This term is going to be finished on 17th of March. But, before that I’ve got two SUMMATIVE essays and each of them counts for 50% of each module. One is Marketing and the other is Management. The marketing one is still ok as it’s a case study and we are asked to write in report form, which means not references needed. But still, it’s quite tough to analysis the case with a Kashani Module. I spent a few hours last night try to draw a mind map, but just couldn’t! The management one got two topics. I am thinking to do the one on organisational culture, which needs to spend a bit more time on reading.

For some reasons I got quite ill yesterday, pain on throat and headache. It’s quite dangerous to have something go wrong at this particular time. So like I said before, I filled myself with tons of water and as usual, it works, I feel much better today.

From now on until the end of this term I should really concentrate on these two essays, so my blog updating (both English and Chinese) will slow down. Meanwhile podcasting might be stopped as well. Hopefully the final results will be equal to my efforts.

If Google’s blog platform Blogger still too technical to write, then a AJAX based editing tool may be helpful for creating simple pages. WangJiangShuo said it’s like Microsoft’s Frontpage, I think it’s easier than that. Well, at least you can just do it online with this Google one.

Check out mine and have a go as well. I’ve also captured two screenshots here:

In our management class, we have changed two teachers so far, and last week came the third one. The reason for changing might be the necessity of this module, I don’t think it’s because of their teaching problems, they are all quite good and professional. However, their teaching styles are very different and I found my learning interest from these three vary too.

When the first lecturer introduced himself he said he is from an island somewhere in the north of Scotland, I can’t remember the name. But from his accent, I can tell it is pretty north. He used PowerPoint in the lecture and looks quite professional, but the way he talked and the accent problem didn’t drew much of my attention. Also with subject like management which is full of technical terms it’s better to have examples, but he just kept giving what’s written in the books and I found they are quite difficult to get into my mind.

The second one is a German lady. She is very passionate and always smiling. I felt having her lecture was like watching a drama, the way she talks and walk was very interesting. Our class is small group with 5-6 people, so she often picked up somebody and asked ‘what do you think?’ which kept our attention and made the class more dynamic and integrated. Although she has a bit accent, but I can understand pretty much what she was saying, at least better than the first one.

What makes me wants to write this is because of the third lecturer. His talks calmly, clearly and at a right speed – not too fast or too slow. But what’s more important is game activities were involved in the class. Last week’s class, in order to explain ‘the pursuit of knowledge’, he gave an example of learning how to juggle with instruction or without instruction. And this week he actually brought some juggle balls and let us practices in the class. By doing this, I found it’s easier to learn and remember those theories and important points we need to learn. Also, I didn’t feel board in 90 minutes lecture, he always kept us focused.

Although a good teacher need to be knowledgeable and professional in certain fields, but a professor title doesn’t make a good teacher. What I see a good teacher is not all about how much s/he knows or how many books s/he published, but how well s/he can transmit those complicated knowledge into students’ minds and motivate them to learn more.

Thanks to Chris for sending me an invitation, I have downloaded the MSN 8.0 beta last night and experienced for a bit, here is a little bit comments.

Its UI is not bad, but I expected more. The two functions I wanted are built in this new version, one is name searching and the other one is rename users. As I said before, there are about 180 people in my list, it takes me quite a while whenever I want to look for somebody. Also, quite a few people like to change their names into a lengthy sentence, sometimes even put an essay there (-.-), so I was wishing to have an option like Gtalk has to change their name by myself. So now renaming and searching make it easier to find somebody.

Actually, before this post, I wrote one titled ‘Gtalk vs. MSN8.0′ but didn’t post it here. They are not really two things that can be compared with, although they are competing in IM field. To me, MSN is more like an IM that with lots of entertainment functions, whilst Gtalk is just a simple IM software for people who want to communicate instantly rather than chatting. I can play games, sending voice messages, drawing funny faces in MSN, but if I just want to talk in text, Gtalk is enough.

After all, MSN 8.0 doesn’t bring me much surprise as I expected.