Personal assignment

E-mail

The innovation which has transformed my professional life in recent years is the e-mail. At ADMC we faculty live and die by electronic mail. We send, every day, e-mails to people who are only a few desks away. In the past we would have gone to see these people in person or written hard copy notes to leave on their desks.

Electronic mail predates the inception of the Internet and was in fact a crucial tool in creating the Internet. MIT first demonstrated the Compatible Time-sharing System (CTSS) in 1961. It allowed multiple users to log into the IBM 7094 from remote dial-up terminals, and to store files online on disk. This new ability encouraged users to share information in new ways. E-mail started in 1965 as a way for multiple users of a time-sharing mainframe computer to communicate. Although the exact history is murky, among the first systems to have such a facility were SDC's 32 and MIT's CTSS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail).

So e-mail has been around a long time but it is only in the last 10-15 years that it has played a part in my professional development.In fact, all aspects of life have been changed by e-mail. When I first went to Brunei (we landed in Bandar Seri Begawan, or BSB, the capital, on 1st January, 1980) there was no widely available worldwide web. No-one had a computer. E-mails were unheard of. There were no projectors in classrooms. There weren't even whiteboards or airconditioning units in classrooms. I used chalk on a blackboard. And this was in the Pusat Tingkatan Enam (Sixth Form Centre), at that time the leading academic institution in the whole country. We didn't even have air-conditioning in our staff room, and papers had to be weighted down on desks to prevent them being blown away by the fans.

The contrast with the situation here today in ADMC is striking. Every classroom has a/c, projectors, smartboards, whiteboards (http://www.admc.hct.ac.ae/internet/). I can communicate with all my students by e-mail; getting them to check and read their e-mails is a different matter.

E-mails have transformed not just my professional life but all aspects of life in general. Increasingly people in their everyday lives, as well as their professional ones, are switching from old-fashioned letter writing to e-mail. It would appear to be an inexorable progression from hard to soft copy. When, in 1986, I was studying for my Licentiate Diploma in TESOL with Trinity College, London, (http://www.trinitycollege.co.uk), I received work modules by airmail, and returned the completed work likewise. It would take weeks for work to arrive, be completed, returned to London, get marked and sent back. The same tasks could be completed today by e-mail in a fraction of the time. The world has been transformed by electronic mail.

As to future devgelopments, prediction is a notoriously difficult business. E-mail, I think it is fairly safe to assume, will continue to be of paramount importance in all aspects of our lives. The future seems likely, however, to become increasingly mobile. ADMC has already begun a potentially transformative operation with the introduction of i-pads. This and the recent advent of 4G mobile phones seem set to inaugurate a new mobile revolution in both teaching and learning.

580 words


Bibliography:

"E-mail." En.wikipedia.org. http://www.google.com/. Web. 15 Nov. 2009.

"E-learning." www.admc.hct.ac.ae/internet. Web. 15 Nov. 2009.

http://www.trinitycollege.co.uk/

First reflection

We did a practice summary on desert police patrols. My advice to the students was to look at the title of the passage, then skim it for the main ideas, then look more closely at the opening and closing paragraphs. I advised the students to omit all names of people and all quotations as this passage, like most we would look at, is about a broad subject, rather than an individual’s role.

The second summary we did, the first extended/assessed task, was about road accidents being the biggest cause of child mortality in the UAE. Normally my advice is to keep figures and percentages to a minimum. It was necessary in this summary, however, to include some statistics because it was the high rates of accidents and mortality and the low percentage usage of car seats by local car passengers which were the main points of the article.

The third summary, the second extended/assessed task, was about a new eco tour in waters off the Palm Jebel Ali, providing a traditional diving experience for locals and tourists alike. It was fairly straightforward and many students showed they had learned a lot from what we have done so far and they scored well. I think the summary work has been interesting and useful for us all.

215 words

2nd extended summary

The Arabian Gulf used to be home to one of the largest diving economies in the world. Early last century there were 1,000 pearling boats employing around 20,000 divers. By mid-20^th century, pearling still continued but had declined due to competition from Far Eastern cultured pearls.

To give Emiratis and tourists a taste of what pearl diving was like, Emirates Marine Environmental Group (EMEG) and Jumeirah Group have created a pearl diving eco tour off Palm Jebel Ali. Guests can dive to the seabed and, later, shuck their oysters, looking for pearls; although the chances of success are remote, they can keep whatever they find. The tour emphasizes authenticity and guests use traditional diving gear and eat local food cooked on board.

For centuries, pearling was the area’s main source of income and the new eco tours are trying to revive this rich heritage with a traditional experience.

148 words

1st extended summary

Traffic accidents are the leading cause of death among infants and cause 63% of deaths among children aged 14 and under in the UAE. The rate of child fatalities caused by traffic accidents, over 22%, is way above the global average.

However, only one law has been passed concerning child seats in cars, saying children aged 10 and over must wear a seat belt in the front passenger seat. The Ministry of the Interior prohibits children under 10 from sitting there but 28% of children still do.

The Child Safety-Car Seat campaign is held annually to raise awareness but an estimated 98% of child passengers are not strapped in. Yet child car restraints can reduce risks by 50-75%. Statistics worldwide show the efficacy of child and booster seats in reducing injuries in accidents.

Simple unawareness seems to be the reason most parents don’t put their children in car seats in the UAE. Despite several local campaigns wich highlight both the problem and its solution, over the past decade 2,134 people have been killed and 23,082 injured in traffic accidents in Dubai alone. In addition to the various safety campaigns, Chevrolet donates car seats and the Baby Shop supports annual campaigns, and there has been an increase in car seat sales over the past 8 years, but it’s still a major problem.

221 words.