Technical
TECHNICAL (analysis)
The HTML page I made for Tech 114, History and Theory of Technology and Culture, shows my technical ability. Tech 114 focused on writing, visual and computing technologies as they advanced throughout history. Each week, for eight weeks, all the students in the class were to collect an article relating to technology for analysis. At the end of the course, we were to post them, along with a summary of one of the articles and how it was connected to the course, onto our SFU webspace. This small piece of website creation was a landmark in terms of technical skill because I had never used HTML (hypertext markup language) before this project. I searched for HTML tutorials online and enlisted the help of one of my technical-minded friends. I picked up HTML pretty quickly, and found that I enjoyed learning how to construct the webpage. The best part of the HTML page is the colour scheme. Since I have experience designing my personal weblog, I was relieved to find HTML employed the same coding system. This transferable skill definitely helped me enjoy HTML since past experiences with colour codes have always been successful (they turned out as I wanted them to). An area that needs to be improved on is the formatting. The summary at the bottom is messy and not very easy to read. The areas where there should have been indents for paragraphs and spacing do not have the aforementioned indents and spacing. It looks unprofessional and rushed, which it was. As I had other course work to do, I tried to do the HTML page quickly.
Team Skills
TEAM SKILLS (analysis)
I posted this weblog entry, displaying my team skills, for Tech 101, Fundamentals of Teamwork and Communication II, which is a continuation of Tech 100, Fundamentals of Teamwork and Communication I. The course further builds on effective communication, teamwork and learning principles that students covered in Tech 100. For this assignment, our team was to create an annotated bibliography, an assignment that documented our sources, in APA style, from a previous assignment about animal testing. Each person was to find a minimum of two links related to animal testing then post them in our thread before we made a final copy to be turned in. In this post, I am helping a teammate who was seeking information regarding the annotated bibliography. I also offer a suggestion on how to go about having the essay done since we didn't know how we were going to get started on the essay. The best part of this entry was my willingness to help one of my teammates, as proven by the statement wherein I go into detail about what the project is about and the expectations. Being an active team member and having interpersonal skills are crucial to any project, big or small. An area that needs to be improved on is the detail that went into this entry. I could have further explained the roles each person could perform. For example, I should have stated when we should have met and who would compile the final project. This lack of detail is not the best idea for big projects, as any detail missed could lead to a large error.
Effective Communication
EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION (analysis)
My Tech 100, Fundamentals of Teamwork and Communication I, final term paper is a good example of my effective communication skills. Tech 100 focused on building on effective communication, teamwork and learning principles. This paper was meant for the TechOne student (a first year student) to gain experience writing research papers. Each student was to pick a topic from a list given by the professor, then start researching that topic (determining which sources were credible), creating a working bibliography (a bibliography that could be changed at any time during the essay writing), planning the structure of the paragraphs, then backing their content with credible evidence. My essay topic was animal testing. The best part about my essay was the evidence I had for both sides of the argument. I successfully incorporated the evidence into my work without making it seem choppy or out of place. This was important because being able to prove a point strengthens the argument and adds to its credibility. The areas for improvement would be any of the comments the teacher pointed out about my work in red ink. She said that I had no rebuttal or thesis. I found these comments strange, since I believed I had a clear argument and rebuttals to every point. The next time I write an essay, I will make sure to show it to a professor who can point out what I need to fix. These small gaps need to be filled, but this essay was still an essential step towards effective communication since this assignment involved being able to demonstrate ethos, which is appealing to a person's fundamental values, a concept that we had learned in Tech 100.
Critical Thinking
CRITICAL THINKING (analysis)
This analysis was one of my weblog postings for Tech 114, a course I took last trimester. Tech 114, History and Theory of Technology and Culture, focused on writing, visual and computing technologies as they advanced throughout history. We were asked to do an online reading then answer a question in weblog form. The question was: 'Think of surveillance technology that you have experienced in everyday life, from street cameras to identity cards, tax records and credit databases. Relate the readings on surveillance to how your behaviour might change, knowing that you are being watched in many ways. What are the dangers? Are there any advantages?' This posting required critical thinking because we had to think of any concerns dealing with surveillance technology. Even for someone who disproves the use of surveillance technology in the home, I had to think of several reasons why it was bad and how this could affect a household in terms of privacy. The best part of this analysis was that it forced the reader to think about the concerns about surveillance as well as the advantages and disadvantages. Forcing the readers to answer the question made them think about the text they had just read in a critical manner, instead of just reading it without fully comprehending the points the article was trying to make. An area to be improved on is the length of my entry. I don't think that the entry was long enough and incorporated enough of the ideas from the text. If I had included more of the text's citations, this would have given the entry a more in-depth look into the article and my understanding of it.
Creativity/Innovation
CREATIVITY/INNOVATION (analysis)
My IAT 100 Final Project, was one of my favorites project to work on. IAT, Systems of Media Representation, was a course that covered the fundamentals of visual representation in 2D and 3D forms. This project combined music, personal imagery and creativity. Each team member would pick a song according to the type of music that he or she liked and then found or took pictures to show what kind of scenes would go on inside their minds when listening for deeper meanings. After that, the pictures would be arranged in a GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) file. The best part of this project for me was the layout. I designed the site layout, doing a storyboard to show how the user should progress after entering the site. The storyboard was in sketch format and was useful in terms of planning and adding creativity to the site. By clicking the Site History link at the bottom of the main page (http://www.sfu.ca/~mhn/Iat%20100_Final%20Project/main.html#), the user is able to see these sketches. The area that needs improvement is the simplicity. I think we should have made our GIFs longer or made more GIFS for more songs. That way, the project would have shown our perspectives on multiple songs and given more insight into our personalities for the audience who did not know us well.
Personal Management
PERSONAL MANAGEMENT (analysis)
This final piece, a weblog entry for Tech 100, is a prime example of personal management. Tech 100, Fundamentals of and Communication I, as mentioned before, focused on building on effective communication, teamwork and learning principles. The assignment was to come up with a summary of our team's ideas regarding an online article. This article, by Susan Herring, was about gender identity clues that were given away on the Internet. An example of one of these clues is attitude, since males and females distinguish themselves online by their mannerisms and diction: males would be more aggressive and use more cuss words, while females would be more gentle and prone to using wider vocabulary. To compose this article, three of our team members met online since meeting face to face was impossible and pooled our ideas together. In total, our team of three spent three hours working on this assignment. The best part about this entry is that we planned to have the three of us take part in the writing and revising so the final essay wouldn't look like just a bunch of sentences put together with no relation to one another. This way, we made the information flow better. An aspect of this entry that should have been worked on was that we could only get three of our six teammates to work on the assignment. The remaining three who did not participate were already busy doing other things, like working, when we decided what time to put the assignment together. Ultimately, not having the other teammates there proved a bit challenging for us since we could have used more input. In the future, this can be resolved by letting teammates know about a meeting time long beforehand so we can always reschedule if things come up.
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