E-Learning Blog Posts

Greeting and peace upon to the citizen of the world and over the net, we meet again in another exciting blogging experience with me, Hanif Mazuki. But before going through let me reminds you folk (the reader) these posts are considered as bone dry… believe me.

Blog Post 1

The Internet

Internet was described by O’Brien and Marakas as “a rapidly growing computer network of millions of business, educational and governmental networks connecting hundred of millions of computers and their users” (O’Brien & Marakas 1975, p.524). But according to my own definition, the internet is like a spider web that interconnected with each others to form a network in which mass quantities of data or information are stored and transferred. The history of the internet began in 1960s by the US Defense Department and also known as ARPAnet in order to transfer data safely between machines and it also function as a medium in communication between military officials and scientists during the height of the cold war.

Initially, the early version of the internet was connected and being utilized in four universities in the States; UCLA in Los Angeles, University of Utah, UCBS (Santa Barbara) and Stanford Research Institute. As time and advancement progressed through time, the internet nowadays it a tool that had provided many services to its user all around the world such as E-mail, Listserv, USENET Newsgroups, Chat, Videoconferencing, FTP (File Transfer Protocol), Multimedia Streaming and my favorite, the World Wide Web.

Blog Post 2

Web browser

Web browser is software that enabled user like you and me to view or browse the web. There many varieties of web browsers to date such as Safari (for Macintosh), Netscape, Opera and the most popular of them all, Internet explorer by Microsoft. But my favorite web browser for the time being is Mozilla Firefox because mainly of the multiple “open new tab” function and download list menu.

Blog Post 3

Browsing the net

In order to browse for information in the net, majority (well… almost) of us use web directory, search engine and Usenet. Web directory is website that stores lists and lists of Internet sites; and it is a bit like the ‘A – Z’ guide or phone directory. Select a category that suited best for you information and let it do the job for you. Web directory is best to use when you apparently have little idea on what to look for or just simply lost. Major drawback of this method is you will spend much time on clicking for information and end up getting lost in the process.

Meanwhile, search engine is a website that has access to an incredibly large index of websites right across the network. Unlike web directory method, search engine does not categorize websites; instead it provides a textbox for you to enter your search directly. Search engine is best to use when you want to get result directly in your face and it is easier than web directory when mastered it. The only drawback of this method is you will be spending more time thinking about the keyword to type in the textbox.

Usenet is one of the most active parts on the net which it is consisting of Newsgroup (collection of Bulletin boards that people usually ask questions and post their opinions online) Usenet is not supervised by anyone or anything; people can use the site to discuss about sensitive issues such as political issues, health issues, government policies and so on.

Blog Post 4

Weblogs

Weblogs are websites that are often updated on a daily basis. Often the design of weblogs sometime can be very simple in nature. They are easy to write and require no or little programming skill. Some wrote their weblogs like a personal diary; while others operate as watchers of media, sport, entertainment, etc. The writer of the weblog is known as Blogger (like me). Other term for weblog is blog and using the weblogs is blogging.

Blog Post 5

Netiquette

Netiquette is etiquette or guidelines for posting messages to any online services. When surfing the Internet, as a Netizen (combination of net and citizen) and the users of the internet must follow certain standard in order to communicate with others online. Since no one owns the Internet, netiquette is basically a mixture of common sense and also courtesy. You must never (3X) forget that there is a human being at the end of the telephone line or anything when using Internet.

Netizen must obey the following rules:-

1. DO NOT CAPITALISE EVERYTHING! As if you were shouting at someone.

2. Do not criticize. (different people, different perception)

3. Pay Attention to Language Issues. (bad language are prohibited)

4. Think Before Posting. (take your time, something wrong you send today will haunt you tomorrow)

5. Avoid Humor. (not many people had a sense of humor, just use emoticons J)

6. Reply Quickly (mostly within a day)

7. Keep Personal Information Private.

8. Obey Copyright Laws.

9. Manage your password.

Blog Post 6

Internet Security

The Internet had dramatically revolutionized the global communications as it making possible for people from all around the globe to easily exchange the information in which sometime involved with lots of money. But the very same openness also creates an enormous problem. Anyone can access the network, yet not everyone has good intentions. Some engage in malicious mischief by unleashing destructive software programs as such computer viruses, Worm, Trojan, Spyware and junk mail in order to steal some of the profit. While others view hacking computer networks as sport. Then there are people with criminal goals in mind. To avoid becoming a victim of misguided pranksters or cybercrime, take the time to examine the security of your personal data and here are some my recommendations.

First line of defense in a war against destructive software program is by installing anti-virus software. Anti-virus is all in one protecting package that protected your computer and personal data from malicious software which is appearing everyday. Another step is to be careful with email attachment because these programs can hide itself in an attachment and make sure to scan it before open it, safety first.

Blog Post 7

E-Learning

The subject that I currently studying right now and it is refer to the use of processes and technologies to create, distribute, manage, and enable learning via an electronic network. The conventional method of learning is mainly on teacher-oriented as the source of information and as time progressed the method of learning is based of student-oriented or student-centered which it is more flexible in delivering the information and knowledge when using electronic network or E-Learning.

Blog Post 8

Identity in the age of the internet

Let me introduce the definition of Identity in the Age of the Internet, it is a study of how people interact with machines and some of the consequences for the way people use these computers or machine in a short and long term. Computer nowadays had evolved from humble beginning which is a one to one communication; computer and person and until it is interconnected with networks to connect all the computers worldwide mostly via Internet, LAN, WANS. The network itself or the Internet provides a virtual space or cyberspace for people to interact with each others in a life on the screen. A best example to show the interaction of people in the cyberspace is Second Life, a virtual world developed by Linden Lab with 15 millions users or also known as Residents which interact with each others via Avatar.

Blog Post 9

The Internet and Linguistic Pluralism

Is one standard language over the internet can satisfy others language users? A very interesting question as majority of the internet-related communication events nowadays are conducted in English. The usage of one standardize language such as English in the internet is seems as convenient at one level only and making the nonnative speaker of English feel left out. The process of globalization over the last 30 years has pushed English from being an international language – to becoming a truly global one, spoken and used more broadly than other languages in the world. Go figure, 85% world’s film market is in English, 65% of scientific papers is in English, and 85% of international organizations make official use of English. English is rapidly becoming the main language of online communication as it is used on more than 50% of websites.

Blog Post 10

Cyber language

Cyber language is a language of the internet, which the definition of the cyber language is not yet recorded in any dictionaries but it is being used regularly in daily basis in our life. The Netizen commonly used words derives from device and borrow words from familiar contexts to describe a new concept such as bookmark, download, mouse, crash, homepage and icon. The creation of cyber language is a never ending process and very unpredictable one as new terms will be introduced as technology evolved. Since the introduction of the cyber language, literacy itself is changing because of the impact of technology on writing and reading practices worldwide.

Blog Entry 4, 5 and 6

Blog Writing Entry 4

Arguments and Evidence (what is the evidence?)

In critical literacy, every arguments presented by the critical reviewer are crucial to insert at least an evidence in order to help strengthen the arguments from the text. The definition of evidence is information that contributes a strong reason or proof to validate the arguments in the sense of the trustworthiness of the arguments especially to the reader. Evidence can be divided into two types, the circumstantial evidence and testimonial evidence. The circumstantial evidence is where the gathering of information or evidence in the absent of witness to testify for the crime.

Testimonial evidence is an evidence that required by testifying from the witness themselves usually can be found in criminal cases where law enforcers call up several witnesses to testify. Different type of evidence also can be used accordingly to the different type of situation for instance in the reading materials, some of the reader prefer to choose between circumstantial or testimonial evidence (maybe both) in order to strengthen their arguments in the text.

Statistics and, Crooked and Fallacious Thinking

Statistics refers to inform about any phenomenon or activity expressed in an understandable numerical form, it also stand for the art and science of collecting, presenting, analyzing and interpreting numerical data. Statistics is a tool for human to make the maximum use of quantitative measurements and assessments. The significant of statistics derived from human tendency to closely relate the facts with figures. Somehow raw or unrefined data can be carelessly accumulated can also be consider as useless or even meaningless. There are common statistical slips such as unqualified averages, fallacious sampling, and percentages unaccompanied by actual number; and misleading presentation.

The development of crooked and fallacious thinking in human is perhaps be molded by our tendency to be mislead and misunderstood as many of us are not aware of the fact that shaped their thought and communication processes. There are common forms of fallacious and crooked thinking such as transfer device, circular argument, false analogy and either-or assumption.

Blog Writing Entry 5

Audience and Impact

Every piece of writing or article published for a certain audience and has certain level effectiveness for the writer in achieving his/her purpose on the audience or also known as impact. In order to answer the question the audience and impact section of the article. Firstly, we should consider asking ourselves ‘who is the intended audience for the article?’ and ‘what is the likely impact/effect of the text have on the audience?’ The audience sometime is easy to identify than impact (which require intensive analysis), for example, it is not very difficult to speculate or predict the readers of a magazines or newspapers you may pick in the library or a book store. Nevertheless, we should be cautious while examining or judging the impact of texts as the readers are different in term of the acceptance and response between them to the texts.

Types of Exposition

There are two types of exposition; analytical and hortatory exposition. Each of them has similarity but with specific characteristic which make them different to each others such as hortatory exposition is ‘persuaded to’. Meanwhile, analytical exposition is ‘persuaded that’. Hortatory exposition is used to explain or giving clarification the reason for improvement for instances a certain problem or issues confront by a society in the micro level or government in the macro level. Analytical exposition is used to explain things or issues as they used to be without any recommendation. Analytical exposition usually associated with academicals speeches and writing. Whereas, hortatory exposition can be found in political speeches, letters to the editor or behavioral memos posted by school administration or employer in order to shape students or employee’s attitude.

Metaphor

Metaphor is considered for most people as the device for poetic imagination and where rhetorical flourished as a matter of extraordinary rather than ordinary language that’s we usually use as the main method of communication in our daily basis. Metaphor plays a vital role in different levels; at the general level of word meaning and also in discourse.

Blog Writing Entry 6

Critical Literacy in General

After 5 month of learning from mistakes and perfecting my critical skills at the same time through rigorous exercises and portfolios practices by my beloved lecturer, Madam Jamie. I had learned many from the 10 elements of Critical Literacy (topic, content, source, audience, rhetorical function, purpose, perspective, positioning, impact and visual literacy) in order to make better understanding on every texts or articles that’s apparently I will encounter in future. During the final assignment, I also learned how to evaluate my classmate’s critical review and I loved it very much. That concluded everything that I had to said about Critical Literacy and until the next blog entry, goodbye and may Allah bless us with better and less chaotic future. Amin.

Blog Entry 3

Positioning

Positioning is an element in critical literacy where the participants in the text are giving roles. For example, I had done a critical review on an interesting article about a girl with disability was rejected by a private school for disable student because of the insufficient of facilities and then I listed down the participant in the text; the girl (Scarlett Finney), the girl’s parent (Scott and Bernadette Finney) and The school (Baulkham Hills private school). After that, I look for further evidence in the text to find the interpretation for each participant and I like to show Scarlett’s position in the text; she is describe in the text as a prominent child with bright future ahead despite her disabilities. Positioning also giving roles to the reader as well such as I managed described the reader playing a role of a judge in the article which I’d done earlier and the writer’s purpose of giving a role of a judge to the reader is mainly to persuade to gain get huge sympathy to the girl’s cause.

Linguistic perspective

For this topic, I defined linguistic perspective as a combination of signs which is different in term of meaning for a specific group of people only as it had being generally being constructed sociologically. The role of linguistic approach to literacy is to show how a text works and how to use the knowledge to become critical reader. This topic also enabled the reader to distinguished the global or key elements from the view of linguistics perspectives in the text and the criteria of the aspects in the text itself which are remained constant such as the text can be about something (field), they position reader interpersonally (tenor), they vary in degree of abstraction (mode), they must have some overall shape (genre) and the unchangeable overt or covert ideological position (ideology). All of these aspects are hidden in the text; which I can describe the reader as if he/she is an archeologist at the archeological quest seeking for valuable hidden treasures (linguistic perspective) in the labyrinth of words and sentences.

Speech and speakers

Kress (1994) stated that the experience of language is the experience of texts which he defined as the ability to utilize and understand language reflects the ways how texts shaped us mainly as human, mainly in term of building our self-identity, attitudes towards others people and general knowledge about the world. He also uses the term of ‘discourse’ to explain more on how texts shape identity of people and Kress described discourse as ways of speaking or writing which it promoted a particular view of the world in the way it should. The usage of language can also shaped our assumption as different people in different setting should behave and an excellence example is the behavior towards men and women in the way of both gender should or shouldn’t behave. There are texts that were ‘constructs’ and ‘positions’ for a specific group of people which also Kress referred as ‘ideal reader’, the ideal reader is a person is most likely to agree or persuaded by the view of the world promoted by a text. Finally, the topic teaches us a valuable lesson in changing the way we usually looked at ourselves and also other people alike as there the need to become aware in how a certain texts position us and also to read critically at texts which constructed the world we taken for granted them as natural.

Reference:

Kress, G (1994). Chapter 2 ‘Speech and speakers: the formation of the individual in discourse and genre’. In Linguistics processes and in sociocultural practice. Melbourne: Deakin University Press, Page 33-37 and page 48-49.

Blog Entry 2

Perspective is one of ten areas of critical literacy which I outlined in introduction topic in my past blog entry. The significant of studying perspective that’s it showed the writer’s stance or viewpoint, let me to put in more simpler words; that’s everybody look at different ‘windows’ to view on something or matters. The word ‘windows’ itself which I used to represent the perspective because everyone has it own preference or the tendency to choose favorite point of views which suited them. Perspective can be either positive or negative, or maybe both of them in which it often fall somewhere a continuum (scale) represented below.

Condemn………………………………………………………………commend

The second writing practice which I’d examine an interesting article on the problem of bully among schoolchildren base on ten areas of critical literacy but for this blog I only emphasize on the perspective part. Firstly, I will outlined the words used by the writer in order to give the reader better understanding on the perspective of the writer. The usage of word in article such as “sadistic” and “who get a big kick of hurting people” to refer the bullies which fall on condemn (or negative) continuum above. I realized it is very difficult to determine the perspective as we need to develop the ability to ‘interrogate’ the text thoroughly.

Language, perspective and ideology

A topic presented by my classmates a few weeks ago if I not mistaken, this topic revealed how language, perspective and ideology affected the writer’s preference to construct their writing. First of all, I shall explain what are language, perspective and ideology; language is a systematic communication between people, perspective is a stance or point of view and ideology is a system of belief or attitude in particular group of people. What really understand about the topic is that’s writer’s language, perspective and ideology determines the scope of the writing he/she produces. For example, if the writer is Malay and he/she want to write an article in a Malay newspaper, he/she will prefer to write in language, perspective and ideology that will fit the preference of the Malay.

Texts and Textualities

For this topic, I’ll discover that’s not every words can be used in any types of text because every words has its dissimilarities between it such as in term of meaning and also usage within the text, and this can be illustrated as the signifiers (words) have multiple signifieds (meaning) associated with it. The chapter about Texts and Textualities also included the connotations and denotations meaning of words in text, connotation is defined as a meaning or connection implied for a group of people or individual. Whereas, denotation can be define as words or expressions that be associated to something in a real possible world. I like to use ‘gold’ as an excellent to explain both this concept, in connotation the meaning of gold which agree by many people; is ‘a precious yellowish metal, highly malleable and ductile, and free from liability to rust’ (Macquarie Dictionary). Whereas, in denotation refer gold as a symbol of wealth and high-status.

Blog Entry 1

Critical literacy is subject that’s taught for semester four students in MPCIM, the subject objective is to give new insight for student in the way of reading a text or an article in critical point of views. Not believing in everything you had just read is crucial in this subject as students looked a text as a product; produced be someone (writer), meant for someone (audience) and the reason for text (purposes). There are ten areas which students can used to analyze an article in critical literacy; topic, content, source, audience, rhetorical function, purpose, perspective, positioning, impact, visual literacy.

The most interested part in my study is the first writing practice, which I’d examined an article based on ten areas of critical literacy. The article is based on a true story of a British nurse who was convicted of murder in Saudi Arabia and returning to work again as a nurse after the payment of large amount of money to the victim’s family. It interesting enough because I had encountered many difficulties at the beginning and it also taught me valuable lesson on how to look at an article in the way which I had never realized it before.

Chapter 1 - Stories and facts

The chapter which I done a presentation with several of my colleagues, it’s mainly about the relationship between the function and form of different genres in writing and also illustrated on how the reader understand the purpose in a type of writing intended by the writer, and also explaining how the reader generally judge the value or quality of writing on the basis it’s aligned well on the rules to the genres. This chapter mainly focuses on the forms of factual writing such as recount, procedure, description and report. The point stated in the chapter which I found it very fascinating is the difference style of writing between genders, female tends to write in perspective of nurture of things or tend to tell stories more and male prefer to write of the nature of things around them in a report-like manner.

Chapter 2 - Rules and Regulations

The second chapter for critical literacy which I had learned that texts with common and benign (subtle) words can serve regulatory function can control and manipulate the reader’s belief and action. Usually, the readers will be not aware for such texts if it being constructed or intended on that way, and the awareness of reader can lead to resistance to the controlling influences. As I go through to the chapter, there four types rules and regulations which I can outlined; declarative, imperative, circumlocution and passive declarative.