(Task 4) Ekom National Conference 2009

Hello there, we meet again on this posting. This posting will be all about the conference that was held at PNB Darby Park Hotel on 18th and 19th March 2009. The theme of the conference was "Bridging Digital Devices" which mean to narrow up the usage of ICT between the communities in the city with the communities in villages and rural areas. This is because ICT was very important in this era which is world is now borderless. Here, in this posting I am going to share with you all the two papers that had caught my attention in that conference. But, before that I would to thank to our tutor, Assoc.Prof.Datin.Dr. Norizan binti Abdul Razak because she had invited us to the conference. I am really enjoyed with the food. hehehe..

Let's move on to the paper works:

1) Online Practicum Placement System(OPPS)

This paper was presented by Mr.Wan Husin bin Wan Ishak from Universiti Utara Malaysia(UUM). This is all about one of the system that has been used by UUM to place all their practicum students without using the old system. This system only been used starting last year(2008) after undergoing all the research on it. This system is very useful because students do not have to find a place for their practicum by themselves but university will choose it for them. In addition, by using this system they can send students to the right agency because the agency will choose students that they want to be in their agency. By using this particular system also can reduce the time of every process regarding to the placement of the students compared to the old system. Believe it or not, if we use this system we can also help our earth because the use of paper were reduce as the system were all online and paperless. I think our university also need to apply this system in finding a place to the practicum students.

2) Reducing Writing Apprehension Through Blogging Activities

For this second paper work I think we were all attracted with the topic right? Because it is related to what we were going through now, BLOGGING. So, here I am going to talk about this paper work that was presented by Madam Azianura Hani binti Shaari from Uitm Penang. Even though she said that she was nervous and need to sit down while presenting, I think she had present the paper work clearly. If I am not mistaken, this topic is the most popular among other topic because there are arguments had been at the conference on this topic. First of all, let's the define the word "Apprehension" as the word was the keyword of what is the paper all about. "Apprehension" is defined worry or fear that something unpleasant will happen. In this context, "Apprehension" can be define as the negative feelings or perceptions regarding to the writing(usually own writing) such as afraid to make mistake, anxiety, and so on. The paper were telling us about the symptoms towards writing apprehension which are scared to write, hands cramp, hate writing, produced shorter essays, and ideas hardly to be developed. The paper also provided us with the factors that lead to writing apprehension, culture-face saving, proficiency level, lack of confidence, examination, teacher's comments, lack role models, and audience.
And the paper showed the advantages of blogging in reducing writing apprehension. First, blogging was the student-centered. Second, we do not need to show our face which call face-saving. Third, huge audience and mostly all the audience is the native speakers. Next, boost up confidence and motivation. Nevertheless, blogging also increases involvement of the passive students and the last but not least, promote brainstorming and peer review activities. You know what, I am very interested of this paper work because it is related to me. I am a apprehensive students that will think more than twice before writing something. But by blogging, I feel very comfortable because I do not have to face the people that going to read my writing. I think this activity(blogging) really helps. So, don' stop blogging.