The new working environmet

Speaking about the new working environment and practises nowadays, the first thing I thought of was : People are less affected by geographic limitations really in today's working environment! And therefore, they are having much higher flexibility in their choice of job. What a good news, isn't it?


People even just need to stay at home working in front of the computer.Yet, everything has two sides. While people are enjoying the advantages brought by higher flexibility of workplace, they also need to remember,  they are facing much keen competition in job market since they need to compete with people all over the world instead of people in their own country merely!

People prefer working at home due different reasons.

For example, if I were a mother with small kids, it would be definitely preferable for me to work at home as it increases my time to take care of my children. Besides it also saves much transport costs! But for me, I will choose not to work at home since my I am kind of lack of self motivation. There are also different things that would distract my concentration like my computer, the TV, the comic books on my desk... I really need to sit in a place which I can always remember myself: I have to work hard and focus since this is a place for work!

If I have to say one thing that I like about today's working environment, I will say the flatter hierarchy between the boss (or supervisors) and the subordinates since it helps to build up better relationship between each others. Workers are also more willing to give useful comments and express themselves better, it helps improve work efficiency as well as the sense of belongings to the company better! Like in the tutorial centre I am working in, I get along well with my boss as well as my other colleagues and we can really talk like friends. This makes me like my job more and work harder! How about you guys ? What do you think?

Summary regarding my blogging experience here

I am never an active blogger in my real life. During my secondary school period, I first started writing online dairies in xanga mainly to share about my feelings and memorable incidents in my life. Although i shared the posts with my friends and I also read the posts of which I subscribed, I seldom left comments on other's post as well as replying comments of my own post. I even won't spend much time on reading the other posts thoroughly since I think communication is not needed in ‘dairies’ ( I don’t have much concept about what a blog is at that time.)
Therefore, the blogging experience brought by this course is really much different.

At first, I didn’t like the way of being restricted to write on certain topics. Yet when time passed, I started to read more posts and found that reading posts about the same topic written by different classmates is indeed a fun thing. The reason is that even though we are writing our posts base on the same topic, our contents are never the same since we all have different personal experiences and thoughts about the topic. Sometimes I get a lot of inspirations from other's post as they made some points which I have never thought of! I started to like doing the weekly blogging more.

About the comments leaving part, I will say that I am still not active enough but I believe I will try my best to communicate with others more by leaving more comments when I have the chance of writing another blog in the coming days.
At the first few weeks of blogging, I left a comment rarely as I really didn’t know what comments to leave. It is inappropriate just to leave a comment writing ‘Nice sharing!’, right? Yet, some classmates started to leave me comments and even raised a question based on the points I made. It encourages me to think more deeply about the things that I have written. When reading the other’s post, I also started to compare their thoughts with my own ones and raised some questions for them to answer. It is a nice way to learn and helps us to strengthen the knowledge and ideas that we learned from the previous lessons.

From the class and the blogging experience, I also learn more about the nature of blogging. Now I know that blogging is not merely about the record of personal matters, it is indeed a platform to share and communicate. To make our blog more amusing, text is not enough. Therefore, a good blog post should be multi-modal with different elements like hyperlink, videos and pictures. It not only can make our posts more interesting and easy to read and inspire readers’ thinking, it also makes ourselves enjoy the process of blogging more!



For the sample post, I chose Unfriend your friends for a burger.  Although this post may not be multi-model enough, it is the post which I enjoying writing and replying the most. I think if the apps which I mentioned in the post is still applicable, most of us( for those who have a Facebook account) should at least get a few yummy burgers! This is a good example of including hyperlinks in our own post as it often inspires people to think out of the box. From the iPhone apps, it shows that we are really having a lot of 'unimportant' friends on Facebook but why do users choose to keep them? Other than 'it's easy to add a friend.', I think the strong weak ties that we learned from lesson could also help explain it. We never know when we need him/ her one day even though they are not good friends of us at the current stage.

I hope I can start an interesting blog and share with more people soon!

Homepage of my blog


List of blogs which I have commented on:

Apple:
http://en2848apple.blogspot.com/2011/04/normal-0-0-2-false-false-false-en-us-zh.html#comments

Claire:
http://en2848claire.blogspot.com/2011/01/tagging-vs-folders.html#comments

Juno:
http://en2848juno.blogspot.com/2011/03/who-is-controlling-human-or-technology.html#comments

http://en2848juno.blogspot.com/2011/04/should-technology-involve-too-much-in.html#comments

Secret:
http://en2848secret.blogspot.com/2011/04/social-media-and-work-place.html#comments

http://en2848secret.blogspot.com/2011/03/social-networking.html?showComment=1303164666676#c6358040540360953895

Summer:
http://en2848summer.blogspot.com/2011/01/my-digital-life.html#comments

How much are we controlled by the technology?

Before the class, I have never thought about the question of whether we are controlling the technology or being controlled.

And the question immediately raised my memories of a few movies related to the topic =].
The movies are all exciting and the idea is at the same time a bit horrifying. Obviously, many people have though about the negative influence of advanced technology long before. Although the story of the movies are a bit exaggerated, yet when thinking about our every day lives, we are indeed inevitably controlled by the technology, just that we never realize it!

When I was small (during primary school period), what technology means to me was my television, my Gameboy ( which could only show the black and white...) I didn't even have a computer at home. I can't say people were not under control of technology 10 years ago, just that when compared to nowadays, the influence is much lower for sure!

When I was small, I like to go reading, cycling, swimming and playing chess in my spare time.
Ten years after, when I ask my tutorial students (which are 7 to 11 years old) what they usually do during their spare time, most of them reply with a instance answer 'computer games! X-box! PSP!'  ' How about Ocean Park, do you like it?' I once asked. 'No! It's boring, I would rather stay at home for computer games...' 


And when we are in the MTR,  and look around to see what people are doing,it is a must to find at least a few passengers playing with their smart phones. Interaction between people has become less and less. I have seen some couples having dinner in restaurants, never speak a word with each other for the whole dinner time but only to play with their smart phones!

Yes, technology really brings us much convenience, but what have you given up for such convenience?
I should also quit my habit of logging in Facebook every few hours and playing with my Iphone all the time,  so that I won't miss other valuable and beautiful things in my life.

Unfriend your friends for a burger

For many of us, Facebook or other social networking tools have seems become a part of our everyday lives. Think about the first page that you log on the Internet, isn't it Facebook? And  how many friends do you have on Facebook?

For me, I have about 300 friends on my Facebook. Compared with last year, the number of friends has decreased in fact since I have been deleting some for my own good.

I have a friend who never cares about the privacy problem in Facebook. Whenever someone add her, she will just accept it. I once asked her 'Don't you worried about your private life? Everyone on your list could see ALL your photos and friends and other personal information!' She said she doesn't care about it yet she started deleting her 'friends' after a few months because of a few incidents. First, she realised someone who downloaded her photos and opened a new account adding her friends. She also received messages of nuisance often sending to her by her Facebook friends that she don't even know.

About two years ago, the US fast food shop Burger King launched a Facebook apps which encourage people to delete their Facebook Friends! ( you can read more about it here.) Users were able to get a free burger by deleting 10 Facebook friends and the result is that 233,906 friends were removed in less than a week by different people! From the large number of friends being deleted in such a short time, it has reflected that people are really having many unimportant friends who they are willing to sacrifice for a burger!  

Of course, it is not necessary to delete all friends who we are not so familiar with. We need strong ties as well as weak ties friends in our social lives. Yet for those we have never seen and even heard about, whats the reason letting them to spy our personal lives?

How many text messages do you send per day?

Have you ever have a count on the number of text messages that you sent everyday?

Sending text messages has become inevitable in today's life with the increasing popularity of smart mobile phones.

Before having a iPhone, the number of SMS that i sent was only about ten per day.However,
the number turns to 30 and even more after I am using iPhone. What makes the change?

Due to the limitations of most of the 'normal' mobile phones, users can only read one single message per time, whenever we need to refer to the last message, we need to search for it from a clumsy message box. I was even merely able to save 250 messages in my previous phone, so what I could do was to delete all less important ones to save places, it makes me more difficult to trace some of the old messages. How uncomfortable it was!

Therefore,I really appreciate the message function of IPhone!

The messages are all  grouped together and saved like a dialog according to the person we are texting. So when I send a text to A, the latest conversation between us will also be listed( there is a button on the top for you to load the more blocks of messages).

I especially like using the text emoticons in my messages a lot, it enriches the messages as I can show my mood and emotion as well. The use of punctuation is also an important feature of text messages. Sometimes, the emoticons and punctuations can replace words. For example when I am angry, I will just send '!!!!!!' to represent my anger. When I am wordless, I will send  '......'. It is time saving, easy and people can still understand you.



To think deeply, does sending text messages affects my English literacy?
Sometimes, I write abbreviation forms of words like 'u',becoz' when I am doing academic writing. Yet, I will always PROOFREAD my writing for a few times at least. The spelling checking of Microsoft word also helps me a lot when I am doing my assignments. Therefore, I think it really isn't a big matter for me.

Information overload

In the last lesson, we were bought to the topic about information overload.

I think the problem is really inevitable in this information era. People nowadays depend so much on information technology in their lives. Today, even  primary school students need to access to the computer for their homework and to update the latest school news!

I still remember I was already 13 when I first got a computer at home.. and I was so silly that I asked one of my schoolmate the following question:

 Me 'Could you please teach me how to surf the Internet?' ( I am sure she felt odd about my question.)
 My classmate 'well....no problem. Actually I don't know what should I teach you, what you need to do is only click on the 'Internet' icon..'

The new generation  is really different. Many children are really good at using computer and different IT stuffs in such a young age. I was shocked when one of my tutorial student showed me her Iphone4. I wondered if they really need such an advanced mobile phone... 

I couldn't understand why someone could spend more than 12 hours a day in front of their computer browsing the Internet and playing online games!  Every time when I finished an assignment and clicked on the 'summit' button, I just want to escape from the computer for a few days. It's never easy to do an assignment(research essays!!) especially in the starting phrase, when we need to search for  the information we need from a large pool of data  How time consuming it is!

I think another trouble  that many of us encounter comes from our emails.

To save my time dealing with my emails, I have my own way to do so. Its not rare for people to have more than one email accounts and so do I. Other than the CityU mail, I also have Yahoomail and Hotmail. The Yahoomail is only for official use ( school stuffs, banking, contact with close friends etc.)
and the Hotmail is like a mixed pool for mails like Facebook alerts, cosmetic membership news and other less important  stuffs. I check with my Yahoomail at least a few times a week but only about 1-2 times a month for the Hotmail. How about you guys? Do you have a better way to do so?

To make my media and digital life more comfortable, my next step is to rearrange different files on my super messy desktop!

About my digital and media life...

About my 'digital and media life' (actually this term sounds a bit odd..),
so let’s just begin at how I make use of the media and digital stuffs around me.

I think the most frequent media that I am in touch with is the Internet. 

Although I am not an addict in the Internet, I spend some time on it everyday. 

Here are the sites which I check in everyday:

1) Yahoo: it’s the homepage of my Internet, I will browse on the daily news ( I am quite lazy in reading newspaper so the yahoo news at least enable me to know the big and hot topics of the day) and also check my yahoo mail.

2) Facebook: I just don’t know why … it becomes my habit to do so (a habit which I want to quit!). If I am bored I will just automatically click to Facebook as there are always things to amuse me (e.g. funny videos and post shared by my Facebook friends).

3) YouTube: it’s a good place to look for interesting videos and old songs!

4) Google: I like using its searching engine more than yahoo’s.

Other than browsing the Internet, I sometimes also log on MSN to chat with friends who are not in HK.
( For my friends who are in HK, I highly recommend them to call me directly as I don’t like chatting on the Internet at all and I always give a very slow reply =P.)

Three months ago, I bought something which has enriched my digital and media life :
IPhone
Other than the communicative function as a phone, my iPhone is also:

• My alarm clock

• My music player

• My camera ( There are some great apps which enable me to take some good pictures!)

• My map ( it’s important as I get lost easily)

• My shopping guide ( I like the H&M and Zara apps so much as they show me the newest clothing on shelf, this save much of my time as I don’t need to go there until I find something I am interested in.)

• My restaurant guide…

I can check the weather forcast before planning what to do and where to go.

I can check mail and reply mail even though I am out.

I can play different mini games while I am travelling on the MTR or waiting for someone

(here are some of my favourite games!)

 

I can...

I can say, I really can’t get rid of my iPhone now!!

In this course, I hope I can get to explore more interesting topics about the digital and media world that we are in. And of course, I hope all of us can enjoy this course together as well. =]