Review on course

I found this course very intensive but useful. I have picked up points on writing, interviewing and presentation skills, as expected of me :), as well as enjoyed the lesson activities. As a language module, I think the intensity was to be expected, no matter what others might think of it, and it definitely was too much for me this semester. I am taking 6 modules, 26mc, and when there are 3-4 lab reports every week to do, I found I did not have time for the required readings towards the middle of the semester. Fortunately, it turned out to be not as bad.

In parallel to classroom work, I also went for an interview for the TIP, and that real experience actually enlightened me much on what "preparing" for the interview should be - immersing yourself into the industry, learning about the latest developments, and gathering your thoughts about these developments, as well as why you want to be in the (teaching) industry. I was sure I could have performed better at the interview if I had prepared. Still, I got the internship :) somehow. I'm not sure if it was because of my niche teaching subject (Home Economics); the interviewer expressed great interest in my FST major. That might be another take-away: having a niche gives you an advantage over others. This was the same for another interviewee - he was interested in teaching Japanese language, and the interviewer was super-enthusiastic about it, because third-language interns are super-rare. She offered to arrange for him to intern at the MOE language centre if it was permissible there.

Outside of classroom work, there was the blogging we need to do. I definitely did not like the idea of blogging as part of the module, although this module is not the only one who uses blogging as a tool for learning (whatever the module planners think we can really learn from blogging). Perhaps for people who are already bloggers (a subcommunity among internet users, mind you), this means of learning would come across more naturally to them, because they would find it fun and all, but not for me. Or maybe I'm just taking this too seriously. In case you wonder, while I have facebook, I don't use it :). And of course, you can say it is just another platform, similar to writing on paper (but the feel is different).

It was fun nonetheless. I would definitely recommend this course to my friends :).

Oral presentation review

On the presentation itself, I am generally satisfied with its outcome. I felt that we presented our ideas pretty well, though not as comprehensively as I had wanted, and we answered all the questions posted very well. Why not comprehensive? Because everyone else felt that giving too much information would make our team vulnerable to questions which we do not have the answers for, which I feel is a very valid point. Nevertheless, I feel the presentation can be more comprehensive and better, even despite the time limit.

On the time limit, we exceeded the given 20 minutes! I believe this is because we did not practice our presentation as a team, which made us less aware of the time we spent outside presenting the content of our proposal. In addition, despite not having any team practice, I did not keep watch on the time, so I was totally unprepared for when the time keeper indicated that our 20 minutes was reached.

On my personal performance, I feel that I can improve my presentation skills. One is to keep track of time, as already mentioned. I also believe there was no eye contact, because I was looking into space as usual. I also did not practice my presentation as much as I intended to, so I was not as confident of my knowledge on the proposal as I thought I would be. My confidence was also affected when Terence talked about how the PV-LED project was to be implemented, for which I was not prepared; my heart skipped a beat when he talked about it. But I was glad I was able to keep my mind alive during my presentation.

On the preparations for the presentation, I enjoyed the intensive last-minute discussions to finalise our presentation, because we really got to interact and seek each other's thoughts and suggestions. No doubt, the last-minute nature of the discussion was bad, but I believe that helped motivate us to our peak in that discussion session.

All-in-all, I enjoyed the experience of the oral presentation, as well as the team work behind the oral presentation. Thank you Terence, Aoyun and Kelvin :)

Post 4

Can't find my 4th blog post anywhere ;_; wonder what happened to the edit of the "Real life example" post.. So anyway here it is:

I have a Vietnamese friend in my FST course. He is not good at English, which makes it quite a challenge to interact with him sometimes (for comparison, Kelvin's English is better :) ), especially in the first year of our studies, when it was the first time I spoke to someone who has a Vietnamese-accented English. I at that time, found his pronunciation unfamiliar, and still do sometimes, and had to listen very carefully when talking to him. He also has trouble finding words to express himself. In view of this, I would repeat what I think he is trying to say to make sure there was no misunderstanding.

All in all, it takes quite an effort to interact with him. Why go through all that trouble? That is because my past online interactions with people of Vietnamese descent gave me the motivation to talk to him face-to-face, to make friends with him and to learn more about Vietnam. (He was the one of the first few people I "targeted" in our class. :P)


While it was tiring, it was also a good experience. I learned a little more about Vietnam, and also practiced interacting with someone not well-versed with English. I learned that (1) I have to speak slowly and clearly; (2) I have to listen carefully and give my full attention; (3) I should repeat what I think he/she is trying to say to me to affirm mutual understanding; (4) I have to be patient and give him/her time to put their thoughts into words. Interacting with him definitely prepared me to work closely with foreign students, like Aoyun and Kelvin.

I hope he, and all other foreign students find it a good experience in their interactions with other students from different parts of the world, because for me, it definitely is a good experience.

@_@

Looks like I HAVE to prepare for the interview this week after all... Anyone like to suggest anything interesting?

--------------------------------------------------

We are pleased to invite you to a Group Interview Session with the Ministry of Education for the Teaching Internship Programme. The details are as follows.

Date :       17 March 2011 (Thursday) 

Time :  7.00 - 8.00 PM (Please arrive 15 minutes earlier)

Venue :   MOE Function Room, Level 24, Office Tower

                1 North Buona Vista Drive, Singapore 138675

Dress Code: Smart Casual

2.    As this will be the final round of shortlisting, please come prepared for the interview.

3.    Please bring along the following documents:

• Original and Photocopy of NRIC (front and back) or Passport (for foreign students)
• Printout of this email 

4.     Do confirm your attendance for this interview by replying to this email by tomorrow, 15 March (Tuesday).

Thank you and we look forward to meeting you soon!

Real life example of the limitations of a (public) wiki

Please note: Wiki.nus unavailable from Friday 11 March, 2200 hrs to Monday 14 March, 0800 hrs due to HSDC Power Test.

kthksbai

Job Application - Edited!

Application for Teaching Internship Programme 2011

I am a 2nd year undergraduate in the National University of Singapore majoring in Food Science and Technology. I enjoy learning new things and teaching my peers on things that they do not understand. Hence, I read with great interest of the Teaching Internship Programme, which introduces undergraduates to teaching as a career. I wish to take my interest in teaching to a higher level through this internship and test my ability to take up teaching as a career.

Most of the peer teaching I have done was on a one-to-one basis. Recently this month, I conducted a peer-teaching lesson for my class as part of a group of four. It was a good and satisfying experience, and it had given me more confidence to attempt going beyond peer teaching as I was used to. Teaching a group of people was unlike teaching one-to-one. I had to spread out my attention and this made challenging to connect with the whole class, to understand their progress. I would like to take on this challenge again through this teaching internship.

I have personal interest in the subjects of physics, IT, Biology, Earth Science, and Mathematics, but struggle to juggle between breadth and depth. Notwithstanding, having an interest in multiple fields of studies helped me better appreciate the things I experienced and came across in life, and I hope to help the younger generation do likewise as a teacher. As a peer-teacher, I am very patient and flexible; when my peers were not able to understand what I was saying, I would attempt to bring the idea across differently until they understood the idea, by using different words, analogies, illustrations, et cetera, according to the situation at hand. I get a strong sense of satisfaction when I succeed eventually.

I hope to get a valuable chance to experience and take on the challenges of teaching through this teaching internship. Please feel free to contact me by phone at #, or by e-mail at #. Thank you for your consideration, and I look forward to your reply.

On effective written communication

 Read something like this before?

The start of the Twenty First century is here and the European Community is still struggling to shake off the latest in a series of economic recessions. Poor communication has often been blamed for holding back the expansion of business. The European Parliament has recently commissioned a study into ways of improving efficiency.

Although English was adopted as the first language of the EC back in 1971, it has always been recognised that English spelling is unnecessarily difficult. This becomes clear when we consider the words ‘chough’, ‘plough’, ‘rough’, ‘through’ and ‘thorough’. Officials in Brussels have therefore agreed that there is a need for a phased programme of changes to iron out these anomalies. A high level committee is being set up to staff these changes.

After the first year of the programme, the committee is likely to suggest using ‘s’ instead of the soft ‘c’. Sertainly, sivil servants in all sites will resieve this news with joy. The hard ‘c’ will probably be replaced by ‘k’, sinse both letters are pronounsed alike. Not only would this klear up konfusion in the minds of klerikal workers, but one key kould be saved on komputer keyboards.

Enthusiasm is expekted to grow in the sekond year, when it will be announced that the troublesome ‘ph’ will henseforth be written as ‘f’. This will make words like ‘fotograf’ 20 per sent shorter in print. The move will also please fysiologists and fysisists.

In the third year, publik akseptance of the new spellings kan be expekted to reash the stage when more komplikated shanges are possible. Goverments will enkourage the removal of double leters, whish have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.

We would al agre that the horible mes of silent ‘e’s’ in the language is disgrasful. Therefor, we kould drop thes and kontinu to read and writ as though nothing had hapend.

By this tim, it wil be four years sins the skem began and peopl wil be reseptiv to steps sush as replasing ‘th’ by ‘z’. Perhaps zen ze funktion of ‘w’ kould be taken on by ‘v’ vich is, after al, half a ‘w’. Shortly after zis, ze unesesary ‘o’ kould be droped from words kontaining ‘ou’. Similar arangments vud, of kors, be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

Kontinuing zis proses yer after yer, ve vud eventuli hav a reli sensibl riten styl. After tventi yers, zer vud be no more trublsm difikltis und evrevun vil find it ezi to understand each ozer. It is apropriat zat in 2008, ze yer of ze Uropen Trety, ze komunity shud be takink vun mor stp tovards unifikation.

A hypothetical conflict

I was in a team of 4 and was not familiar with anyone on the team. Tom stood out as a very outspoken individual in the team, and in our first meeting, he suggested using the Pelican wiki as the platform to collaborate on project documents. We agreed to follow his suggestion. However, after trying to use Pelican, I found it to be very unfriendly to use.

In the next meeting, after deciding on the project topic, I raised my opinion of using NUS wiki instead of Pelican, because NUS wiki was more user-friendly and work can be done more efficiently. Tom however strongly insisted on using Pelican, and I strongly opposed his decision. An interpersonal conflict thus resulted.

Causes of conflict:

1. 2 strong personalities in the same team; Tom's strong insistence on doing things the way he wants; my not giving way because I was not convinced and I was given a chance to do so by the rest of the team.

Perhaps, Tom was uncomfortable with using NUS wiki because it was new to him. However, he could have been insisting just for the sake of doing so.

2. Passive team members Dick and Harry did not take sides on this issue.

After talking to them outside of the meeting, I found that they did not like the idea of using Pelican either, but did not voice their opinions because they did not wish to create conflict with Tom.

Possible solution:

I might try rallying Dick and Harry to form a majority insisting on using NUS wiki. If he still refuses to play nice, I will use words to make him feel bad about himself, and hopefully weaken his resolve.

Question:

What do you think is a good way to deal with such a Tom when his opinion makes no sense and Dick and Harry are not helping?

P2P on IVLE

Learned something new today - how to set up p2p sharing through the IVLE. Here are the steps:

IVLE
Resource banks

Multimedia bank

Folder status (not shared)

The rest should be straight forward.

I don't know whether our IVLE uploads are scanned for ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY FOR IT RESOURCES infringement. Anyone know about that?

Here's where you can read up on the policy: http://www.nus.edu.sg/comcen/gethelp/faq.html

And here's the section you should be concerned about when you do upload:

4.1 Uses In Violation Of Law

Users shall not engage in any activities relating to the use of the IT Resources that will be in violation of the laws of Singapore, in particular (but not limited to), the Computer Misuse Act (Cap 50A), Copyright Act (Cap 63), Spam Control Act (Cap 311A) and Undesirable Publications Act (Cap 338) as may be amended from time to time. By way of illustration only, some examples of such illegal uses are:

(i) Downloading, distribution, sharing or storing of (a) seditious or other materials that is likely to cause feelings of enmity, hatred, ill-will or hostility between different racial or religious groups; or (b) obscene or pornographic materials or other materials depicting sex, horror, crime, cruelty, violence or the consumption of drugs or other intoxicating substances that is likely to be injurious to the public good.

(ii) Downloading, making copies, distribution or sharing of any copyrighted materials or copyright infringing materials without prior permission from the copyright owner and using or making use of the IT Resources to engage in activities which generally infringe copyright and intellectual property rights.

First post~

In this course of Professional Communication, I will be studying how communication between people can (or can not) be effective. The course starts with studying the basic underlying principles of communication, then goes on to the specialised fields of written, job search and oral communication skills. I find this arrangement very reasonable; I first understand the fundamental principles that make any communication effective, then gradually over the course see how they can be applied to specific fields of communication. In that sense, I can get a feel of applying the fundamentals, and this will help me when I apply them to other fields of communication this course does not cover. For me, this is the most important part of the course I wish to digest and absorb.

The importance of effective communication, to me, is that it allows me to build strong relationships with other people. In effective communication, the message (or idea) one wishes to send is received without distortion, and the recipient knows that. I feel this is important, more than whether the message is damaging to the relationship. This way, there is a sense of transparency, which generates mutual trust. This element of mutual trust is the foundation of any relationship. With this foundation strongly and firmly in place, any cracks in a relationship can be repaired.

My relationships with my siblings are not very good, and I hope to improve and strengthen them by improving my communication skills (even though I have already improved much compared to the past). A barrier I have with communicating with my siblings, is I do not find myself able to bring myself to the same level as my siblings (or the other way round; I do not know), and so find it awkward talking to them casually, especially when there is no common topic of conversation we are both keen on. That there is no common topic of conversation is also why I am not exactly good at initiating casual conversations; I'm a better listener than a speaker most of the time. I only start one when there is a common topic in sight.