Week 5 Video editing

here's a video i made using Windows Movie Maker. hope you guys enjoy it.


Friends Forever - Raiin

Apologies that it will take some time to load. Imeem is slow...

Week 4 E-Learning

I only got to use the internet for educational purposes only when I reached JC level, when the school decided to use this platform on the internet called "Aspire" to post up our lecture notes, extra notes, exam answers, mock papers, and the list just goes on as far as academics is concerned.

At first things seem efficient, if we missed a few sentences we can always go back to the internet to download the notes and fill up what we've missed. And also the notes will be up there before the actual lecture, so for us we could be prepared for the lecture. At that point we thought that our school is so 'hi-tech', and the teachers started to post homework, do online quizes instead of the conventional paper and pen, marking and returning papers.

Then as time passes, I realised a growing trend. When we realise we have access to already available notes, we stop copying notes in class, which literately translate to 'i can do my self study at home', which then means wasting more time, and less effective learning. And in the end we still have to print our own notes, talk about paper and ink.

Then there was the occasional 'portal-down' issue. Sometimes out of the blue the portal is inaccessible for some reason and we'll have to go to school facing angry teachers and backing our stories of 'we couldn't log in' using class size. Then there was the lost of passwords, firewall, pop up window block, disconnection, and the list goes on again as far as internet 'accidents' are concerned.

Until the days in UB.SIM, my internet use has turned from entertainment/notes, to entertainment/notes/homework/research. Pretty much many things can be found on the internet now, since it doesn't take up a huge space like the libraries does. But then comes the problem of credibility. Since anyone can just go into Wikipedia and edit the contents of the information, how do we know who to trust and who not to?

Although not everything is as bad as it seems. Learning is enhanced with videos, slideshows, presentations, movies, all aided with digital media. How else would we know how the structure of a simple molecule differs from a macro molecule? How would we know what happens when you put a current through a complex circuit? Sure, the teacher can tell you the answer, but ultimately we still need to remember those in our heads using images, might as well save the trouble of getting confused trying to translate words into pictures, and just show them the images.

Technology is changing everyday, and new means of digital media is being introduced every now and then. Who knows, maybe one day we don't even have paper and pen anymore, no more whiteboards in class, even the projector or visualizer might be gone, replaced with something far more efficient and engaging to make our learning more fun and insightful.

Such as this, 3M digital learning board. I had the chance of using a similar board at The British Council, a language learning center which teachers used such boards to conduct lessons, eliminating the whiteboard and combining a projection screen and an interaction board. Teachers can now open up documents and write on them, at the same time scroll and nagivate around desktop.

It was great fun, using the board and a pen to write on the board, erasing with the same pen, and scrolling around, drawing, clicking...

I do hope to see more of these being used in schools where technology is greatly used, such as SIM!!

Week 3 E-Business

Two years back before entering SIM UB, during a huge break that I have after my A'lvls, my friend and I set up a small blog shop to sell accessories that we made ourselves. It didn't turn out well, as in the end we only got to sell one item...

One main concern that I had was publicity and advertising. There are tonnes of blog shops out there, and what makes me think that people out of the blue will stumble upon this blog and buy things from us? And at that point of time, I did not know anything about advertising online or how to even conduct business over the internet. In the end after a long while, we advertised on two shopping directories online.

As we were planning, I realise that partnership is also important. Collaboration with your partner involves distribution of work, handling money, planning of the website, delivery, getting the products together, and the list just goes on and on.

Another concern that I had was the prices of the goods. There are a lot of shops out there, and the prices that we quote must be able to compete with them. This is a tricky issue as we are selling accessories that are handmade by us, the materials that are used are not cheap if bought in small quantity. Unless if we have a steady business going, there is no point in buying the materials in bulk. Hence our items were priced rather high to cover our cost. However, given that we do not have to pay rental, bills or any other cost to set up the shop, all the more the price needs to convince people that they are buying quality goods and persuade them to buy.

The last concern that I have was our goods. Do we have enough goods to sell, does our quantity and quality of goods show that we are credible and reliable. How do we compete with other people who are setting up similar blog shops and how can our products stand out from theirs?

In the end the shop was left there as it was not profitable, since we only sold one item and we had our own commitments to school. Time is also a factor, whether or not do we have the time to maintain such a business on the fast moving Internet?

Now that i looked back, I realise that the issue was not as simple as it was. Insufficient market research was done to see what consumers wanted. My goods were made according to my style and capabilities. To market our own style takes a different approach than the commercial marketing of goods to make profit. Hence there is a conflict of the nature of the product, and the way of marketing.

Then is the outlets that we used to publicise. Our target audience is young teenagers to women of early twenties. The two directories that we used were not exactly places teenagers would visit to know what kind of shops are there online. We should have used blog advertising, which is going to blogshops online to advertise our own blogshop so that people visiting them would get to know about us.

Then was our own capital. We do not have a start up captial to get our materials, which in the end was our own pocket money, which is very limited.

Also, we limited our payment mode by bank transfer. As we didn't have the expertise with internet credit and eligibility to have our own credit card. Hence it limited our scope to customers who can pay by bank transfer.

Lastly, the problem of our business is that it lacked the foresight. We did not have a clear idea of how long and how big our business is going to be. There was insufficient planning and clear targets of our e-business.