China and Kerala

Population policies!

China: One Child Policy
Kerala: Emancipation of women

Smart Searching! 09122011

Learning Intentions
- To understand how to do smart searching.
- To comprehend how to do research.

Success Criteria
- To be able to concentrate and be on track whilst researching.
- To be able to obtain relevant information in a short amount of time.

What is Boolean Search?
Boolean Search is a search technique which narrows down what we want to obtain. There are four major techniques:

1. And- When you search for Volcano AND Earthquake, pages with both these two terms present will only appear. 
2. Or- When you search for Volcano OR Earthquake, pages with one of these items will appear. This allows you to search for two different things at once.
3. Not- When you search for Volcano NOT Earthquake, pages will exclude Earthquake and those only with Volcano present will appear.
4. "..."- When you use quotations marks "Volcano and Earthquake", this will refine your search into articles with the full phrase. This is very useful when you are looking for quotes and titles.

Why is it useful?
This techniques are very useful because it definitely refines our search. It filters the pages that are going to appear on our Google Page. This saves a lot of time because we do not need to manually filter it. With this, we can do so much in a little amount of time.

Example of questions:

• Vandalism as an art NOT crime
• Street art NOT vandalism

Team Strengths

Our team strengths are quite evenly spread as out of 8 key areas, our team members have covered 6 with the exception of Coordinator and Shaper.

With 2 plants (Carlos and Azzah), we can trust them to come up with great ideas which are creative and innovative! For example, Azzah came up with the idea that we actually seek permission from the city council to vandalise a wall in KL to record down general views of Malaysians about vandalism. This can be compared to the reactions with other people all over the world.

We have 1 teamworker, who is Bryan, whom we can trust to be supportive at all time. An important trait of a team worker is that he/she must be sociable, which Bryan demonstrates.

Next, we have 2 Complete-Finishers (Nicole and Bryan) who are highly motivated and very task-focused. They will ensure that the work will be done on time and will be less prone to distractions and going off track. This can be seen from their willingness to set deadlines and ensure that everything is done by then.

We also have 2 Monitor-Evaluators (Nicole and Bryan) who are cautious and and take everything into account. Monitor-Evaluators are very critical minded and before accepting a given idea, they would question the sensibility/ different aspects of the idea. This would ensure that our work is of standard and we do not include unnecessary things in our outcome.

We have 1 Implementer, who is Nicole. An implementer is important because he/she is very systematic and organized. This was demonstrated throughout the mock group project through updates and minutes of the mock project agenda.

We are missing Cordinators and Shapers but after reading the criterion of those two personalities, we discovered that these 2 traits are quite similar to Complete-Finishers and Implementers so Bryan and Nicole can cover the other two traits, with help from Carlos and Azzah.

We have quite a dynamic team here but we must work on not to overplan and do research on unnecessary information in our real project. 

It's time to reflect!

The Group Work

• What have I contributed to the group project?

First of all, I have been updating the agenda of all our meetings as well as recording down the homework for each of our team member. Besides that, I was also in charge of researching about a world without oil. I felt that the National Geographic scenario planning videos helped me alot. It was particularly difficult for me to imagine living in a world without oil as from my research, I found out that everything we use everyday relies heavily on oil. Whether we know it or not, our lives are fueled by oil. I found out about different renewable resources that we can use, sustainable agriculture, or cutting down our dependency on oil right now so that we can soften the impact of a post-peak oil world. 

Also, I recommended a few of the outcomes that we could do. After several discussions with my team members, we have decided to present our findings through a mockumentary. An advantage of a mockumentary is that we can keep the audience entertained without compromising any of the relevant information that we want to convey through our video. Moreover, I have also helped my team members create a Gantt Chart which helped us in organising and delegating our work as well as making sure that our project would be completed in time before the deadline. 

• What would I do differently next time?  Why?

I would definitely make sure that we, as a group do not over plan. Over planning wastes time and might kill our ideas for the mockumentary as well. We fumbled too much on how we should present our information as well as the information that we are including in the mockumentary. This process was too lengthy and unnecessary so I would make sure that this does not happen again in our real Group Project. Also, in dealing with passive group members, I should be more engaging and inclusive at every part of our discussions. As a group, I feel that we should not leave anyone out and we must ensure that everyone clearly understands everything before moving on.

• What have I learnt about working together?

I have learnt that in a team, there is no 'I'. We must always listen to what others have to say and at the same time, cannot be shy or hesitant to pour in any ideas/ recommendations for the benefit of our group. I have also learnt that we must be frank to voice out any problems we see in the project or any problems that we are facing. By voicing it out, our team members might actually have the ability to help us. Effective communication is what keeps a team going. And without communication, there is no team.

• What has been good/challenging about working as part of a group?

Working in a group has its advantages. We can effectively share the workload and discuss our ideas together before presenting it. For example, in our group, our brainstorming sessions made me realise the different ways/ perspective that we can use to interpret a situation. It gave me new insights to how different things can be viewed in different ways. Working in a group also hones up our teamwork and leadership skills, which is not possible in our individual project. We learn how to become better leaders and team members.

However, working in a team is also challenging in the way that we must ensure that everyone understands and reaches the same ground before proceeding. This is quite difficult because everyone has their own views. But of course, we must learn to persuade others as well as be willing to compromise to create a win-win situation for our team. 

What have I learnt doing the project?

• What have I learnt about;

• deciding on and planning a project?

Deciding a project is crucial as we must ensure that each of the team member is passionate about the project in order to make 'our project' work. Planning is also essential as well because before anything can be done, we must all sit down and plan our project. Without planning, everything will go haywire and they might be a big possibility that nothing can be done. Planning helps us define our goals, stay on track, and lists down everything that needs to be done in a particular timeframe. Planning is the skeleton of our project.

• planning and producing research?

Planning research is perhaps one of the most challenging part of being in a team. This is because while researching, we must ensure that no repetitive data are researched because it wastes alot of time. And sometimes, we might not know that we are researching on the same things. With GoogleDocs, this is no longer a problem because we can clearly see what each of us are doing and prevents researching about the same things. I easily get off track while researching, given the amount of information that are available through the internet. I have leant that I must shortlist and be selective of the sites that I want to obtain information from. This by to done by making sure that the site/ information provided is reliable and not biased in any way.

• reading and presenting my ideas?

Well, I feel that the most important part to this element is to present logical and relevant ideas to our team members with justification. The other members might not be familiar over what we have researched about so clear explanations really helps to clear up confusions and misconceptions.

• time management?

Everyone is different so how we spend our time is also different. Team time management is very different from an individual's time management. To me, time management is detrimental to working in a team because if one in the team does not manage time properly, then the progress of the whole team would be disrupted.

• What would you do differently to develop these skills?

I would be more thorough in my research. Sometimes I tend to go off-track while researching so I would definitely make sure that I do not waste time doing unnecessary research.

• How did I approach my individual contribution?

I did all the work allocated to me and I also contributed my views as much as possible. I also accepted feedbacks and criticisms about my weaknesses and worked hard to improve them.

• What are the most valuable points I have learnt?  Why?

I have learnt that being in a team, I must be voluntarily active. Besides contributing ideas, I must also listen to others for they might have better suggestions and ideas. I have learnt that communication is very important when working in a team. Time management is also crucial because the rhythm of the team will be disrupted even if one member fails to keep up with deadlines. 

Gantt Chart

Gantt Chart (noun)
- a chart in which a series of horizontal lines are used to show the amount of work to be done in a period in time.

This also shows us the dependency relationship between each tasks as well as the time frame where the whole event would be completed. This is particularly useful because big events can be broken down into smaller tasks and everything can be done efficiently. This enables better planning.

In our example Gantt Chart of building a house, a 26 weeks task became a 19 weeks task with Gantt Chart planning. So as shown in that example, by using a Gantt Chart, we can save time because some tasks can actually be done simultaneously.

Top tips for creating a Gantt Chart:
1. Before starting a new Gantt Chart, first list down all the tasks that you'd want completed and the proposed time frame for every task.

2. Colour code each of the task according to each person's responsibility.

3. Ensure that each bar is labelled clearly.

4. Lastly, it is important to ensure that everyone knows how the Gantt Chart works before using it for your tasks! (if not it'd be useless to have a Gantt chart)

Group Mock Project Reflection 20.10.2011

For this two weeks, we have been working hard on coming out with an outcome of our Group Project. But before choosing a suitable medium, we narrowed down our different aspects that we can look at peak oil to the social, political and economical impacts in a post peak oil world. The reason to doing this is because these three aspects are interrelated. 

Thus, we that in mind, we decided that we will be producing a mockumentary. At first, we wanted to produce a serious documentary, History Channel style. But we realised that it would be more interesting to produce an end-product which will gauge people's attention, especially when our goal is to raise awareness about peak oil. And comedies work all the time, given that it's not too cliche or lame. So we decided to switch out focus a little and come out with a mockumentary.

Over the past 2 weeks, I think we have been working quite hard as a group. Right from choosing the aspects that we would want to focus on to looking for a suitable end-product, we have actively participated and discussed about different ways of producing our end-product. 

We have came up with a checklist which hopefully can be done by tomorrow. It's all filming.

Fishbone!

Our fish bone diagram.