Week 13

13 weeks of TWC over, time sure does fly really fast! But not that I'm complaining teehee :p These 13 weeks have proven to be useful in changing my perception of technology. In particular, I'm now more exposed to the various kinds of new technologies that I've discovered with the class over the weeks, and these emerging technologies have wow-ed me! It has made me aware of the up and coming technologies in the different fields and industries, something which i would never have discovered on my own.

So this last session of TWC saw the last few groups presenting their web report, including my group on Women & Technology- please visit us at HERE to learn more about how women do have intricate links to technology and we're really not noobs at it! Please take our polls too!!! Okay, don't mind the advertising. So this week we had 3 other groups, apart from my own, presenting. One was on armageddon, the second on diseases and technology and third on technology and art! I thought this week's range of presentations was pretty diverse, so that was really good in expanding the scope of learning for our class. The one which was caught my interest was the one on armageddon! I've always been interested in end-of-the-world stuff, such as movies like 2012, the day after tomorrow, etc. So i thought this topic on the end of the world and technology was nice to know about, will visit their site once i'm not as bogged down with work like I am now!

One other presentation that I thought to be informative was the one on diseases & the technology related to combat the spread of diseases! This group had an organised site which made it easy for users to navigate around and it seems really easy to obtain information without overloading us with facts at the same time. I thought this topic to be really relevant to everyone as it deals with health- our very being! They also offer information on various diseases on their site, including the most recent H1N1 swine flu, of which during the period I got quarantined with my friends, haha. And the rest of the other types of diseases listed there have information that everyone should gain knowledge of as well.

Lastly, I'd like to include a video which my group had shown in class (and is also on our site) to illustrate the preconceived notion that most people have- that women are noobs at technology. Hope you have a good laugh watching it!

And here's another one!

And to end off, I'd rate this session a 9/10!

Bye bye TWC.

Week 12

We had the group presentations for class today, and overall you could see that a lot of effort had gone into putting the various sites together :) There were 3 presentations today, one on aeroplanes, one on space junk, and the last one on technology and land use! Can't really recall the exact names but it was along these lines. From all the presentations, i managed to pick out the most significant example to me, which was the China Straddling Bus! Blogger says i've exceeded my limit to upload photos -.- so here's a video instead!

I thought this way of incorporating technology into improving land space is way cool, and can probably top the list of China's inventions! With the Straddling Bus, it allows buses to function like MRTs, and this lets it move at faster speeds as well, making the whole service more cost-efficient. This should be implemented in Singapore! We're always bothered by bus lanes and traffic jams with long queues of buses at the side (esp near school, haha), hence such a form of transport will definitely speed things up on the road.

One other thing noteworthy about today's session is the quote that Prof mentioned-

Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification. -Martin H Fischer

Although it kinda has no link to the content of the presentations today, I thought this to be true, and that it is important to keep these in our heads as University students. Many a times while doing our research papers we tend to get carried away with the content and knowledge that we're obtaining. We fail to internalize it fully and we just proceed to rephrasing and dumping them into our papers. So I thought this quote would be a good reminder for us all to not take the easy way out, but to make the effort to absorb and internalize the knowledge that we gain through the research process.

Overall, I'd rate today's session a 8/10 as it was interesting to learn about other arenas in which technology has had an impact in, apart from what was fixed for us to learn during the past 11 weeks.