Communication Feast

     I never thought I could meet a communication feast until I attended the Ales 204 class. It brought me a fresh communicating ambiance, from Twitter to Blog, from Facebook to LinkedIn. From this class, I learned how significant the social media involves in my life.

posted by notshortonopinions, Retrieved on August 1,2011
http://notshortonopinions.wordpress.com/

     Taking Twitter, my favorite social media, as an example, basically, twitter provides a convenient way to communicate with fellow classmates and the professor at anytime and anywhere. We can share feelings or comments on the lectures, ask questions about the courses and update every minute happenings of our daily life. For doing these things, you only need a laptop or just a mobile phone, typing what you want to say and @ your potential audience and that is all. Obviously, Twitter presents a fresh world to me and the most impressive thing I remembered is the playing dodgeball story. I followed the UniversityOfAlberta when I first used Twitter. During those days, I got updated news for the numbers of candidates and I felt excited when the numbers approached to the record. Unfortunately, I had class on the competition day. Yet, I got every picture of wonderful moments from the twitter and it just like I was actually there. That was the first time that I realized the outstanding features of Twitter. However, there is just one disadvantage of twitter I want to mention, which is the characteristics limits but I think that is why Twitter can be that clear and fast.

7 Step Social Media Optimization Plan,
Retrieved from http://www.seriouslysocial.co/

     Likewise, Blog, Facebook and other social media also give me various interesting stories. I send my feelings and get feedback. That is the usage of social media but just this function makes communication to be colorful. In my view, social media has become one part of my life and their influence on me beyond my expectation. They guide me to really involve in the world and my life is connected to others. I made many friends from communicating with them on these social media and here are five comments on my friends' blog.

Minmin Gao

Wenxin Li

Xuechan Yang

Lutong Huang

Xinru Ye     

     

    Today is the last day of winter semester and the last day of Ales class, but THIS IS THE END. THIS IS THE START. Thank you!

Writing a scientific article

     I never thought I had a chance to write a scientific article, because in my view, people who can write scientific articles only can be professors or researchers who are very knowledgeable and experienced in some fields. However, the Ales class told me “No.”. Hence, I got this assignment, writing a scientific article, from the class. This was my first time, I was nervous but excited.

     I went through all the topics and their requirements. Finally I chose option one, Open Access, as my topic, because it gave the questions for every section so that it could be easier to summary and organize information that I have to search. This article was separated to five sections, Introduction, Background, Impacts, Possibilities and Conclusion. At the beginning, I was confused about introduction and background parts since I thought what these two contained were almost same. But when I further checked these two parts, I found that the background part should be more relevant than the introduction part since the contents of background are richer. For instance, background contains the history of open access, interesting facts, the current issues this movement faced and so on. Thanks to the questions, I finished every section smoothly because I can catch the key points to search what I want. However, also because of these questions, my article looked like answering questions. So, I spent some time organizing it which made each paragraph can be connected very naturally. After I finished writing, I put the whole contents of article in the Wordle website and got this beautiful word clouds. Here is the picture.

Zhou,F.(2012).Open access in Wordle.Retrieved on April 10,2012  http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7200/7066675199_8aed931933_c.jpg

     
     However, there was one part we cannot forget, which is the Reference. Refer to the reference; searching information is the basic but essential step in the writing. Wikipedia is a useful searching website, but it could not be academic enough to support the article. Therefore, I chose to look up peer-reviewed articles that helped me finish the writing and I found the U of A library website was a good source to obtain peer-reviewed articles. After finishing the contents of article, I started to reference. APA style is the citing method for scientific articles. I checked Purdue OWL website and it assisted me to cite each reference properly. After adding reference to the article, I felt that the article had been more academic. 
     In summary, writing a scientific article is a strict process. From this assignment, what I learned is not only how to write a scientific article but also how to search academic information which is properly related to our research and how to cite the reference. These two essential steps are the keys to write a good scientific article. Finally, I want to introduce my friend Yunke Xu's blog, and we have similar name for the blog. She will have a Pecha Kucha presentation on Friday. Good luck!

Wikipedia Article: Give you warm in winter

Zhou,F.(2012).Instant-boiled mutton,Retrieved on January 25,2008.                  http://www.flickr.com/photos/77891688@N04/6862676564/in/photostream/

     
     
            Seeing this steaming hot hot-pot, do you feel your whole body is warm now? And you may be hungry as well. But before having it, I want to introduce what it really is. Click HERE to see the whole information.

     Edit a Wikipedia article? When I heard this week’s assignment, I felt excited but also nervous. Because Wikipedia is a worldwide online encyclopedia and it seems to be very academic. I’m excited that millions of people around world may be watching my edition. However, I’m also afraid that I cannot make them clearly understood what they want to know.

Zhou,F.(2012). my wiki edition, Retrieved on March 23,2012

http://www.flickr.com/photos/77891688@N04/7008811557/in/photostream/ 

      I chose a stub called ‘Instant-boiled mutton’ which is a very famous hot-pot dish in China and people have it mostly during winter. Can you imagine? When you go back home in a hurry with heavy wind and chilly weather, you open the door and seeing a steaming hot instant-boiled mutton is waiting for you and give you warm to help you against the cold. That is so enjoyable and that’s why I chose to edit this one. At the beginning, I found this stub contains very few information, only a picture and a section. So I decided to add more and I added three sections (Introduction, History and Healthy effect). It is a little hard to find scientific articles related to this topic because this is not a worldwide known stuff and may be scientists haven’t found its researchable use. But I found a book ultimately called ‘Food in China’ which contains introduction of instant-boiled mutton. And I also obtained useful information and delicious pictures from some web pages. The History part is my favorite part, and actually it is also my first time learning the history of instant-boiled mutton. I’m surprised it has a long history and an interesting story. Eventually, a warm Wikipedia article editing finished.

     What’s more? The ‘Good article criteria’ also helps me a lot. A good article should be clear and concise, therefore, when I searched information online, I always compared each materials and tried to summary and organize so that the information that I added to can be more accurate and do not mislead people who read it.I read my friend, Wenxin Li's  Wikipedia article. She introduces a popular movie star,Stephen Chow in Hong Kong, China. Have a look and find interesting stuff in it.

My new Facebook page

     This is my first time using Facebook. I’m little confused but also curious. Actually there is a similar website ‘RenRen‘, which means ‘Everyone’, in my hometown China. However, RenRen only has Chinese version but Facebook has more than 60 language versions and that is why people all around the world use it and why this website attracted me at the beginning.

I have just created a page and it shows me the third different way, besides Twitter and Blog, to share information with Ales 204 classmates. At first, I found there is too much personal information requiring to be completed. It looks like a business card, very professional design, which includes all parts of my life, study and work. But it gives me a chance to look back my life. In addition, this page is much useful for career searching in the future due to very detailed personal information. It helps others to understand me from every part of my life and here is a screen capture image of my Facebook page.

Zhou,F.(2012).My Facebook page.Retrieved from: http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7240/7067705335_542beb82cb.jpg 

     In my view, Facebook is the combination of Twitter and Blog. Twitter can update plenty of information immediately and show what is happening now but the letters are limited. For Blog, it is used to write articles, which contain detailed content. However, Facebook achieves both. Up to date information associate with long and detailed articles, which make the Facebook more outstanding. Recently, I found a Facebook page ‘NutritonData’ and I obtained a great deal of useful nutrition-related information, which shows me an abundant nutrition world!

I also want to show you a Facebook page from my friend Minmin Gao. Take a look and find more interesting things. 

Hey, everyone

     My name is Feiyan Zhou and I come from China. I am a second year student in Nutrition and food Major and this is also my second year in Canada. For me, Canada is a very peaceful country. People here are very friendly and always smiling. I met so many different people here. They are pretty nice and help me a lot. I am so glad to be friends with them. Here is one of my best friends Minmin Gao.

     Few days ago, I started to use twitter. Although I heard about it before, the first time try surprised me. It shows me a fresh way to communicate with others, to share my feelings and to obtain the updated information immediately at anytime as long as I twittered it or followed the person or the organization that I interested. Obviously, this new communication tool will be more and more important to me, especially for my current study. Now I open a blog, which also a new try for me. The blog is different from twitter. From twitter, what I get is just few sentences and brief info; however, from the blog, besides the outlines, I can find very detailed information. For example, currently, I use Ales blog to find every lecture’s content, assignment and the newest news such as ‘SOPA’, which I was aware of on Wednesday’s blog. Except that, I also can write comments under the blog to share my opinions with the bloggers. 

Posted by Toniann, http://knotjustjigs.blogspot.com/2011/11/scheduling-do-you-do-it.html

     These two communication tools are really amazing to me and I believe they will make my current study and future work more effective. I hope that I can learn more useful and original communication tools from this Ales course. Looking forward to every class~!

 
Reference:  Toniann.( November 28th, 2011). I love blogging, from: http://knotjustjigs.blogspot.com/2011/11/scheduling-do-you-do-it.html