Protectors of the Internet

Two decades ago, to have a desktop computer at home is considered an honor and privilege. I still remember going to my cousin's place and played on his Floppy Disk games. There were no such thing as Internet, not to mention computer having a virus attack. Today, almost everyone has a computer with internet access at home. We use it everyday. And most of us have surely encounter viruses, spams and hackers in our Internet. Although it is a major issue, nobody kicks up a fuss anymore. Worst comes, we'll just reformat the computer; if that still fails, we just go along Sim Lim and buy a brand new one.

Well, prevention is still better than cure. If we can prevent viruses from attacking, spammers from sending malware into our hard disks, and hackers from stealing our information and identity, we would not have to spend the additional money re-formatting the computer or buying a brand new one. Since most problems we face today comes from the Internet, i'll be discussing Internet Security today. Let's watch a video.



Haha! Botnet is basically one of our many hackers online today. So they access your computer through email attachments, some website links that you clicked on, and with some software/freeware which you installed with. Scary isn't it? Just within the second we click on a suspicious attachment from our emails, the computer is theirs to control.

Virus, is a term used for malicious programs which spreads to many computers. It normally attaches itself to a normal program file, a host program. It could be exe, doc, or even ppt. The virus will start attacking when we open these files.
Worms on the other hand attaches themselves to email addresses, and tracks out our address book and sends itself automatically to our friends. Have you ever received MSN messages from your friends saying you've sent them a link which you don' remember at all? What about Facebook? Have you ever log in and realized your account has sent some links to your friends which you never did it? Well, that's worms for you.

As from the video, there are some tips in which we can prevent spams, virus, hackers from entering our computer:
1) Do not open attachment from suspicious emails. They often have typo errors or link to websites which you do not recognize. Once again, DO NOT OPEN.

2) Have anti virus software in your computer and keep it updated. The video introduces Norton Anti-Virus. To my knowledge, they have a one year protection, after which you have to purchase their software again. If you would like some secure freeware that helps keep viruses and malwares at bay, i recommend AVG, windows defender, and IObit security. These are freeware that can be downloaded from the Internet.

3) Have your firewall switched on, and keep it on always.

Best Employer in the world?!?

Before I say anything, just take a look at this video... and see if you'll get tempted to immediately quit your current job and send your resume to this company



Oh yes, favorite pastas, gyms, tennis courts, swimming pools, casual wear to the office, bringing your pets along... plus this is a worldwide renowned company, google. I would definitely want to work there. As the adage says: enjoy what you work, and you need not work for a single day. The culture in the Google company is having fun, in turn, the employees devote their energy and time to produce their best results.

Let's watch what the employees in Google have to say about their fantastic job there. Perhaps we'll get a hint as to what requirements we need to possess to be able to their colleagues.



i am sure many of us have used Google, at the very least, Google search. There is Gmail, google maps, google earth, google scholar, google wave, google docs and many many great products. All we need to do is to access Google's home page and click on Google labs. Recently, Google has invented more great products which threatens even giant Microsoft. One such example will be the Google docs and Google wave, which helps us organize our documents, and email conversation seems easy.. Once again, a video is more than a thousand words.

A virtual Classroom

NO more difficult wake ups, NO more morning rushes for the bus, NO more facing bias teachers who favors "pet" students only, NO more having detentions for dozing off in class... no more classmates and friends.. Yes, it was proposed that students study at home, making education 24 hours accessible to them. Finally, education is catching up with technology. With such advanced technology today, we might as well send our avatar to school and he'll transmit all he learns back to our main server computer at home. Well, we've heard plenty about the pros and cons for having a virtual classroom to replace traditional whiteboard-lecturer classroom. Let's look at the idea from a video:



Cool isn't it? But is it applicable to students and apt for learning? Let's look at this systematically..

According to Bloom's Taxonomy, the most ideal learning involves 3 domains: Cognitive, Affective, and Psychomotor.

Under Cognitive domain, students have to remember what is being taught, understand and apply it. A higher level for them will be to analyze the information given by the lecturer, evaluate it and re-create the information. From the video, the lecturer was apparently teaching geometry, it is analytical as the diagrams are precised. If they do not understand, they could virtually "raise their hands". Well... understanding it is one thing, applying it? I am assuming they have downloaded a worksheet, so that they can complete the questions and submit it back.

Under Affective domain, students learn best when they are emotionally "touched". For example, a teacher who cracks the best jokes in class is likely to receive attention, and during that point, the information related by the teacher will be embedded into students' brain. Another example, we all know how Titanic sunk, all due to the movie Titanic, with its amazing storyline and tears-triggering scenes. In a virtual classroom, i can't visualize how can teachers interact with students "affectively".

Under Psychomotor domain, students get to experience it real time, first hand. For example, nothing beats learning about Crystallization with doing the real experiment itself. Watching a video would be very difficult. You get to touch sodium sulphate, smell ammonium, taste (don't know) which would not be available through a virtual classroom. Sports, you can't become a sportsman by just reading up a Dummies guide to basketball. You have to experience it yourself: the sun and sweat, the the fatigue, the teamwork, the satisfaction of throwing the ball through the hoop.

Hence, although the cognitive domain is sufficiently attained, students who learn best in an affective and psycho motor domain get compromised. Of course, that's why schools in Singapore today still require students to be in class and the fields, but also INTEGRATE cognitive learning with technology by submitting assignments online, doing research and bringing it to class...etc. Yeah!