located on each bubble - just mouse over.

However, as far as I can tell, they are not entirely suitable for non-linear storyboarding as you typically cannot connect two nodes to a new node, nor can be insert a new node in the middle of an existing chain. I could be wrong though.

 

GIMP and Paint.NET: the brief 3-point review

GIMP

• Good enough as a Photoshop replacement, although it does not have a magnetic lasso and RYGB mode. It only has RGB, so it's more suited for non-print designs.
  
• Many free add-ons, scripts, brushes, gradients available. A lot of GIMP users regularly convert Photoshop brushes, gradients and other effects for GIMP.
• Palettes are all over the place (compared to Adobe CS), may require some interface customization.
  

Paint.NET

• Not as feature-rich as GIMP: no healing brush and brush selection. May have to use the clone stamp tool instead to work around this.
  
• Has Black and White and Sepia adjustments option, good for converting color photographs without going through too much trouble
• Good enough for really basic image editing. After all, it was originally designed to replace Paint which comes with Windows.
  

Free Advanced Image Editing Tools

In an earlier article, I listed a few free Digital Art options that have very basic options only. Here are some free advanced image editing tools that you can use in the absence of Adobe Creative Suite.

GIMP: GNU Image Manipulation Program
I first came across this probably a year or two ago, but I never got down to trying it because the installation package was not as user-friendly as it is now. As far as I can remember, you used to have to install something else apart from GIMP and do several other things before you can setting up GIMP proper.

This is a fairly full-featured image editing software, but I have not got down to testing it though. Reviews however are rather positive. (Download.com editors and users respectively rated it 5/5 and 4/5).

Paint.NET
"Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools."

The unlimited undo feature looks like its greatest affordance. Adobe Photoshop has a History palette that by default stores 20 states (i.e. you can go up to 20 steps backwards by clicking on any state or snapshot in the palette). Although technically speaking you could increase the number of History states to 1000, the maximum, it will take a serious toll on your system resources. I have yet to test this as well.

Photobucket
If you only need quick fixes for blemishes and wrinkles, just use the image editor on this free online image hosting tool. Works like the "Healing Brush" in Photoshop.

Reference:
Top 8 Free Photo Editors for Windows

Google SketchUp

Google SketchUp: 3D modelling the free and (hopefully easy) way. Yeah!

Uses:

• Art class designs


• 3D Classroom floor plans


• Reconstruction of spaces described in texts e.g. History, Chinese...

Kaltura

This is my latest loot: Kaltura, a free online video editor that is licensed under Creative Commons. I'm blogging on Kaltura from ScribeFire before I forget how to locate it.

I think it would be amazing if we could use Kaltura as part of our SCLP for students to record and edit their conversation practice, especially since you can add content immediately to a Kaltura using a webcam! Kalturas can also be embedded on websites with maximum ease.

According to the site, "Kaltura partners with the Wikimedia Foundation to add collaborative rich-media to Wiki projects." Yes, this is definitely suitable for Student-Centered Learning where collaboration is key.

Flock, the social web browser

Flock is touted as THE social web browser, which integrates social networking tools to help you connect with friends.

Although I am intrigued by the concept, I am put off by the disclaimer that not all Firefox (FF) extensions will work with Flock, even though Flock is FF-based.

A SWiK.net article points out some differences between Flock and FF, as well as some flaws and product biases of Flock (e.g. Yahoo is the default search engine).

Mozilla Firefox Add-ons (Part 2)

I haven't been "shopping" for Mozilla Firefox add-ons for quite a while, but here are some great finds, recommended on the official Firefox Add-Ons site, that I found today and like.

• Interclue: "Interclue tooltip windows display content previews, useful extra information and relevant next actions for almost any link on the web. A truly user-centric design, "Clueview" tooltips show you only the most relevant content from linked pages, and can provide embedded viewing for images, mp3s and YouTube videos."


• ScribeFire: "ScribeFire (previously Performancing for Firefox) is a full-featured blog editor that integrates with your browser and lets you easily post to your blog."


• PicLens: "PicLens instantly transforms your browser into a full-screen 3D experience for viewing images across the web. Our new interactive "3D Wall" lets you effortlessly drag, click, and zoom your way around a wall of pictures for an extraordinary viewing experience. The new search box lets you search the Web in full-screen using Google, Yahoo, SmugMug, Flickr, Photobucket, and DeviantArt. Just type a query and view all the results in the PicLens wall."


• Greasemonkey: "Allows you to customize the way a webpage displays using small bits of JavaScript...."


• BlogRovr: "You don't have time to read ALL those Blogs! Let RovR do it for you. Rovr fetches posts from your favorite blogs about anything you're browsing, and shows you summaries you can open read posts without leaving the web page you were on. Blogrovr also suggests popular items AND lets you Twitter about any site you're on too."

For my earlier post on Mozilla Firefox, click here.

Printing to PDF

How to export anything printable to PDF for free

1. Download a PS2PDF converter and install it.
2. Download CutePDF and install it.

3. Once you have done that, CutePDF will be added as an available "printer." To export just about anything printable to PDF, simply access the Print menu as you normally would, but select CutePDF as your printer instead.

4. Once CutePDF is selected as the printer, you can customize the number of pages per "sheet" and choose to print in black/white or colour in the "Properties" menu in your print dialog.

Contemplating a Mac purchase…

"MacBook Pro Is the Fastest Windows Vista Notebook"

Link shared by Guilian.

Exporting and importing entries to create a mirror (Wordpress)

This is something I have started to do regularly to save myself unnecessary frustration. However, importing is not enabled in Blogger, so choose another blog hosting service that will allow you to do so.

Steps for Wordpress MU users:

1. Login to your site admin page.


2. Go to Manage>Export.


3. Export your blog entries. Comments and pages will also be exported with them.


4. Save the exported file.


5. Go to another Wordpress MU blog, login >Manage>Import. Select the file you have exported earlier.

You can access my mirror on wordpress.com here. Wordpress.com has more presentation layouts and CSS functionalities, but Edublogs is friendlier for Edublogging and the prompt support it provides, although it is less stable because of the overwhelming server loads.

Fun with Vokis

Voki: "Create and customize your speaking character to express yourself, communicate and interact with your friends."

I managed to stick one on my sidebar after much fumbling with the procedure. It can be used like a pod- or vod-cast for class. You can choose to use your own voice or one of their stock voices to read out your message.

Reference

Adding A Voki Speaking Avatar To Your Blog Sidebar

Recruitment of and psychometric testing for teachers

The esteem of the profession may be to an extent compromised by the recruitment process.

If teachers are expected to possess certain skills or aptitudes, should not applicants for the job undergo psychometric testing? If we believe in the importance of these skills and the profession itself, why then do we fall so short of what is being done, i.e. psychometric testing etc., for other professions?

While the academic qualifications of the teacher should let us in on how suited an applicant is in terms of certain aptitudes, it does not tell us how well he/she responds under pressure, works in groups, or communicates. Nor can we equate paper qualifications with proficiency, such as in languages. We cannot discern his/her areas of interest. Although these aspects can be trained, an applicant is still and has to be offered the job on the basis of inherent qualities he/she possesses, or his/her teachability.

By offering the job to applicants with local qualifications who pass an interview, or to applicants with other qualifications who pass both the proficiency test and interview, are we saying that we do not have to assess further the proficiency of the first category of applicants since their former institutions of study are well accredited and accepted? Are we implying that the second category of applicants, who may be better qualified nonetheless, still need to be subject to scrutiny that borders on contempt for their academic achievement?

Double standards like these possibly contribute to complaints about the inadequacies of teachers, and the disdain that encounters any consideration of teaching as a serious profession. We would do well to improve the recruitment process, for the benefit of applicants, current teachers, students and the education sector. It will reduce the number of teachers leaving the profession.

After saying all this I kind of feel weird for not adding a disclaimer somewhere! I sometimes wonder to what extent am I entitled to my opinion without being criminalized. And I find myself often sounding self-righteous.

What's published is published, though it may be published on a personal blog that cannot and will not remain genuinely private. Forums on the other hand sometimes give the sense of safe anonymity - but I would not want to post on My Forum on certain issues.

Articles on and ideas for Edublogging

Some recent, noteworthy articles on The Edublogger:

* Tips On Blogging With Students: Practical advice on how to start edublogging with your students. Touches on the element of parental consent for student edublogging.

* Meet the miniLegends — Check Out How They Customise Their Own Blogs: (also see http://alupton.edublogs.org/) A student blog mentoring project initiated by Al Upton, an Australian primary school teacher. Every Year 3 student or "miniLegend" in his class has a blog. His invitation:

If you’re an educational blogger of any kind (or visitor) and would like to ‘mentor a mini’ then please leave a comment on THIS page saying who you would like to be connected with. The idea is to drop into their blogs from time to time throughout the year and leave a positive comment.

It's a project whereby people from all around the world (The Edublogger says, "He would really like mentors for all students from as many different countries as possible") are invited to help students improve by encouraging them.

Very different from the earlier example where a teacher made fun of student essays.

Google Search in alien languages

Check out the Google Search page in the following languages:

• Pig Latin


• Bork, bork, bork! 


• Elmer Fudd

You can try running your normal web search on these pages, which are fully functional, just for laughs. You can access Advanced Search, Preferences and Language Tools in these languages as well.

Google Search in these languages can be useful for SCL where students analyze language patterns.
(Discovered through an article in the latest issue of 8 Days)

B4USurf

B4USurf is an initiative by Business Software Alliance, launched in partnership with Ministry of Education, ACS (Barker), Media Development Authority (MDA), and Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS).

Some of the information on Cyberwellness is very useful, especially the analysis of some affordances and anti-affordances of commonly used ICT tools.

(Featured in LHZB, 20 February 2008)

Hypertextuality and the notion of the work

This is kind of an extended reflection of some issues I discussed earlier.

Wikis and blogs are never finished pieces of work. Like I have written in my dissertation on a film adaptation of Jin Yong's Shendiao Xialu, Brave Archer and His Mate, adaptation fragments the narrative. Since wikis, blogs and other forms of online writing often adapt (in a broader metaphorical sense) other works of the same genre or nature, they echo Bazin's observation that:

[I]t is possible to imagine that we are moving toward a reign of the adaptation in which the notion of the unity of the work of art, if not the very notion of the author himself, will be destroyed.

Where so-called adaptations and originals are actually how:

a single work [is] reflected through [multiple] art forms, an artistic pyramid with only an ideal point at the top of this figure, which itself is an ideal construct. The chronological precedence of one part over another would not be aesthetic criterion any more than the chronological precedence of one twin over the other is a genealogical one.[1]

The destabilized work, never complete or completed, is well embodied in hypertexts like our blogs and wikis. George Landow, on his Cyberspace, Hypertext, & Critical Theory site, defines one kind of hypertext in reference to Roland Barthes' seminal work, S/Z:

In S/Z , Roland Barthes describes an ideal textuality that precisely matches that which has come to be called computer hypertext -- text composed of blocks of words (or images) linked electronically by multiple paths, chains, or trails in an open-ended, perpetually unfinished textuality described by the terms link, node, network, web , and path.[2]

Yet if this textuality is meant to be "ideal," then using such "perpetually unfinished" texts as part of assessment mode would be self-defeating in traditional assessment means, although they certainly tie in with the vision of lifelong learning because of they can be perpetuated, thus allowing also authentic assessment that observes student progress over long periods of time.

References

[1] Bazin, André. “Adaptation, or the Cinema as Digest.” 1948; trans. Alain Piette and Bert Cardullo, 1997. In Film Adaptation, ed. James Naremore. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2000, pp. 19-27.

[2] Cyberspace, Hypertext, & Critical Theory

 

 

Notes from QED520 Educational Psychology I

Unmotivated and underachieving students are not the same as low ability students. They underachieve usually due to emotional and psychological factors. For example, they may not see the need to achieve, or face relationship problems.

Thus, there is an emphasis on socio-emotional learning (SEL) which helps to raise self-awareness and the like. Students also need to learn about consequences of their action. If necessary, they may take diagnostic tests that will help determine the kind of assistance needed.

So-called weak students may also be in actual fact better at practical intelligence (Sternberg) than cognitive intelligence. In such cases, a hands-on approach is encouraged.

Safe Assignment - the penultimate submission experience

I have just submitted my final submission online. But before that, because of itchy fingers and unease with having just one chance to submit, I also tried the draft link, to see if it has really expired. After submitting a "draft," the wait for the report finally put me off so much that I submitted my paper to the official link.

What follows really says much after the efficacy of SA. Earlier, during the draft submission phase of e-learning week, SA picked up my reference to Tan O. S. et al., Education Psychology: a practitioner-researcher approach (an asian edition) as plagiarism, once. However, in my final submission, this was not picked up again, but another article title was detected as suspected plagiarism instead. Urgh.

Does this mean that SA is also notoriously inconsistent?  : ( I take heart in the presence of human reviewers.

Getting RSS Feeds on Mozilla Firefox

There are 2 ways that I know of:

1. Use Mozilla Firefox's Live Bookmarks function.

Whether it’s news from CNN and the BBC, or posts on your friend’s blog, the Web is updated continually. Firefox’s Live Bookmarks feature automatically keeps track of these updates for you, so you always know when new content has been added to your favorite sites.

With Live Bookmarks, the content comes to you. Instead of constantly checking Web pages for changes and additions, a Live Bookmark delivers updates to you as soon as they are available.

2. Use Firefox add-ons for RSS. The one I'm using now is Sage.

Mozilla Firefox

This is advertising I feel compelled to do.

I am an ardent fan of Mozilla Firefox, so much so that I cannot stand using IE. A browser with every add-on you need is a blessing that will make the rituals of internet surfing a breeze. For quite some time I have wanted to recommend Mozilla Firefox on the class wiki but I figured that that may not be the best place to do so. Anyway, here are add-ons I recommend getting once you've downloaded and installed Firefox:

• Adblock Plus and Adblock Filterset.G Updater: "Ever been annoyed by all those ads and banners on the internet that often take longer to download than everything else on the page? Install Adblock Plus now and get rid of them."


• All-in-One Sidebar: "All-in-One Sidebar (AiOS) is an award-winning sidebar control, inspired by Opera's. It lets you quickly switch between sidebar panels, view dialog windows such as downloads, extensions, and more in the sidebar, or view source or websites in the sidebar."


• Copy Plain Text: "Copies text without formatting..."


• Download Statusbar: "View and manage downloads from a tidy statusbar - without the download window getting in the way of your web browsing."


• IE Tab: "IE Tab - an extension from Taiwan, features: Embedding Internet Explorer in tabs of Mozilla/Firefox..."


• McAfee SiteAdvisor: "We test the Web to help keep you safe from spyware, spam, viruses and online scams."


• NoScript: "It allows JavaScript, Java and other executable content to run only from trusted domains of your choice"


• Tab Mix Plus: "Tab Mix Plus enhances Firefox's tab browsing capabilities. It includes such features as duplicating tabs, controlling tab focus, tab clicking options, undo closed tabs and windows, plus much more. It also includes a full-featured session manager..." My must-have is Duplicate Tabs.


• Zotero: "Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] is a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources."

I used to have even more extensions but everytime I reformat my PC or reinstall stuff I start all over again with the bare essentials. Still, it only takes minutes to get all the extensions back and running, even if you do not employ some method of saving them somewhere. Now, there is even a campus edition. What's not to like?

Free and open source should be the way to go!

Anyway, you really have to look at this to get an idea of the creativity of Firefox users and their adoration for the browser:




And the first of an interesting series of Japanese youtube videos on Mozilla Firefox:

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/umed6hskKg0" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Identity Theft

As usual, I am being melodramatic and pessimistic, but the observations apply.

I freaked out when I found numerous notifications from one unknown wiki which supposed that I edited it. Some computer user had taken the liberty to login and edit a page without first checking if he/she used a name and email that were his or her own.

Naturally I am disgusted. It simply betrays how our class wiki is oh-so-susceptible to abuse of every kind. It is not unimaginable that in the absence of consideration and careful regard for work (mindless editing a classic example) that someone may just become someone else.

If we lose faith in our class wiki, how can we resurrect belief in a platform that is only protected by a common password that is almost public information, as long as you search?

At the very least, I can take comfort in how this is at least not the case yet for our class wiki. BUT, make this incident my second BAD brush with class wikis.

Postscript: I distinctly remember clearing my private data from Firefox before logging out of that NIE computer the other day. I have tried contacting the owner of the wiki but to no avail so far. Now, I have a desperate urge to come up with indecipherable passwords for everything online. I am paranoid. My persona is paranoid. This is my first, not second life.

Random Rambling of the Day

ICTechnology is inclusive, not exclusive. Do you agree?

My ongoing debate with myself

Let's consider:

• competence

If the user needs a high degree of competence to leverage on ICT for learning, then it is exclusive.
A less competent user would have to gain competence in ICT first before he/she can use ICT in a way that enhances and engages his/her cognitive ability.

• sharing and protection

• mobility and accessibility

On the reflexitivity and reflectiveness of Reflections

I realize that I am reflecting more on ideals and ideas than I am on class proceedings (not that I have not been condensing my thoughts on that - it's just that they are not what I feel would be a publishable format yet).

The nature and efficacy (to the degree that the means meet the ends) of a web-based reflections blog eludes me to some extent because inevitably, there is no absolute honesty in an environment where there is no absolute security or privacy. It could be because that, unlike those days where some language teachers would ask us to pen our most intimate thoughts on anything and everything by journaling, we have really passed the age of innocence, we have passed out of essential schooling with our belief that teachers (tutors of us and student teachers like us) are people whom we can trust with what we really think, regardless of the political correctness or the PR-savvy our comments lack or possess.

I am not advocating a blatant all-out attack on the things we truly rage against, or a shameless confession of who we really are, on a blog. What I am simply saying is that a good class blog is not a good personal journal for it is essentially a task and showcase, not an exhibition of private emotions and that which elicits them.

As a tool of assessment then, are we assessed as a person first , or for our thoughtfulness? Either way irony is evidently built in, for the brash and harsh and impolite, if deemed undesirable learning outcomes for a very task-driven reflection blog (note the oxymoron), will be subsumed under a dogma. Reflections as a tool of participation, yes. Reflections as a tool of assessment, yes, if something other than the amount of thought we put in - not to please others but to express ourselves and our negotiation with self and world - is assessed, then ultimately the reflexivity and personality of the blog is killed.

I am not saying that this class blog has to exhibit the negative traits I am so paranoid and wary of. I merely seek to discern maybe semi-philosophically and whimsically what a class blog is and is expected to be.

Also, how authentic is our web presence as per our blog? Besides the issue discussed earlier, the fact that we can dynamically manage our blog means that authenticity, if present, cannot be built upon our manifest transformation, for memory has become transient in an environment where "all that is solid melts into air." We may not always choose to keep and reveal all our development or atrophy, but our state can be and is perpetually vulnerable to overwrites.

If assignment submissions, once submitted, cannot be re-submitted, and yet blogs and wikis are ongoing exercises in constructing and reconstructing and deconstructing and destroying, do we not have a paradox?

KWLQ: to know, to want, to learn, to question

Welcome to my humble blog for QED522. The outstanding entries from previous groups are already getting my competitive side all psyched up!

My first entry after a long hiatus from blogging, the original contents of this post were actually deleted accidentally at log off without me realizing. Oh, the loss and love that ICT brings!

Class only starts this Friday, so much for the preamble!