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.

3.10.2011 Reflection (Peak Oil)

We read all the articles and watched all the videos provided in KN individually. We decided to do this instead of reading the articles and watching the videos together because we do not want to be influenced. In this way, we can form our own views and have a personal response towards this issue.

We also did the fishbone diagram. This was done by separating the workload into 4 main sections namely, personal, national, global and future. This was more efficient as we can work on the diagram simultaneously. Also, we allocated the specific roles according to their specialities. For example, Bryan and I have lived in Malaysia pretty much our whole lives so we did the national perspective of peak oil, a section that is closer to heart. 

We are a pretty close-knitted group so it wasn't really difficult to work in a group. I personally find it more interesting to work in a group because there are more views to a certain topic. 

Independent Project Wall Display

A photobooth blurry product.

Reflection and Sharing

I have FINALLY completed my first independent project.

What have I found easy about IP?

I found it easy as I already have done a similar one in my mock IP. So what I did in my current IP was to specify and narrow down my topic (by a lot), looking at abortion. 

What have I found difficult?

Finding a medium to present my view of different levels. It would be dull and boring if I were to present everything in a word document. Thus, I have chose to present my findings in unique and different ways. For example, I used a recipe book, a diary and an iMovie. For the iMovie especially, I was pretty lost at what should I include and how should I film my video. In the end, I used graphics and I did a voiceover.


What problems did you encounter? How did I overcome this?
To obtain Malaysia's statistics on abortion. I overcame this by looking at different sources and googling A LOT of reliable sources. At some point, I felt like I was going out of the topic and at some point, I felt like I was making absolutely no progress on my project.

BUT I AM GLAD THAT I WAS ABLE TO COMPLETE MY PROJECT WELL BEFORE THE DEADLINE. 


Tata,
Nicole. 

Traits

Trait 1: Implementer

I do have common sense, have self-control and discipline. 

Trait 2: Monitor-evaluator

I do prefer accuracy over speed. For me, quality is more important than quantity.

Trait 3: Completer-finisher 

I get panicky when things are not done on time. But I remain my steadiness and calm even under pressure. 

Teamwork 01

1. What do you think you are good at?
- Coming up with good ideas
- Making sure people do their work on time
- Include everyone during a discussion
- Meeting deadlines
- Working with other people
- Communicating

2. What areas do you think could be an issue?
- Ensuring that everyone is updated on the issues
- Making sure that everyone meets the deadline

Vandalism

Nicole Lee
Bryan Chen
Maxwell Lim
Stephanie
Carlos
Terry

Teamwork:
- equal amount of inputs.

Our team has:
- has a great mixture of gender and nationality.
- We live in different districts. Thus, we can compare the rate of vandalism.
- We have considerable chemistry.

A successful team:
- can work with each other, cooperate and communicative
- mutual understanding and respect
- equal distribution of work
- inclusive

Expectations:
- To be able to finish our work on time
- Make sure that everyone is involved
- Respect each other's views
- Be organised
- Be communicative, no arguments!

The greatest insult to human civilisation and intelligence

Why are we humans?

What makes us humans?
We have emotions and feelings. We feel anger, humiliation. We have imagination. We believe. We are unique. Each one us us are different, none of us are the same. We can make judgements, we know how to differentiate the right from the wrong. We are conscious of the implications of our actions. We are more intelligent (but I doubt that we are smarter than our fellow aliens from Mars). We empathize. That's why we are humans.

Reflect

Purpose: To reflect what I have done for the unit on law and criminality
Target audience: anyone (learners, teachers)


1. Content

I have learnt that in order to persuade the jury, we have to produce evidence to disprove the prosecutors.
I did not know that Holocaust also refers to the genocide in Rwanda et cetra. I thought that Holocaust ONLY refers to the mass extermination of Jews ordered by Hitler.

I learnt to listen to the witnesses' accounts very carefully and pick out points that they are vague on.

I find the different findings provided by the Amnesty International and the Chief Finance Officer on the total amount of money used to execute someone very confusing. Both have provided different findings. This is because contradicting information should definitely be counter-checked before presented in the trial.

2. Court Case and Legal Preparation


As a team, we were well-researched. We also helped everyone and made sure everyone was well-prepared. The cross examiners and witnesses also practiced, as well as the people giving the opening and closing speech.

During the trial, we were able to keep calm. Cross examiners were also able to ask good questions when cross examining the opponents' teams. We also demonstrated teamwork in our team, especially when we helped each other out when listening to the witnesses.

I did my research fairly well. I also communicated with my team members on any arising problems. I were also very confident about the questions that I was going to question the witnesses.

Target for group: run through all probable questions before the real trial.

Target for self: Take on a role which enables me to talk more.
Preparation: To research even more to clearly know opponents' stance
Presentation: Speak more.

On the whole, I have learnt a lot on law and criminality, especially on death penalty. This is a very interesting yet sensitive subject as it involves humanity, politics and religions.

For/Against Death Penalty- pick your choice (:

Hey geeks 8)Maxwell and I worked together to research on our death penalty piece. Anti Death Penalty

View more documents from GP10.

PRO Death Penalty

View more documents from GP10.

Please comment. Thanks! (:

Nicole X

12 Angry Men

This is a movie about people's perspectives can be easily influenced; proof is never always right (sometimes interpreted wrongly); and when someone's life is in your hands, you must not just dismiss and deny the right of the guilty to live. Also, never give up hope even when you're the loner- you must be patient and insist- trust your intuition, it will bring you where you want to be.

I like the part where the old man in the jury related the simple and natural habit/ action of the man in specs (which is massaging his nasal bridge) to the woman who claimed to have witness the crime. Again, observance is extremely important at this point and habitual actions, though easily overlooked, it can coerce the jury into wrongly sending the boy to die.

My favourite jurors were the man who firstly defended the innocent boy and the old man with white hair.

I live in a century where action-packed movies or soapy romantic films rule and dominate, so this black and white movie was definitely kind of boring- especially the introduction. Also, the introductory part was a little too long and mundane. Perhaps they can go straight to the point, and that'd have captured the attention of viewers faster. The setting is boring because they never leave the meeting room which is locked and ever so stuffy. One thing that abhorred me was the men's sweating armpits marks on their shirt. That is just plain unhygienic and disgusting and it ruins my viewing pleasure.

3 stars I'd say. Original and interesting storyline but the setting somehow ruined it. Yet again, I contradict myself. If it ain't in a meeting room, how'd they sit down and listen to each other's views about the case? Perhaps a nicer room would settle my complaints.

This is definitely not a insipid movie, but outlined with many many interesting points. This movie is not jejune at all, it's more to meet the eye. I'm highly impressed with how a stereotypical boring meeting can turn out so interesting and colourful with a rich and diverse mixture and clash of personalities and emotions.

A CASE STUDY

Cyber-bullying. In relation to the rather serious cyber-bullying case in our school where two students were suspended, we had at least two talks regarding cyber-bullying. One was conducted by Mr. Steven in which the talk featured some wonderful videos about cyber safety, while the other was conducted by a rambunctious teacher from Singapore which lightened up the tense atmosphere in the theater by talking about Facebook and Formspring, which we can easily relate to.

The case study is a concocted story that Ms Suzy made up. This is a pretty good job as it made me realise that cyber-bullying is the last thing that you'd want to be involved in.

1. Who is the perpetrator in this case? Who is the target?
At first, Nazar was the perpetrator as he manipulated others into 'unfriending' Chong Wei. However, Chong Wei was in the wrong later on when he created a facebook group 'Why I hate Chong Wei' and accused him of things that CW never did. CW never knew the existence of this site yet. When this launched a heated debate among their friends, their friends who made their own accusations and suggestions on how should Nazar should be treated was also involved in cyber-bullying as well.

2. What acts of cyber-bullying has happened? How serious would you rank them?
CW: engaged in singling and excluding
Nazar: Why I hate CW- harassing and targeting
            Accusations about CW- insulting
Other members: suggestions- insulting

I think I would rank Nazar's actions as the most serious as he engaged in many cyber-bullying acts. He did not just stop after creating the group. He continued to insult and post fabricated shocking 'revelations' about CW without his permission or knowledge. CW would come in the next as he pressurized others in unfriending Nazar. The last would be the other members who participated in and was aware about what was happening. They shouldn't join in the conversation and make 'incredible' comments and suggestions about how Nazar should deal with CW.

All in all, I think CW bears the same responsibility as Nazar because he initiated this whole terrible event. A domino effect it seems, as Nazar won't commit into cyber-bullying if CW did not pressurize others into unfriending him. This is wrong and nobody should do that.

We live in a world where technology rules all. For the better or the worse, cyber-bullying should be last in the list to restrict our internet, social networking sites in particular. We live in a digital world, make it civil.

Nicole

Rank 'em

Hello Geeks,

1 = Totally acceptable and appropriate
2 = Possibly wrong, but no action needs to be taken
3 = Wrong, and school authorities or Internet service providers should take action
4 = Wrong, and civil action could be taken by the target or the target’s parents
5 = Wrong, and criminal charges should be pressed


1. A student posts a negative review of a concert given by another student’s band. The review focuses on the band members’ skill as musicians and the quality of their music.

1 = Totally acceptable and appropriate

2. A student posts a story making fun of a teacher, suggesting that he is unqualified to teach. The teacher’s name is not used, but he is clearly recognizable to anyone who knows him.

3 = Wrong, and school authorities or Internet service providers should take action

3. A student uploads to YouTube a video of his band performing a song that makes fun of teachers. No specific teacher is named or is identifiable from the song.

2 = Possibly wrong, but no action needs to be taken


4. A student writes a letter to the school administration stating that a teacher has used improper discipline in class.
1 = Totally acceptable and appropriate

5. A student finds that photos of her, which were taken by her (now ex) boyfriend have been uploaded to his Facebook page. Then they were copied and reproduced in many more places, including photo-sharing sites. Her ex-boyfriend says that he is not responsible for what was done with the photos after he uploaded them.
3 = Wrong, and school authorities or Internet service providers should take action

6. A teacher asks students in her class to help write holiday greetings in a variety of languages for the school’s Web site. Without the teacher’s knowledge, one of the students’ contributions is a false and insulting statement against another teacher.
3 = Wrong, and school authorities or Internet service providers should take action

7. During an instant messaging session with several participants, a student accuses her boyfriend of cheating on her.
1 = Totally acceptable and appropriate

8. A student creates a Web site in which she criticizes school policies and suggests that several teachers, whom she names, are overly strict in their discipline.
3 = Wrong, and school authorities or Internet service providers should take action


9.    A student creates a Facebook group in which he states that one of his teachers is a space alien who is scheming to abduct students and take them to her home planet.
1 = Totally acceptable and appropriate

10.  A teacher discovers that students are being pressured by a popular student to remove an unpopular student from their Facebook “friends” lists.

2 = Possibly wrong, but no action needs to be taken

Nicole (:

Eye of an eagle, perception of a human

1. We are humans, thus we are definitely not perfect. We make a considerably amount of mistakes, whether we know it or not.

2. This brings me to my point that well, unfortunately, witnesses's witness on a particular event cannot be trusted entirely.

3. The reasons being:
(a) ENHANCED by drugs, regular exercise, chilli, coffee, sleep, binoculars, glasses, electronics etc.
(b) DISTRACTED while we focus on something else.
(c) MISTAKEN as we are humans and have our own prejudices.

4. Yes, I do admit that a lot of factors influence our perception, but they cannot be not trusted completely. This is because eyewitnesses' witness are at time in certain cases are the only evidence thus it help polices to narrow down their suspects. Yet again, our perceptions vary too much to be taken in account and they do result in innocent people being dealt with instead.

5. Therefore, I would like to say that we cannot altogether trust eyewitnesses account. We cannot use eyewitnesses as a concrete evidence to prove someone guilty. We need to have concrete evidence that cannot be biased in any way or other in order to prove that someone is guilty.

Selectivity Perception
A child dying in poverty as seen by a doctor, economist, a social worker, the child’s father.

Doctor (Nicole) : Inability for medical aid to reach poor people.

Social worker (Kai Song): We should help those who do not have the ability to support their child/ family. We are responsible to bring them up maybe in orphanages.

Economist (Maxwell) : Economic gap is getting bigger and this is not a healthy thing for a society.  We should try to find out ways to improve the social and living condition, by providing mor job opportunities.

Child's father (Bryan): I think that it is very sad o see my child dying in front of my eyes but I really do not have the ability to provide him with what he is entitled to. I felt sorry but I too hope that there will be aid from the society to help the poors.

A sunset as seen by a religious figure, a physicist, an artist, a farmer.

Religious figure (Bryan): Nothing is eternal.  Everyone will die one day, no matter how healthy you are, how wealthy you are.  Like the sun, it will set one day.  Pray, listen to God, and you will have a wonderful life after death.

Artist (Nicole): This is a perfect opportunity for me to express the beauty of nature.

Physicist (Kai Song): *Cough* Listen carefully, this is caused by the earth rotating around the axis.  Isaac Newton has discovered gravity.... bla bla bla bla bla

Farmer (Maxwell) : End of a day, I can finally go home, what a hard day!

A tree as seen by a biologist, a logger, an environmentalist, a native from Sarawak.


Logger (Nicole): The forest is a gold mine.*sings* "Money money money, must be funny, in a rich man's world"

A biologist (Bryan): To the logger, please stop cutting down tress as they lock up carbon dioxide.Without tress, there will be a rise in the earth's temperature..... *Continues the 30 minutes lecture*

An environmentalist (Maxwell): We borrowed nature from God and we owed it from the future generation.

There you have it. Our very argumentative group with two distracted souls. The other two are sane, at least. Or not? Who knows.

Tata,
Nicole.