MSc by research at UMK on phylogenetics and population genetics

There is an opening for MSc by research in UMK for the coming semester 2010/2011. Research will focus on phylogenetics and population genetics of nectar bats in Malaysia for a period of 2 years.

Requirement for the position as following:

1) Minimum CGPA of 3.0 for BSc (CGPA less than 3.0 may still apply for the position and will be subjected to an interview by the project leader)

2) have some laboratory skills related to molecular biology

3) Prepared conduct sampling in the forest and handle live bat samples

4) Enthusiastic to learn, passionate about scientific research and driven to publish (most important trait)

5) Acceptable command of English

RAship negotiable subject to available budget and potential candidates are required to apply for available UMK/NSF/ etc scholarships. Those who are interested are required to send their CV that has full contact number and e-mail to jayaraj@umk.edu.my / jayaraj_vijayakumaran@yahoo.com

video on demand: using video as an educational resource

This is the last assignment that i should have done prior to my last post :) I have been doing amateur video editing from my laptop for about a year but the usage was primarily 'cut and paste' kind of work. Basically what can be done is using windows movie maker we can add, join, delete certain parts of the videos together. We can also insert audio in the same program, thus we can have a voiceover or add background music to it. I did something simple in my blog actually prior to this assignment by 'cutting and joining' parts from Mushu's scenes in Mulan and use it as my catchy intro. Well that is a simple thing to do actually.

Trough the readings that were provided by CENL2008 I found that there are other ways of publishing videos online besides using youtube or bliptv. I am particularly interested with Ustream.tv as it allows interactive chatting during the video casting and we can have RSS onthe particular channels that we are interested. The drawback about using this tech is it requires high speed internet that will be virtually impossible in our campus but maybe this can be done at home as a simple discussion session with my students.

Screencast is easy once we have the storyboard and the available softwares. I downloaded Autoscreenrecorder and tried using it but the free version is limited. I would definitely like to get my hands on those that can add caption and interactive menus as this will make the video more user/learner friendly. Maybe George/anyone in this group can recommend me such software that is cheap and available in Malaysia?

On my experiences searching for videos that can be used for my class via online, generally there is no problem searching for such video content but most of them are copyrighted :( thus I can’t edit them. Most of the videos are also short (probably due to uploading size in the web) thus we would probably use it to explain some simple concepts (that are more suitable using graphics) in the class. Generally most textbooks that we purchase do come together with an interactive CD that may have video recordings or simple flash videos that can be embedded in the PowerPoint. Thus video is actually a very useful tool that can be used in education. Look at how George use it so skillfully :).

Conclusion about CENL2008 experience: All well ends well

What did I learn?
Tools and some of the concepts that made it emerge as an educational tool. I learnt that the new internet era is an era where everyone has a voice and no one can control this voice. Student or non-student can engage in conversation about any topic and this is the highlight point in education that we need to emphasise in the future.

What did I find more interesting?
I am very interested in the iGoogle actually as it can incorporate multiple RSS in a page. But this works when there are things to be uploaded. So prior to this all the tools learnt were also important. Its nice to have a tool that can incorporate everything in one single page and have updates on it.

What would I have liked to explore that CENL2008 didn't cover?
I would like to explore tools used to make animation that can be used in my classroom. This was not covered in the CENL2008 but I guess we might need some background in programming for this. But basic ones like flash can be introduced. I realize that torrent files and its association were not mentioned in this course but it is a widely used file sharing tool. When I realize about torrent I realize we were not exposed to file sharing programs that are widely used (legal and illegal).

If I were teaching this course, what would I do to improve it?
If I were teaching this course I would like to reduce the amount of articles/length of articles that are required for reading. Pages over 20 you would assume that we would only skim trough (maybe that is what you already expect). I would also like to propose chatting as a means of more interactive way of communicating with the students as I do it very often with my students. We can ask questions and maybe the facilitator can give us some insight on what is going on.

All well ends well. Thanks George for the enlightening 12 week exposure to new IT technologies emerging in our teaching and learning world. Maybe we will chat some other time.

gaming experience as a learning experience

I have always been fascinated with games. So I will focus on games as tools for teaching and learning.
Here is the first article I read about games as a teaching and learning tool. It talks about paradigm shift from games as entertainment to games as 'edutainment'.
1. http://connect.educause.edu/Library/EDUCAUSE+Quarterly/OvercomingtheFearofGaming/47081

In this article there were excerpts (section 3, 5 and 9) in using gaming experience as a way of teaching and learning. I personally have played SimCity and the Sims so the experience is quite vivid in me. Section 5 talks about how games can be used as an interactive tool in students learning in the future and some of its obstacles that are currently suppressing this ‘tool’ being used as a learning tool currently. Section 9 talks about virtual communities that exist in the www although not mentioned but it can be related MMORPG as a teaching tool in the future (hey its inevitable that students enjoy more in World of Warcraft than in our classrooms).

2. http://rapb.mspnet.org/index.cfm/8353

This third post is about general tips in creating simple games for teaching and learning. The post title is Getting started in creating learning games.

3. http://www.bottomlineperformance.com/lolblog/?cat=4

This fourth, fifth and sixth articles review about serious games as a teaching tool specifically on a particular subject. Wikipedia page talked about the overview of these types of games and examples of it. The fifth article gives details of how serious games are different from casual games and how this gaming experience is a learning experience (they even gave a reallife example of a game named EveOnline and how it will benefit players in the real world; this is what was stated: Once you have managed a virtual corporation that spans the universe, you can easily manage a real corporation that spans the earth ). The sixth article talked about MMORPG gaming experience as a learning environment.

4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serious_games

5. http://www.adobe.com/resources/elearning/pdfs/serious_games_wp.pdf
6. http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Emerging_Instructional_Technology/Simulations_and_Gaming

These articles talked about Warcraft gaming experience as a potential learning tool.

7. http://www.gamepolitics.com/2008/10/06/world-warcraft-touted-educational-value

8. http://www.livescience.com/technology/081003-school-games.html

Gaming experience in teaching and learning might be a thing in the future. Even people from IBM are recognizing this tool.

9. http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/gbs/bus/pdf/g510-6307-00-more-serious-games.pdf

please comment about what i have wrote.

My PLE and its future

I believe PLE is a two way thing. It is connects the learner and the educator. It should be flexible and due to its flexibility would be able to reach out to different learning styles and taste of the learners. For educators it should be a ‘tool’ that will assist them in delivering the content needed for the subject taught but it shall not delimit the learning experience. How do I describe my PLE? I have been using the computer and internet for 9 years and have learnt some things on the way. From my first e-mail to my first iGoogle it has changed my way of learning and hope so in the near future teaching. Before enrolling in this course I knew about:

Office application: Microsoft Office application, Open Office application

Some statistical softwares: Minitab, SPSS, Microsoft Excel (although primary a spreadsheet program but we can perform some statistical test in it)

E-mail: Yahoo-mail, Gmail, Hotmail, Lovemail (not active anymore).

Internet web browsers: internet explorer, Netscape navigator, Firefox, Safari

Chatting: Mirc, Yahoo-chat

Download manager: Download manager, Orbit

Messenger services: Yahoo messenger, MSN messenger

File sharing programs: I use bittorrent

Movie editing software: Windows Movie Maker

Maps: Google earth, Google maps

Phylogenetic softwares: Chromas, PAUP, MacClade, MEGA, DAMBE

Software for engineering drawing: Catia (learnt it from my brother; an Aircraft Design Engineer)

Search engines: Google search, MSN search, Yahoo search

Social networking: Friendster, Facebook (have an account but was not active), Hi5

RSS readers: came together with my internet explorer

Pic editing tools: primarily MsPaint but have tried Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator

From what is listed here we can see that these are tools that I have been already using for a period of time to perform specific functions.

What is extra that I learnt during the whole course of CENL2008? Which tool could be used as a lifelong learning asset?

E-mail: Gmail can be incorporated with its other Google applications and can be used for chatting also.

Internet web browsers: I’ve heard that Firefox is a great web browser as it can incorporate various applications like download managers etc but I have not tried it.

Chatting: My knowledge in this area has changed abit as I discovered that other applications can also do so like Facebook and Friendster not to mention the messenger services.

Movie editing software: Windows Movie Maker can be incorporated with other softwares like Audacity and Autoscreen Recorder to make useful tutorials and can be posted in blogs (view my catch intro), youtube and metacafe.

Audio editing software: Audacity

Podcasting service: I use Gcast

Search engines: Google search, MSN search, Yahoo search all these searches can be also be used as RSS that can be read in an RSS reader (this is where iGoogle comes in)

Social networking: Friendster (not so active), Facebook (have an account and is active). Also joined and is currently managing another social networking site ning.com. I am managing a group called eRuai Zoology, a group effort initiated by Prof. Dr Mohd Tajuddin Abdullah from UNIMAS (My supervisor for my MSc and is currently my close associate in Zoology related research; please do visit the site http://borneozoology.ning.com/).

RSS readers: came together with my internet explorer but now have Google Reader and iGoogle. I prefer iGoogle as it is very interactive and you can add any page with xml in it. I can do a lot of things in it like monitor new papers/research that is being in press or look at any changes/comments in my other included pages (ning.com, podcast, news from BBC, my blog etc)

Wikis: where we can contribute together knowledge in a particular subject

Social bookmarking: using Delicious; I can now tag websites/info and share it with my students. This is particularly useful as they can read what I have I can gain access to what they have. Its like we teach and they learn vice versa. The best thing this tool can also be incorporate in iGoogle again.

Microblogging: using twitter not too much to say as I have already talked about it in my blog.

Potentially the iGoogle and social bookmarking has a great potential as I will be using it very often in my courses/lectures/final year projects in the future. I have been chatting with my students prior to this course, have been managing social networking group (http://borneozoology.ning.com). Incidentally I have been doing Google search and accessing help from softwares more often than I do (I have been doing this) so there is nothing new there. Well my personal learning environment is very flexible and I always like to explore new tools (or for me its toys) like the ToolBook software that was just recently promoted at UCSI University recently (pretty nippy tool) and so it should be with my students.

about igoogle

this is an interesting topic. I have tried google reader and igoogle so i will discuss based on these 2 services. With google reader you get an update on RSS feeds/updates on what's happening with the page you subscribed but with igoogle you can do the same and customize it. Since the page is customizable then it definitely can be used as a course webpage. I felt like i was 'Neo in the Matrix' movie watching what happens in the world and getting updated info about what i subscribed. The only thing that bugs me is how many of these feeds can be included in the igoogle. its like the supercomputers that the superheroes always have that monitors everything happening!!!!!!!!!! I am not sure why we can't add Facebook/Friendster here but maybe google should add this service or integrate with them. Google is really leading with these gadgets on the net. It only takes you an e-mail account and walla everything can be included. Now I can feeds from BBC sports, my blog, my twitter, my podcast, my delicious tags etc. I have also added RSS feeds from my favourite journals. AMAZING TOOL i got to say. Oh ya i will be including this in my blog.

tiwttering at a glance

Fun with twittering. A means to send send short messages to be posted in the net. Well after trying it then i understand what is it all about and what is microblogging. I am still trying to figure out how to send these micromessages to handphone. For me it is an easy method to communicate with students. Thinking of asking all my final year project students to signup for this service. the best feature of this service is its like a social networking site like Facebook but its much more simple and yet its straightforward, sending messages. i am astonished to see that how this service can be incorporated in my blog and the moodle platform. this will definitely be another plus when it comes to posting a question and expecting short answer responce from my students. Still need time to explore this tool and will do so in the near future (as i heard we need to train other staff from our faculty).

Podcasting

Well this is my post regarding the podcasting homework. I think for most of us this would be wierd the first time but i soon relialize that this tool is useful for students if they are always missing my class. Creating the MP3 using Audicity ws not a problem. Hey i even manage to put some music into it but i was concerned about the copyright issue so i scrapped it. i was fun though. If you 'aaahh ' then you willl see that the sound patterns can be identified in Audacity so i deleted most of my 'aaahhh' LOL!!!! Well what i did in this podcast? I just described about my blog and some of the available things in it and post it to my blog. It was fun and certainly i will try to post more. I publised it using Gcast and it was easy.

CENL2008- my views on the art of blogging

Hi to all fellow humans and creatures alike welcome to my blog about everything on earth. did any of you manage to look at my intro vid? I liveee!!! means the birth of Mr Raj's blog. Well initially this was just another assignment I from the CENL2008 course but i plan to make this blog my permanent one :) .....

How to blog:- got to read the art of blogging :)

Blogging is a very powerful tool, in Malaysia if you are a prominent and vocal blogger you get to be in TV, and go to jail haha. Our ex PM has 8462402 number of visitors in his blog currently viewing his expressions on all things happening in Malaysia. I think this is currently the best way to get his message across Malaysia and the world after he stepped down since in Malaysia the press is controlled by the government.

Back to the art of blogging; I have learnt one thing when i read this article; what you write will be assessable to everyone that uses the internet, and thus anything stupid done here will be known to everyone thus the key words 'RESPONSIBILITY' and 'MATURITY'.

It is a great tool but I see that in the future it will change; maybe it will not be in the form of written article (we do see other forms of blogging eg. video). It is an evolving tech that allows free flow of ideas and it is responsive. Just imagine in the future we can post our daily activities in the web; some sort of video of what we did the whole day, and people can comment to that. Scary but fascinating isn’t it?

Two lines that also catch my attention on the consequences of this technology:
Conversation vs. lecture...I have a mind...I have an opinion. It counts. Just like yours.
Shared meaning and understandings. Knowledge is acquired and shaped as a social process - resulting in spiraling: I say something, you comment on it, I evaluate it, comment and present a new perspective, you take it to the next level...and the process repeats until a concept has been thoroughly explored.

These two lines is a statement that is directly reflected in students learning today and what they will become in the future. My thought about first statement is that people now want a voice in everything that touches their lives; students will also want this power in their learning too.

My thought about the second statement is that students work closely together and they will function better in the future as blogging enables them to connect to each other more efficiently sometimes even better than the contact hours they have in class. I have already seen signs of this form of communicaction working well in some of my students. Hopefully they have both ‘RESPONSIBILITY' and 'MATURITY' on using this tech.

dear all who are not from CENL2008 you can read the original article by George Siemens in the link here.

I liveeee!!!!!!!!!!