Interactive Board
We have come up with this solution to first spark of the curiousity of the public, then educate them about dyslexia and increase the awareness of DAS.

So basically, the interactive board will be placed in various places such as on the bus, in the void deck, shopping centres, in schools and many other places that you can think off.
The Interactive board will first flash up a game where curious user will begin to play a game similar to hang-man. The first panel shows a picture of an elephant, and asked “What am I”. That is obviously an elephant. But the catch is, the answer starts with the letter “L”, and the answer is Lephant instead. Users are given 10seconds to complete the answer.Whether the user is able to get the answer or not, the screen will proceed to the next question. We included 3 questions in this game, and the purpose of this game is to educate people about what the dyslexic students are facing. After the game, users will be prompted to enter a page that includes more information of Dyslexia, information of DAS, a mini quiz + lucky draw contest that gives away attractive prizes upon answering all the question and winning the draw lot, a feedback page with comments that will be accessed before being posted to the blog that we will be creating, and a page for donation information that includes the mobile donating method.

we hope that by sparking off the curiousity of  people will attract them to use our interactive board before educating them about it. This way, people will not immediately see the objective of these boards and walk away, but actually use it and learn from it.

These are our solutions!! we hope that if these ideas are ever used, we are able to increase the awareness of DAS and Dyslexia.

Both of this websites are targeting on the Dyslexic community. They are both learning centres and have a website.

But the difference is that the Bristol’s Dyslexia Centre is targeting more to the Dyslexia students themselves(of younger age). This can be inferred as the layout used contains more Cartoon characters and it is more colorful.  The user access and the vocabulary used are much simpler and easier to understand.  Both websites contains about the same amount and type of information, naming the information about dyslexia, self assessment and how/where they are able to seek help, etc.However, the bristol’s website did include games that allows interaction with user.

DAS is targetted to a more mature group as the layout is kept simple and based on texts(little images). They included newsletters, up-coming events, and the above mentioned information.

Another factor that might lead to the extreme popularity of youtube could be due to the variety of the videos that are available. From Movies to lectures, youtube is able to target people of all age group! Being able to do that, it will be weird if it is not popular among the people. I believe that anyone reading this blog would have viewed videos from youtube at least once.

As for the downsight of youtube, i believe that it would be the limit of the size of the video that can be uploaded. Competitors such as VEOH is catching up as their file size limit is relatively bigger than youtube. Like youtube, VEOH has a wide range of videos ranging from soap operas to music videos. With such strong competitors, Youtube has got to constantly come up with new ideas to attract its user.

The future directions for youtube? I believe that youtube might include social networking services in the future. With facebook up and rising, youtube and veoh will lack if they do not do something about this.

The trip down to  the Dyslexia Association of Singapore’s Learning Centre(Tampinese Branch) was really fruitful as the trip provided us with alot more information that the website did not provide us with. Basically, the learning centre is where dyslexic students and their dyslexia community learn to cope and improve with their condition.

We met Su’Ann, the Centre Manager and Educational Therapist there, and had a question and answer session there.  Through that session, we’ve gotten information on how thing works in DAS and the various methods they’ve used to increase the awareness of DAS and Dyslexia.

We’ve found out that they do have open houses in all of their centres and a raising awareness week called Dyslexia Raising Awareness Week(DRAW). The week we went was the week where they had collaborated with the National Library board, where poster and information of DAS and dyslexia were moved from one library to another.

Apart from that, they held awareness talks in various schools such as Chung Cheng High, and live forums where people can voice out their enquiries and concerns regarding DAS and dyslexia. They do have a facebook group that allows only the dyslexia community to join, such as the parents of the dyslexic and the dyslexic themselves. They have a web2.0 enabled website that consist of the nearing events and many information about what DAS does and what Dyslexia is and how they can go about assessing and improving  their condition.

In order to make sure that our solutions will be according to the restrictions of what information DAS are willing to share, we asked if there’s anything that we should not include in our solutions. The answer are the fees as they do not want to deter people who are unable to afford it and  photos for privacy sake.

Apart from those, DAS do have their own psychologists that helps in the assessments of people who suspect they are dyslexic, or their children are dyslexic. They provide trainings for teachers and parents of to help them identify and better cope with dyslexic students.

Students of dyslexia are often misunderstood as being lazy and not very smart due to their difficulties in reading and writing. I hope that this situation will improve by educating people about dyslexia.

- Who are their “clients”?

Children suffering from dyslexia.
-provides encouragements, testimonials and tips on improving their condition.
- fill them in about funds available to help the dylexic.

The Teachers
-helps teachers to identify dyslexic children
-provide teaching pointers to benefit the students

The Parents
-helps Parents to identify dyslexic children
-included instructions on how they are able to enroll their children in DAS learning program.
-helps Parents to improve the conditions of dyslexic children by providing with some home teaching tips
focusing on pheonics.

- Types of payment.
1. Cheque
2. Nets or Cash
3. Giro
4. NCSS Online Donation Portal

Website – Any updates?
News and Newsletter section not updated since 2008.
Course and training available are often updated.

source: http://www.das.org.sg/

Apart from that, Lionel also talked about his portfolios such as Nuffnang, Blog Celebrity – Xia Xue’s blog, blog shop – Her Velvet Vase, and many others. Through this lecture, I found out that Nuffnang is a blog advertising company where advertisements are placed in the blogs of bloggers. Bloggers can sign up in Nuffnang to allow advertisements to be placed in their blogs to earn money.

In addition, Lionel talked about the difference between the free lancing and working for a company. He stated that free lancing is a better choice for students who are interested for taking a part time job as the timing is more flexible.But when something goes wrong, the free lancer will be accounted for the mistakes. Also, a free lancer does not earn as much as a designer working in a company. As for being in a company, you will be representing the company. Timing of work will not be “do-as-you-like”, and the company will be responsible for mistakes caused by the designer. This would mean incurring lost to the company too.

I’ve gotten much take-aways from this lecture and i believe that it will help me prepare myself better before stepping into the working world

Although 1 to 10 out of 1000 children will get Tourette Syndrome(TS), many Singaporeans are still unaware of such a disorder, or rather, they are unaware that the involuntary actions done by these people are a disorder. As a result, many victims were constantly made fun off and avoided.

Tourette syndrome is a neurobehavioral disorder(affects the nerve system) characterized by fluctuating motor and/or vocal tics. Tics would usually start in the face or upper body. They are made worse by stress and would on the other hand diminish in sleep. Symptoms usually occur before 21 years old and they wax and wane spontaneously. Tourette syndrome is hereditary and it affects males more than females. It is not a progressive degenerative disorder(It will not shorten the life span).

Some tics includes an involuntary screech, twitching of the cheeks, sticking out of the tongue and other movements of the body.

As mentioned, about 1% of Singaporeans suffers from this disorder. There is a need to raise awareness so that people will not misjudge, misunderstand and avoid these people because of their condition. There is also a need to tell people that such a support group exists, so that they are able to seek help and support from people who has been through taking care of people suffering from this disorder.

I believe that the most powerful way to raise the awareness of Tourette Syndrome and the Care Group is through the use of the media.

The most effective way is through the television advertisement which will reach millions of people within a short period of time. If a good advertisement is done, words will spread and people will learn of such a disorder and change their perspective towards people suffering from TS.

Talks regarding the Tourette Syndrome and the Care Group should be held in schools to deepen their understanding towards such disorder and raise their awareness of the existence of the Care Group. If all the schools has been through this talk, every Singaporean in the future will know of this disorder and the care group.

Having Flag Day for TSCGS is yet another way to raise the awareness of the care group and the disorder among the public and the students who are involved in the event.

Creating a page in Social networking sites is also a way to raise the awareness of the care group and the disorder.

Apart from that, the Government should go around raising the awareness of this disorder and the care group the way they did to raise the awareness of AIDs, Breast Cancer, Drug addiction and Smoking.

To allow people to see and feel living the life of a Tourette Syndrome victim and their family, a Television drama could be made. This way people who watched the drama will know about the care group and the disorder.

Even as I am blogging now, I am creating an awareness to such a disorder and letting people know that Tourette Syndrome Care Group Singapore do exist.
I hope that more people will know about it and stop discrimination against the victims.

The National Archives of Singapore holds on to the many memories of Singapore that allows future generations to learn about the colorful history of Singapore.

They are responsible for the collection, preservation and management of Singapore’s public and private archival records such as government files, private memoirs, historical maps ,photographs, oral history interviews and audio-visual materials and is an important research center for people who are interested in finding out more about the history of Singapore.

In addition to that, they also protects the rights of citizens by providing evidence and accountability of government actions and they provides advice to government agencies on records management.

Furthermore, NAS provides internships and courses on archives and records management and conduct guided tours around NAS to educate the public on the how archival work is done.

Apart from being able to get hold of research materials there, the Access to Archives Online Singapore (a²O) was developed by the NAS to meet the increasing demand for online research. Through a²O , the public to get hold of media records, administrative history, photographic posters, speeches, cartographic records,audio-visual recordings and  digitised archival records and they get to view the online exhibitions that NAS has showcased.

All in all, the NAS holds the very essence of Singapore. Without NAS, the history of Singapore will only be left in the heads of people and will be lost in the future.

Not long ago, we considered the Television set as a new medium, the new way of communication. Today, new media are defined differently as they were before. New media today are our mobile phones, our personal computer(PC), social networking sites(SNS), the internet and everything else that are considered to be the convenient way of communication. These new media has affected our society in many ways we cannot possibly imagine in the past.

The Personal Computer(PC) is a door that opens to many other new media. With Internet, the television is no longer limited to scheduled programs,users can watch just about anything at anytime; The newspapers  allow users to get updated by the latest news without having an actual copy of the paper(and it is free for that matter); People can talk and  interact with one another without face-to-face meet ups or the use of a telephone through the use of social networking tools such as FaceBook and the various Instant messengers such as Skype, ooVoo and Windows Live Messenger; Students can study and gain information via various educational portals such as Asknlearn and Blackboard; Companies can advertise through the use of the internet and World Wide Web; Games are now available in the cyberspace, and the list simply goes on.

The mobile phone is another new medium that people are familiar with. There are about 1310 Mobile phone subscribers per 1000 population in Singapore which makes it safe to say that every Singaporean owns at least 1 mobile phone (on average). The use of the mobile phone has been expanded from the primary function of calling and answering calls, to the state where it is often used as a mini Internet Browser(with its WIFI function), a Music Player, a game set an organizer and an alarm clock. The fusion of various necessities and entertainment has made mobile telephones today more than an ordinary telephone.

With the growth of the new media, “media will no longer be delivered one way from a media company to an audience but by audience members to other audience members”(Bhuiyan,2006). This is especially true when we think about the information provided by the world wide web.  Information from Wikis/Wikipedia are written by internet users such as ourselves. The accuracy of information might not be high, but it is a case of how media is delivered by an audience member to other audience members. Weblogs and Podcastings are yet another example of how an audience member distribute multimedia files and share information with one another.

While it is true that today’s new media brought about much convenience to us, it has proven to bring about many other negative impact on our society.
According to Trevor Cairney, Master of New College and Adjunct Professor of Education at the University of New South Wales in Sydney,
“many studies showed that there is a significant relationship between time devoted to new media and a variety of health or behavioural problems, for example:

• 83% of studies found a relationship with obesity
• 88% found a relationship to sexual behaviour
• 75% found a relationship to drug use
• 80% found a relationship to alcohol use
• 88% found a relationship to tobacco use
• 69% found a relationship to ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder)”
  These studies were done on children aged 0 to 13+ over a period of 30 years.

The exposure of explicit and violence-based videos, non-censored website with language vulgarity are all present on the internet and just about any user is able to gain access to them. This is proved to be of a negative influence to teenagers around the world.

The information provided on the internet might not be trustworthy at all. This might cause miscommunication and misunderstanding.

With the rise of new media technologies, there are definite implications on traditional business models in the media industry such as the press holdings and book publishers.

With the use of various social networking tools, people will stay home to communicate. The lack of activity will lead to many health problems such as obesity, spinal and eye problems.

In addition to that, the radiation from the computer and mobile telephones have proven to be a health hazard.

In conclusion, new media has both positive and negative impact on the society. As convenient and beneficial new media are, we have to use it with moderation or it might prove to be detrimental.

Sources:

• http://www.cybercollege.com/frtv/frtv030.htm
• http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=52164
• http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/56035/how_media_affects_society_pg2_pg2.html?cat=2
• http://www.ned.org/cima/CIMA-New_Media-Report.pdf
• http://trevorcairney.blogspot.com/2008/12/impact-of-new-media-on-children.html
• http://www.singstat.gov.sg/stats/keyind.html