TV 'ban' for Aussie toddlers

SYDNEY - CHILDREN should not watch television until they turn two because it can hurt their language development and ability to concentrate, according to new guidelines for Australians.

The government recommendations, expected to be released next week, also say that children aged two to five should watch no more than an hour of television a day, The Australian newspaper reported Monday.

The draft guidelines, which have been designed for childcare centres but also offer advice for parents, are intended to help curb the spread of the obesity epidemic which has left Australian children heavier than ever.

'Based on recent research, it is recommended that children younger than two years of age should not spend any time watching television or using other electronic media (DVDs, computer and other electronic games),' they say.

'Screen time... may reduce the amount of time they have for active play, social contact with others and chances for language development,' a draft copy of the guidelines obtained by The Australian said.

'(It may) affect the development of a full range of eye movement (and)... reduce the length of time they can stay focused.' The government would not confirm the report, saying that the guidelines were still being finalised. -- AFP

- From Straits Times 12th October

Singapore youths addicted to games

SINGAPORE students spend 27 hours a week playing video games like Maple Story and World of Warcraft.

The statistic, uncovered by an ongoing National Institute of Education (NIE) study, is raising concern over the impact of such games, and the extent of gaming addiction here.

The three-year study, the biggest of its kind in Singapore, is looking at more than 3,000 primary and secondary school students' gaming habits, and will be finished at the end of the year.

NIE declined to reveal more about it pending an analysis of the results.

One thing is clear though: Singapore youth really like video games.

Acting Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts Lui Tuck Yew, who revealed the 27-hour statistic at a Singapore Press Club event last month, said he was 'quite surprised and a little bit shocked' that the figure was so high.

From ST

God Bless This Gadget

IF YOU HAD TO CHOOSE ONE WEAPON for fighting the next religious war, you could do worse than to pick an iPhone. . In recent months, the foot soldiers of religion have come out with a bevy of new programs designed to win con­verts and make religious practices more accessible. For those of the Jew­ish faith, iBlessing helps in figuring out which blessings go with which food, ParveOMeter keeps track of the t- waiting times between eating meat, and dairy, and Siddur gives prayer times based on one's GPS coordinates. Devout Roman Catholics will appreci­ate iBreviary, which pulls up and dis­plays complete missal and principal prayers in Spanish, French, English, Latin, and Italian.

Ever since Galileo, the relationship between technology and organized religion has been uneasy. The printing press helped spread the Gospel and win new adherents to Christianity, but it also greatly undermined the Catholic Church’s information monopoly. To avoid repeating this mistake, religious organizations are embracing cutting­-edge communications technologies, hoping to stay on

the right side of the next technology revolution.

Less than a year ago, the Vatican deplored "the age of the Internet and the mobile," in which, according to Cardinal Lombardi, the pope's spokes­man, it's "more difficult than before to protect silence and to nourish the interior dimension of life." Since then, the pope has changed his tune. "Young people have grasped the enormous capacity of the new media to foster connectedness, communication, and understanding between individuals and communities, and they are turn­ing to them as means of... forming networks, of seeking information and news, and of sharing their ideas and, opinions," he said in May.

Thank the Vatican's younger cohort for this turnaround. Paolo Padrini, a 36-year-old Italian pastor and a Vatican insider with a knack for technology, is the developer of iBreviary, the first iPhone application officially approved by the Vatican. Padrini launched the ambitious Pope2You site, which aggre­gates the Vatican's presence on various social networks. It boasts cutting-edge social-media components, including an iPhone application that keeps its users updated with the pope's recent speeches and activities and a You Tube channel that features papal video addresses. A site called Wikicath deliv­ers the pope's messages "in a new way, interactive and hypertext, through a platform built in the Wiki style."

Not to be outdone, followers of Islam have begun battling over religion online almost as vehemently as they used to clash in the streets of Baghdad. Even mobile-phone ringtones are emerging as important affirmations of religious identity. So many people have been downloading verses from the Qur'an that a Muslim organization in India saw fit to issue a fatwa declaring it a sin to interrupt the tone before it has fin­ished the verse.

As the Vatican has discovered with its Wikicath site, posting boring texts online doesn't guarantee thousands of followers. Lately the site seems to elicit little comment. If Vatican offi­cials continue to haunt Facebook and Twitter, though, they're bound eventu­ally to absorb the new-media culture. Whether the young crowd will have moved on by then is another story.

By Evgeny Morozov from Newsweek July 27, 2009, p.11

1) What is the tone of the writer towards the use of technology in religion?

2) What is your own opinion about the issue? What do you think are its pros and cons? Relate your answer to your own experiences.

Word of The Week

im·per·vi·ous
adj.

Incapable of being penetrated: a material impervious to water. Incapable of being affected: impervious to fear.

Word of The Week

trepidation

n.
1. fear; apprehension; nervous trembling

The nursery school students were filled with trepidation when they saw the other children in their class dressed in their Halloween costumes.

The trepidation of the students before the class play was very apparent as their hands were trembling and some were perspiring.

Animal Activists blamed for fire

VIENNA - A MASSIVE fire at the Austrian holiday villa of Novartis chief Daniel Vasella was criminal and the handiwork of a British animal protection group, a company spokesman said on Tuesday.

'It was a criminal act,' the Novartis spokesman told the Swiss tabloid Blick, adding there was 'no doubt' that Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) was behind the arson.

'The situation with SHAC has completely degenerated,' he said, adding: 'We take the security of our officials very seriously.' Austrian police have said the fire was probably started purposely but have not confirmed this as yet.

The blaze at Vasella's holiday home in the small Tyrolean village of Bach was discovered around 3.30am on Monday by a German holidaymaker, who woke after hearing a muffled bang and saw the neighbouring house in flames, according to the police.

He immediately alerted the fire department and it took about 100 firefighters to douse the flames. Nobody was injured, police said.

Two sides of the villa were seriously damaged but the extent of the damage was unknown.

Swiss media reported that Mr Vasella, who was not at the villa at the time of the fire, and his company had already been the target of repeated attacks by the SHAC.

This group, which campaigns against animal testing, is believed to have been behind the desecration last week of Vasella's mother's tomb in the eastern Swiss town of Chur.

They also torched company cars and destroyed a Novartis sports facility in eastern France.

An SHAC member, Debbie Vincent, warned of more attacks in an interview to La Tribune daily. -- AFP

This article was reported in ST today. What do you think of the reporting? Do you think the activists have gone too far? Justify your answer by referring to your own experiences/observations.

Word of the Week

im·pugn
n.
im·pugned, im·pugn·ing, im·pugns
To attack as false or questionable; challenge in argument

Example: The opposition team intended to impugn their opponent's record by listing their inexperience and dubious background as obvious flaws.

Interesting Ads

Here are some interesting ads that you need to decipher its meaning. The first few ones are easy. How about the last few ones starting from the psychiatrist? What can you INFER from the ads? Please state your comments about the last two. See whether you get it.

Word of The Week

Hey beautiful people.....I'm starting a word of the week to highlight interesting words which you can use for your essay or even impress your friends with your new found vocabulary. We might be lucky if these words appear in your Paper 2 exam! Anyway some of the words are selected from the word list of your articles so keep a lookout.

prec·i·pice

n.

1. An overhanging or extremely steep mass of rock, such as a crag or the face of a cliff.

2. The brink of a dangerous or disastrous situation: on the precipice of defeat.

Example: The team managed to score a point at the precipice of defeat to maintain their unbeaten run.

The Funeral of Common Sense

Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape.

He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as:

Knowing when to come in out of the rain; why the early bird gets the worm:

Life isn't always fair, and maybe it was my fault.

Common sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don't spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults are in charge not children)

His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of an 8 year old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate, teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch, and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition.

Common sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children. It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or an aspirin to a student, but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.

Common sense lost the will to live as the churches became businesses, and criminals received better treatment than their victims,

Common sense took a beating when you couldn't defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault.

Common sense finally gave up the will to live, after a women failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.

Common sense was preceded in death, by his parents, truth and trust

His wife, discretion

His daughter, Responsibility

His son, reason.

He is survived by his 4 stepbrothers

I know my rights

I want my rights

I want it now

I’m a victim.

Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone. If you still remember him, pass this on if not, join the majority and do nothing.

From BBC Radio Stoke's Mid-Morning show, presenter Stuart George who mourned the death of 'common sense'.

What do you guys think? Is it really true that we have lost common sense to the graveyard?

Writing To Reach You

Here's a song by Travis which appeared in one of the good podcasts that you guys did. I dig this song too cus the tune is infectious and the words are cool....they feel so sincere as if you can feel what he is actually feeling inside....emo but good emo....

Every day I wake up and it's Sunday

Whatever's in my eye won't go away
The radio is playing all the usual
And what's a Wonderwall anyway
Because my inside is outside
My right side's on my left side
Cause I'm writing to reach you now but
I might never reach you
Only want to teach you
About you
But that's not you
It's good to know that you are home for Christmas
It's good to know that you are doing well
It's good to know that you all know I'm hurting
It's good to know I'm feeling not so well
Because my inside is outside
My right side's on my left side
Cause I'm writing to reach you now but
I might never reach you
Only want to teach you
About you
But that's not you
Do you know it's true
But that won't do
Maybe then tomorrow will be Monday
And whatever's in my eye should go away
But still the radio is playing all the usual
And what's a Wonderwall anway
Because my inside is outside
My right side's on my left side
Cause I'm writing to reach you now but
I might never reach you
Only want to teach you
About you
But that's not you
Do you know it's true
But that won't do
And you know it's you
I'm talking to

What do you guys think the song is about? Is it about a break up? Or did he jus woke up on the wrong side of bed...and what IS the wonderwall that he is referring to?

Family

"Funeral" is a new TV commercial launched by the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports (MCYS) which looks at relationships in a different light, through a woman at her husbands funeral. Ultimately, the TVC celebrates the beautiful imperfections that make a relationship perfect. Another excellent piece of film work by Yasmin Ahmad.

Project Wonderful

The video is from Google's Project 10^100, a platform for people to help others. People across 42 countries submitted their ideas for making the world a better place -- and Google has committed $10 million to turning up to five of those ideas into a reality.

You guys can also gain inspiration from CNN's Impact Your World.

Women's Aid Ad: Isn't it time someone called cut?

The actress Kiera Knightley made this video about a pressing social issue. What is it? Can we relate this to anything in Singapore??

What Is Web 2.0?

Web 1.0 was focused on a relatively small number of companies and advertisers producing content for users to access—some people called the web at the time the “brochure web.” Web 2.0involves the user—not only is the content often created by users, but users help organize it, share it, remix it, critique it, update it, etc. One way to look at Web 1.0 is as a lecture, a small number of professors informing a large audience of students. In comparison, Web 2.0 is aconversation, with everyone having the opportunity to speak and share views.

Web 2.0 embraces an architecture of participation—a design that encourages user interaction and community contributions. You, the user, are the most important aspect of Web 2.0—so important, in fact, that in 2006, TIME Magazine’s “Person of the Year” was “you.” The article recognized the social phenomenon of Web 2.0—the shift away from a powerful few to an empowered many.

“We can’t be device centric...we must be user centric.”

—Bill Gates, MIX06 conference

Many Web 2.0 companies are built almost entirely on user-generated content and harnessing collective intelligence. The significance is not just in having user-generated content, but in how it is used. Google—the leading search engine and Internet advertising company—sends its users to user-generated websites by considering what users collectively have valued in the past. For websites like MySpace^®, Flickr™, YouTube and Wikipedia^®, users create the content, while the sites provide the platforms. These companies trust their users—without such trust, users cannot make significant contributions to the sites.

“A platform beats an application every time.”

—Tim O’Reilly

The architecture of participation is seen in software development as well. Open software is available for anyone to use and modify with few or no restrictions—this has played a major role in Web 2.0 development. Harnessing collective intelligence, communities collaborate to develop software that many people believe is better than proprietary software.

You, the user, are not only contributing content and developing open source software, but you are also directing how media is delivered, and deciding which news and information outlets you trust. Many popularblogs now compete with traditional media powerhouses. Social bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us and Ma.gnolia allow users to recommend their favorite sites to others. Social media sites such as Digg™ or Reddit enable the community to decide which news articles are the most significant. You are also changing the way we find the information on these sites by tagging (i.e., labeling) web content by subject or keyword in a way that helps anyone locate information more effectively. This is just one of the ways Web 2.0 helps users identify new meaning in already existing content.RSS feeds (Chapter 14, XML and RSS) enable you to receive new information as it is updated—pushing the content right to your desktop.

The rise ofsocial networks has changed the way we interact and network. MySpace— the largest social network—has rapidly become the world’s most popular website. Other popular social networking sites include Facebook, Bebo, LinkedIn, and Second Life—a 3D virtual world where you interact with others via your online persona called an avatar.

User-Generated Content

User-generated content has been the key to success for many of today’s leading Web 2.0 companies, such as Amazon, eBay and Monster. The community adds value to these sites, which, in many cases, are almost entirely built on user-generated content. For example, eBay (an online auction site) relies on the community to buy and sell auction items, and Monster (a job search engine) connects job seekers with employers and recruiters.

User-generated content includes explicitly generated content such as articles, home videos and photos. It can also include implicitly generated content—information that is gathered from the users’ actions online. For example, every product you buy from Amazon and every video you watch on YouTube provides these sites with valuable information about your interests. Companies like Amazon have developed massive databases of anonymous user data to understand how users interact with their site. For example, Amazon uses your purchase history and compares it to purchases made by other users with similar interests to make personalized recommendations (e.g., “customers who bought this item also bought...”). Implicitly generated content is often considered hidden content. For example, web links and tags are hidden content; every site you link to from your own site or bookmark on a social bookmarking site could be considered a vote for that site’s importance. Search engines such as Google (which uses the PageRank algorithm) use the number and quality of these links to a site to determine the importance of a site in search results.

Source:

http://www.deitel.com/eBook/WhatIsWeb20/tabid/2483/Default.aspx

https://php.radford.edu/~tlc/wordpress/

De Bono's Six Thinking Hats

"Six Thinking Hats" is a powerful technique that helps you look at important decisions from a number of different perspectives. It helps you make better decisions by pushing you to move outside your habitual ways of thinking. As such, it helps you understand the full complexity of a decision, and spot issues and opportunities which you might otherwise not notice.

Many successful people think from a very rational, positive viewpoint, and this is part of the reason that they are successful. Often, though, they may fail to look at problems from emotional, intuitive, creative or negative viewpoints. This can mean that they underestimate resistance to change, don't make creative leaps, and fail to make essential contingency plans.

Similarly, pessimists may be excessively defensive, and people used to a very logical approach to problem solving may fail to engage their creativity or listen to their intuition.

If you look at a problem using the Six Thinking Hats technique, then you'll use all of these approaches to develop your best solution. Your decisions and plans will mix ambition, skill in execution, sensitivity, creativity and good contingency planning.

This tool was created by Edward de Bono in his book "6 Thinking Hats".

How to Use the Tool:

To use Six Thinking Hats to improve the quality of your decision-making, look at the decision "wearing" each of the thinking hats in turn.

Each "Thinking Hat" is a different style of thinking. These are explained below:

• White Hat:

  

  With this thinking hat, you focus on the data available. Look at the information you have, and see what you can learn from it. Look for gaps in your knowledge, and either try to fill them or take account of them.

  This is where you analyze past trends, and try to extrapolate from historical data.

• Red Hat:
  Wearing the red hat, you look at the decision using intuition, gut reaction, and emotion. Also try to think how other people will react emotionally, and try to understand the intuitive responses of people who do not fully know your reasoning.

• Black Hat:
  When using black hat thinking, look at things pessimistically, cautiously and defensively. Try to see why ideas and approaches might not work. This is important because it highlights the weak points in a plan or course of action. It allows you to eliminate them, alter your approach, or prepare contingency plans to counter problems that arise.

  Black Hat thinking helps to make your plans tougher and more resilient. It can also help you to spot fatal flaws and risks before you embark on a course of action. Black Hat thinking is one of the real benefits of this technique, as many successful people get so used to thinking positively that often they cannot see problems in advance, leaving them under-prepared for difficulties.

• Yellow Hat:
  The yellow hat helps you to think positively. It is the optimistic viewpoint that helps you to see all the benefits of the decision and the value in it, and spot the opportunities that arise from it. Yellow Hat thinking helps you to keep going when everything looks gloomy and difficult.

• Green Hat:
  The Green Hat stands for creativity. This is where you can develop creative solutions to a problem. It is a freewheeling way of thinking, in which there is little criticism of ideas. A whole range of creativity tools can help you here.

• Blue Hat:
  The Blue Hat stands for process control. This is the hat worn by people chairing meetings. When running into difficulties because ideas are running dry, they may direct activity into Green Hat thinking. When contingency plans are needed, they will ask for Black Hat thinking, and so on.

You can use Six Thinking Hats in meetings or on your own. In meetings it has the benefit of defusing the disagreements that can happen when people with different thinking styles discuss the same problem.

A similar approach is to look at problems from the point of view of different professionals (e.g. doctors, architects, sales directors) or different customers.

http://www.learnerslink.com/questioning_card.htm

http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTED_07.htm

Media coverage of Innova's A-level results

Here's a couple of clips featuring Innovians excelling in the 2008 A-levels:

Channel 8

Suria

PODcast resources

Hey beautiful people....

Here's a couple of resources that are IMPERATIVE for your podcasts:

Audacity is D place to download this simple audio software to record your podcasts.

PartnersInRhyme is a website that provides royalty-free music and sounds for you to use in as your intro, outro or background music. Lots of cool sounds as well.

Cool like ol' skool.

Enjoy!

Facebook to own info?

NEW YORK - TENS of thousands of Facebook users are protesting new policies that they say grant the social-networking site the ability to control their information forever, even after they cancel their accounts.Facebook's new terms of use, updated Feb 4, largely went unnoticed until the popular consumer rights advocacy blog Consumerist.com pointed out the changes on Sunday.

That prompted a clarification from Facebook's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, although the new terms remain in force. Mr Zuckerberg told users in a blog post Monday that 'on Facebook, people own their information and control who they share it with'.

When someone shares a photo, a message or a status update telling friends what they are up to at the moment, they first need to grant Facebook a license so the site can pass that information along to authorized friends, Zuckerberg said. Without the license, he said, Facebook wouldn't be able to help people share information.

Zuckerberg said the new terms are necessary to reflect the fact that friends may retain a copy of that message or other information once a user shares it with them.

'Even if the person deactivates their account, their friend still has a copy of that message,' Mr Zuckerberg said. 'We think this is the right way for Facebook to work, and it is consistent with how other services like e-mail work. One of the reasons we updated our terms was to make this more clear.' Mr Zuckerberg did acknowledge that Facebook, which boasts 175 million users around the world, still has 'work to do to communicate more clearly' about how information is shared on the site.

The rapidly growing site has had several run-ins with users over its short history.

In late 2007, for example, a tracking tool called 'Beacon' caught users off-guard by broadcasting information about their shopping habits and activities at other websites. After initially defending the practice, Facebook ultimately allowed users to turn Beacon off. -- AP

JC vs Poly

A RECORD number of school leavers fresh off the O-level boat have made it to the polytechnics this year.

And, continuing a trend that began a few years ago, many of these poly students did well enough in the O levels to have gone to a junior college (JC), but chose a polytechnic education instead.

About 20,640 of these school leavers have been posted to the five polytechnics, where they will earn diplomas in three years. The intake is 800 more than last year.

The new high comes despite there having been fewer O-level candidates last year than in 2007. As a consequence of that dip, the number posted to the polytechnics, JCs, Millennia Institute and the Institutes of Technical Education under the Education Ministry's Joint Admissions Exercise was also smaller.

The polytechnics' gain shrank the overall intake for the JCs, and also for Millennia Institute, where students take the A levels after three years. (See chart.)

One school leaver contributing to the tilt in favour of the polys is former Anderson Secondary student Ranjini Visvalingam, 17, who scored six points in her O levels. She could have made it to just about any junior college, but opted for Republic Polytechnic's biomedical science course.

Noting that her friends have queried her choice of a polytechnic over the more academic junior-college track, she said: "But I've already decided what I want to do – get an advance diploma in biomedical science and go on to Monash for a degree – so there is no need to go to a JC."
Melbourne's Monash University has a programme with Republic Polytechnic where students get on a fast track to a degree.

In response to the demand, the five polytechnics have opened up 25,700 places, about 700 more than last year.
Ngee Ann Polytechnic raised its number of vacancies by 150 to 5,250.
Republic Polytechnic principal Yeo Li Pheow has seen a 60 per cent leap in applicants who made the poly – the newest among the five – their first choice.

And they are coming in with stronger grades too.
"It's definitely a good sign for polys that students eligible for JC choose to go to the polys. It's a personal choice they make," he said.

Among the 18 JCs, the high-end ones have had no change in intake size, though a few, like Serangoon and Tampines, have smaller intakes this year.
The heads of JCs and of Millennia Institute contacted are not overly concerned that their schools now seem less popular.

Millennia Institute's Tan Chor Pang said a core of students will always pick the A-level route, which is still regarded as better preparation for higher education.
But he conceded that the JCs and Millennia Institute can do more to court potential students; the polys, he said, "are more aggressive and define their courses in a very attractive way, being up to date and relevant to industry. Students are attracted to that".
He added that this year's single intake for JCs might have also shrunk the demand for JCs.

Previously, students admitted provisionally could try out JC life until the O- level results came out in March, but "in the absence of the first three months of JC, there is no longer a natural platform to experience JC education", he said.

Ms Helen Choo, the principal of the mid-tier Tampines Junior College, said students may be going to the polytechnics because they are focused and know what they want, be it mass communications or hospitality studies.

JCs' future intakes could be uncertain, she said, given declining enrolment resulting from a declining birth rate and an explosion of choices for school leavers.

Yishun Junior College, on the other hand, took in slightly more students this year, just under 600. Vice-principal Wong Mun Wah said the JC's efforts at selling itself as a "value-added" school have paid off, as has the flexibility in subject combinations that it gives its students.

janeng@sph.com.sg

Where the O-level students have gone

Number who sat for the O levels

2008: 36,640
2007: 38,450

Number posted to their next school under Joint Admissions Exercise

This year: 34,400
Last year: 34,800

Number posted to junior colleges

This year: 11,008
Last year: 11,484

Number posted to Millennia Institute for the three-year A level course

This year: 344
Last year: 696

Number posted to polytechnics

This year: 20,640
Last year: 19,836

Number posted to ITE

This year: 2,408
Last year: 2,784

NOTE: The figures are calculated based on rounded-off percentages provided by the Ministry of Education and may not be exact numbers.