Research summary

For my topic on youth smoking, i did research on smoking statistic why youth smoke, with a personal case study which is myself as a smoker, what are the harmful effects of smoking and how to prevent youth from smoking.

Smoking statistic:

• 360 000 people smoking in singapore
• 1 out of 5 youth smokes

Analysis: Why youth smoke?:

• Curious
• social influence
• media influence
• parents influence
• friends influence
• peer pressure
• fit in to their friends
• stress
• face problems in their life
• want to be like adults

Harmful effects of smoking:

• Heart disease and stroke
• cancer
• Chronic obstructive disease
• bone loss and osteoporosis
• reproductive and sexual health problems

How to prevent a youth to be a smoker

• educate the harmful effect of smoking
• parents should communicate opening and spent more time with teens
• parents should be a good role model

To conclude, youth are the future of singapore, we must not smoke away our lives. Most smokers also start smoking at their youth, this is why we should prevent youth from becoming a smoker. Media influence are strong, we must be strong and not get influence. Peers and people around youth should also not encourage non smokers to smoke. Finally may all smokers cut down on their cigarette and walk the path towards quitting smoking.

Ending of EIR

Time flies, and EIR is coming to an end.

I feel that EIR is a very interesting and benefiting subject. We earn alot of about using internet and doing research. In future, in pursuing a degree or furthering my studies, research is always the base and fundamental and most important part in most career.

What i like most and learn most about in EIR is the forum discussion part. We get to post on forum to hear from people's view and comments. What i did is that i post my personal story on smoking and raise an awareness of problems and also finding the cause of smoking in youth. The results of this is very fun and high when you see many people commenting, although there are some useless comments, most of them are relevant and useful. I get to further my analysis with this forum discussion. It gives a feeling like doing an interview with people and surveying them on a forum. I believe this is very good and i learn alot.

The metaphor i think about EIR is salt, EIR seems like any common and normal subject, just like salt, common and seems nothing special, but when food is tasteless, a little bit of salt makes a lot of difference and can transform the food into a delicacy. EIR will be the salt in my future life of doing research and the skills i learn might seems simple, like search engine ect, but will be very useful.

My dream holiday...

The famous Sin City Las Vegas, yes this is my dream holiday. This is the place that will be filled with entertainment, gambling, nightlife and shopping with luxury. I wanted to go to Las Vegas becuase of the entertainment and shopping there. There are many luxury shopping boutiques there and also mang night life and other entertainments. Most importantly i love to place poker and a little gamble at a grand casino is always what i wanted to try. So while searching for a travel guide about Las Vegas, i stumble upon this website.

http://www.visitlasvegas.com/vegas/index.jsp

This website is more of a information website regarding tourism in Las Vegas. There are many pictures on Las Vegas and i find there. The website introduce on different parts of Las Vegas and all different entertainment.

The website talks about many highlight of Las Vegas, like the Strip (picture above) off Strip, downtown, ect.

The website also introduce on the famous casinos in Las Vegas and what are the games avaliable in each casino.
And most importantly my favorite shopping heaven, there are many branded shops in Las Vegas and they sells things at a discounted price all year round.

Overall, the layout and the presentation of the website is pretty good, but its just that the pictures are a little small, if there are big and nice views of Las Vegas, it would be better. Content and coverage wise, this website have everything that fit into the purpose of a guide to read before visiting Las Vegas. Not only there are all the different parts and entertainment related topics on Las Vegas, there are also information of hotels for staying. There is also a search function that allows the user to search for specific places he or she wants to go at Las Vegas.

To conclude, i believe this is a good website and i learn alot more on Las Vegas from this website, when i hit 21, which is the legal gambling age, im going to go to Las Vegas and ill be thankful on the information this website gives. I would like to emphasise on the site's search function that can allow us to access all different entertainment and other information relating to Las Vegas. This makes our lives easier if we are looking for specific highlight of Las Vegas.

Practical 8&9 Reflection

Today, we learn about website evalution. We learn to determine whether this website is a good or a bad and relevant or not. There are many factors to evaluating a webstie. We learn about, the purpose, coverage, currency, authority, accuracy, accessibility, layout & presentation and usability. We learn how to access a website and how we can identify problems of internet and website.

After learning about how we can evaluate website, i realize that there are many websites out there that are very terrible. Many have bad user interface or bad layout and presentation. Others have content that have no link the the purpose. Before i learn about website evaluating, i always though, this website no bad, its alright for things like that ect. However, after i learn how to evaluate website, i can see good and bad website in a more professional point of view. On the other hand there are also many other good websites that have high standards out there. However, i realize that evaluating website is quite a tedious job and it is quite time consuming.

Practical 7 Reflection

Today we have a class test, the question are rather tough and tricky, thanks to my luck i manage to get a decent grade. After the test, we learn about citizen journalism. Citizen journalism is that normal people like you and i gets to post and update news and topics on the net. It is very successful in countries all over the world. However, i personally dislike the way singaporeans do citizen journalism. I think that singaporeans are using citizen journalism as a gossip corner, its like for coffee shop talk purpose.

We evaluated the website STOMP in our groups. I believe that STOMP meets the criteria of a citizen journalism website. It does sharing, allowing people to post and contribute photos and news. However, i think that most of the news are entertainment and gossip news there. It is indeed interesting to go and read up when we are bored, but in terms of true content, i still think traditional journalism is better.

E-Learning Reflection

Today is open house 1st day, upon hearing there is no lesson, i am delighted. However, we need to do a E-learning activity. There are 2 good things that i found out about E-learning, first is we do not have to go to class!!! means i do not have to wake up early and squeeze on the morning bus. Next is the flexibility of the learning time, it is on time on target for the day, so we just need to post the topic any time before 12 midnight. This allows us to have flexibility in our time as some of us are involve in open house or have other projects to do.

The E-learning activity was like any other discussion forum thing, except with everyone having the same topic. Anyway i posted up my post, most people talked about how good internet research are, so i decided to talk about some cons of internet, the security, the reliability of the information.

Heres's another fact to share, when internet was 1st founded a few decades back, the founder of the internet does not have to worry about security problems. The reason being it is only a few people in the world can access it. However, now with so many people using the net, there are many security issues.

Also, here is the url of the vid by Vint Cerf, father of internet, enjoy:))

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeAIwLp9YmA

Practical 6 Reflection

Today's practical we learn alot about invisible websites and library databases. Although i have already learn how to use them before in a library workshop when i was in year one, this lesson help me refresh my memories on how to use a database to search. There are so many information online that we cannot access through normal search engines and may require training to get access. However, these websites need to pay to use, and it can cost a huge sum of money for good service like GMID.

Fortunately, we have access to certain databases like the one from Tp's Spark, which is paid for by Tp for the students. When using this database, i find that the resource is very relevant and very useful for my research topic. Why youth smokes.. They have the answers with statistics and actual figures. A real useful tool for research as we can have full text document of the article or book. There are articles, reports by professionals, statistic all up there, all we need to do is to search using the right method. Some websites are kind of hard to navigate, they are complicated and not user-friendly, some are like a combination of search engines, directories and scholar, others have so many preferences to set and filtering the search results.

Related -> Relevant -> Reliability

When it comes to internet research, there are some that provides information that are related to topic but irrelevant, others provide relevant information but we might doubt the reliability. From my point of view, invisible web is where the highest level of search comes in, it is a wonderful search engines and the information there are almost 100% RELIABLE.

Practical 4&5 Reflection

Today, we learn about directories and meta search engine. i never really use both of them before, so this is something new to me. From my point of view, they are good and useful. Different kinds of search engines are for searching different things. I find them really interesting.

Directories are search engines which can be browsed in categories. This helps to narrow down the search results into a very refined search, with sub categories after sub categories.

Meta engines search other search engines and return the top results in the other search engines. This way it is quick to get the best results for your search query. This saves time as it search many search engines at once with the user going through the trouble of manually searching into multiple search engines.

Directories VS meta engines
To me, i feel that both are equally useful, different search engines are there to serve different purpose. For my topic, im in favor of yahoo directories, it have a category that is related to my topic and i am very happy about it as it is very convenience when there is a totally related category to your topic. However, it would be another story if there is a topic that do not have a category there. On the other hand meta search engine provides many irrelevant search for my topic. In my opinion, depending on the sitiuation and topic, we have to think and choose, if not use both of the engines.

Practical 3 Reflection

Today we learn about search engine and how to search. We learn a new search engine called Google Scholar which searches articles available online. Also we learn how to use boolean operators to scribe a focused search topic.

Google Search and Google Scholar. Which is better?

From what I think and experiences while using both search engines, I find that both of them have their good and bad points and I would say I will use both of them from now on.

Google is a very good search engine where you can use boolean operators to optimize your search to get yourself more focused search results. Moreover their search scope is very wide and we can get all kinds of information there. It is a very user-friendly and easy to use search engine. I use google almost everyday, mainly for casual search purpose. For example, i forgot a link of some websites i wanted to go or looking up for some definition of some terms. I would use google for these purpose because it is fast and easy.

Google Scholar on the other hand is a search engine specially for searching articles. It gives results from articles available online and most are about research done by other people. It have more options and preferences and allows the use to do detailed filtering of articles. I feel that this google scholar is somehow like the library research database, just that it is free, and a little easier and faster to use. However, there are websites that needs to pay to view the full text version of the articles.

Both search engines gives very relevant results and gives different types of results, therefore I think that if I'd used both of them I will be able to access more informantion then using just one.

Practical 1&2 Reflection

Today we learn about different kinds of websites. They are:

• Information
• Advocacy
• News
• Business/Marketing
• Entertainment

We get to browse through all these different websites and identity the differences between them. Lastly we use business and marketing websites to do our online shopping trip. I realized that different website serves different purpose. The layout and the content have to match and fit together to allows the user to feel comfortable when reading the website.

Online Shopping!!!

Today's assignment is to spent $500 on online shopping.

The first thing that come to my mind is JEANS! NEW JEANS!!!! yes i love nice jeans, plus my jeans are getting old. There is a saying by 1 of my friend, "a new year must always start with a new pair of jeans and wear them till they worn out throughout the year and don't wash it until the year ends." Its a bit disgusting not to wash the jeans for a year but its common practice for guys to make raw jeans fade by not washing for half a year or more. Recently i have become a fan of raw jeans and I mean i really plan to get some new jeans 1 for the new year and another 1 for chinese new year.

When choosing the jeans i want to get, i look for quality, style, brand and special (cannot be too commonly worn by many people). Of course the price have to be reasonable. I prefer simple raw jeans with not much fading and pattern on them and also jeans that are tough and good quality that will last long.

This is a pair of A.P.C jeans from A.P.C official website http://www.apc.fr/ In terms of quality, it is 100% cotton and RAW denim, which is what im looking for. The main reason why i like this pair of jeans is because it is quite rare to find, A.P.C does not have any retail outlet in singapore, the only way to get it is by buying them online or go find some boutique that import it (usually sells at a high price due to imported, not worth it). That is why buying it online is the best way to get this jeans. The price of this jeans is 125 EUR, converted to singapore currency it will be 251.678 SGD.

This is a pair of nudie jeans, its from the website http://www.nudiejeans.com/shop/ Nudie jeans have been quite a trend for some time, its becoming more and more common for poly guys our age to wear. However, despite getting common, this pair of nudie is quite special. As the description says, it is 98% cotton and 2% lycra, it is a pair of black jeans wash down by stone and sand blasted to this colour. It is different from the normal raw denim nudie jeans we see around. Another reason why i am getting this pair of jeans is same as the A.P.C jeans, nudie also does not have any retail outlet in singapore, that makes it quite rare to get. The price of this jeans is 1199 SEK, converted to singapore currency it will be 236.942 SGD.

To sum up my online shopping trip, the amount i spent on this 2 pair of jeans will be $236.924 + $251.678 = $488.62

Reflections: Online Shopping

After doing this online shopping assignment, i realize that online shopping is actually very fun. I actually spent an hour or 2 looking at the internet browsing thru different things to buy on the net. I ended up with a long list of things and finally choosing these 2 pair of jeans, the main reason i choose these 2 pair of jeans is because they are not sold in singapore. From this, i realize the convenience of online shopping. Singapore being a small country, although we are very advance and stuff, there are still many things not sold in singapore. Especially in the fashion industry, where some brands only open outlets in some particular place. With online shopping, we do not have to fly overseas to buy something that is not sold in singapore. All we need is a credit card and internet. Therefore with the advance of new media in the retail industry, comes online shopping more and more brands and shops are offering this service to increase their sales, it provides convenience to the consumers and also generates more revenue for the company.

However, there is a downside on online shopping. The security of credit cards use when purchasing an item. There are many cases of credit card fraud or stealing credit card number cases happening online, and these are due to people casually giving credit card numbers to websites that are not reliable. Another problems is the delivery process, sometimes packages went missing if its not registered mail, or maybe the delivery time sometimes takes too long for things you need urgently.

In conclusion, when doing online shopping, the websites we visit are marketing and business website. These websites some are there to provide convenience and ease when shopping, but there are also websites out there that are there to steal people's credit card number and hack into them. Therefore, with the convenience of online shopping, we also need to be careful of the system and take the necessary precarious when shopping.