Thursday, October 23, 2008

ASSIGNMENT: WEBSITE EVALUATION

WEBSITE EVALUATION: www.myspace.com


Nowadays, internet plays an important role in many sectors such as education, economy, social and politics. Therefore, the progress of its content is rapidly being improved. In fact, there are many websites that provide us with good and bad information. It depends on us to use it on correctly or not. There are several types of website that function in different ways such as social networking, video hosting, trading, wikis, and etc. I would like to evaluate one of these website that prepare users with social networking services called www.myspace.com. This website is commonly well-known among users especially for those who like to make friends and community.

First of all, I would like to explain about the features that available on this website. From what I’ve known, www.myspace.com is one of the web 2.0 that provide users with enhance creativity, information sharing and collaboration among users. In other word, besides gaining information from the web and enjoying the features only, the user also can contribute something such as uploading text, image, audio and video too. Users also can create their cyber community which means that they can makes friends from around the world. Suitable for social-networking, this website provide us with all the attractive features such as upload image and video, sharing information, bulletin board and chat box for users to communicate with their friends. For the new features, users also can put some applications such as internet games to play while surfing the website. Overall, the features for the website are suitable for all type of users.

Then, as the social-networking website, the must be interesting to attract users. For this website, for the main page, it uses a soft blue colour and contains some videos and images that have been uploaded by the registered user of the website. For new users, they must signing up first, login to their account and start to make friends all around the world. After that, the also can customize their own page such as the theme for the layout, put videos and images on it and etc. there are several theme provider that available on the internet and users can use it for free. In my opinion, the layout design for the website is excellent since that it must attract users from different categories and country all around the world.

For the effectiveness, users will not facing many problems in surfing in the website because the interface is very user-friendly and simple to deal with. This website also prepares step-by step instruction on how to upload text, images, and videos on the site. Furthermore, it also provides us instruction on how to change our page layout, to search for friends, to give and reply comment to friends. Once you already expert about the features of the website, you will find out that this website make yourself easier to share information with people and also making friends with others. For me, I will suggest this website to the internet users that interested in socializing and networking and making friends with people worldwide.

However, besides all the advanced features and attractive user interface, there are also problems and issues that need to be solve while surfing in this website. For the registered users, there are certain cases that your account will be attack by virus and cannot be use anymore. So in term of security, www.myspace.com has to upgrade their firewall so that the rights of the users such as pictures and videos will be guaranteed for safe. Other than that, for the social-networking site, there are some types of users that misuse the features in this website such as by uploading pornographic pictures and it is not suitable for certain categories of users. In this case, I think that this website must also update their terms and conditions on uploading materials for the site.

In educational field, www.myspace.com is merely suitable to be use because it includes all the services such as uploading materials, give comment and also information sharing. For example, teacher can use this website to communicate with their students, give homework and assignment, discuss on issues about the subjects, and give notes about the subject without worrying about the time factor and participation of the students.

As a conclusion, for overall evaluation, I kindly suggest this website to be use in educational field with supervision from the teachers so that Teaching & Learning (T&L) process will be more attractive, interactive and can motivate student to learn the subjects without feeling bored and tension. Thank you.

Sunday, October 19, 2008

America is a mistake, a giant mistake.
-Sigmund Freud (1856 - 1939)

Thursday, October 16, 2008

ASSIGNMENT : TextBook Evaluation

Reference : English Year 3 Sekolah Kebangsaan Textbook
Publisher : Abadi ilmu Sdn Bhd
Writer : Audrey Lim Bee Yoke
Manjindarjit Kaur
Shanti David
Editor : Tam Lye Suan
Graphic Designer : A.Komagarajan
Ilustrator : Salmah Rahim
Year of Publish : 2004


Textbook evaluation is done to determine and measuring up whether the textbook that has been use by the student in schools is appropriate and effective in guiding them to gain knowledge and participate in Teaching & Learning (T&L) process in class. There are three main characters that I need to stress in evaluating the textbook such as the organization, the content and the physical aspects of the book itself. The organization means that the arrangement of the content in the book as well as the image, text and so on whether it is comprehensive and helping the users to use the textbook clearly. About the content, I will look at the accuracy of the content, does it match the level of readers and is the language used appropriate with the user. Lastly, the physical aspects also important because at first, it can attract the user to read it willingly without feeling bored.

For this English Year 3 Sekolah Kebangsaan Textbook, from my observation it has the nice and attractive table of content complete with the pictures and colours. It is important because for Year 3 students, they will attract on the pictures and feel enjoy to read this book. The font used for the content is Arial 20 which is big enough to cover one page of table and content with clear and neat arrangement. It also state the objective for each chapter in the book such as what will the student get and able to do after completing certain chapter in the textbook. In addition, all pages in this textbook are numbered and match with the table of content so that the users do not have any difficulties in finding the topics and chapters. However, this textbook does not contain references, glossary and index on it. It maybe because of the writers feels that those elements are not so important in the Year 3 textbook.

For the content of the textbook, I would like to state here that the textbook meet the local and national standard because it contain variety of module and exercises for student and it also encourage the higher level of thinking. The issues talked in this textbook also accurate and up to date. For example, there are some images and brief explanation about interesting places in Malaysia such as Petronas Twin Tower, National Science Centre and Batu Caves Temple. The language used for the content of this textbook also appropriate for the intended age group which is Year 3 student. The sentences used are also clear, comprehensive and grammatically correct. About the activity that engage student, even this is an English Textbook, it also linked student to the other areas of study such as career study, parenting, sports and so on. However, for this book, at the end of each chapter, it doesn’t prepare student with end-of-lesson questions or quizzes to test student whether they really understand on the topic and able to complete the work given or not.

In physical aspects, I think for overall it is good because it uses a very clear font, Arial 16 and the language style used is also appropriate with the target users. Furthermore, for the arrangement of images and texts, it is comprehensive and attractive since it using the colorful images with the appropriate size of font and showing the diversity of culture in Malaysia, career and flora and fauna in this world. It is important for the student at this level to get an early exposure with the multicultural society and so on other than just learning their subject in class only. Besides, it also contains illustrations, tables and figures which are attention-grabbing and appropriate with the level of users. For the cover and binding of the book, I can say that it is durable and long-lasting since its use the plastic coated thick paper and the decoration is quite attractive and catchy.

As a conclusion, from the organization, content and physical aspect of the book, I can say that the editor and writer of the book do perform their job very well in analyzing and completing the needs if target users which is Year 3 student. For overall, I suggest this book to be use for Teaching & Learning (T&L) process in our primary school system for another couple of years but it can be improve due to any changes in order to make it more appropriate and interesting.