ONLINE JOURNAL

Journal of Computer Assisted Learning Abstract Designing and implementing effective e-learning is a complex process, which involves many factors. Lecturers need to constantly consider, evaluate and adjust these factors to provide effective e-learning environments for students. In this paper, we report on the design and development of the Online Learning Environment Survey (OLES), an instrument which can be used to gather and represent data on students' 'actual' (experienced) and 'preferred' (ideal) learning environments. We describe the use of this instrument in blended learning environments with university classes, illustrating how OLES can be used by educators striving for good practice in the design of effective online learning environments.

Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia with the intention of defining an initial research agenda for discipline-specific factors in the usability of e-learning websites, this article focuses on the example of foreign language learning. First, general notions and concepts of usability are analyzed, and the term "pedagogical usability" is proposed as a means of focusing on the close relationship between usability and pedagogical design.

Then, to address the key issue of whether there are aspects of pedagogical usability that are discipline-specific, the article examines how language learning and teaching, in particular Technology Enhanced Language Learning (TELL), has approached usability when developing technology-enhanced learning materials. Three elements of a research agenda are identified: (a) pedagogical usability, (b) intercultural usability, and (c) website evaluation. In conclusion, it is suggested that, just as language learning websites may require a discipline-specific approach, other disciplines' pedagogical usability may also need to be considered in relation to the specific requirements of the discipline, and that a debate around these issues is timely. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF BLOG

Blogs are web logs that are updated regularly, usually on a daily basis. They contain information related to a specific topic. In some cases blogs are used as daily diaries about people's personal lives, political views, or even as social commentaries. The truth of the matter is that blogs can be shaped into whatever you, the author, want them to be.

Creating blogs give all the users a lot of benefits. The users enable to make contacts with people they would never have met. The blog opens new opportunities. It significantly increases our credibility by demonstrating the quality of our thoughts. The users can build a community of people who are interested in their products and what to say about them. Blogs are flexible enough to allow a dialogue, a conversation, a sharing of ideas, the revelation of the parties’ true insights and resources without corporate filtering.

That, and only that, encourage and develop a relationship based on trust. It has given a much better two-way conversation with the consumers than they had without it. The users also had several interviews with journalists because of the weblog, though that is likely because it is still unusual to have a corporate weblog.

Blogs also allows the users to share ideas and insights into our product. A blog allows us to have an open dialog with customers. This open dialog allows us to align ourselves with our customers.

Blogs have potential to help the organization develop stronger relationships and brand loyalty with its customers. Blogs can be a positive way of getting feedback, and keeping your finger on the pulse, as readers react to certain pieces, suggest story ideas. Blogs can build the profile of the writer, showcasing the organization as having talent and expertise.

The disadvantages of blogs are most people don’t have very much to say that’s interesting unable to write down their ideas in a compelling and clear manner. I have often found that the people who have most time to write have least to say, and the people who have most to say don’t have enough time to write it. Like practically everything else on the web, blogs are easy to start and hard to maintain. Writing coherently is one of the most difficult and time-consuming tasks for a human being to undertake.

So, far from blogs being a cheap strategy, they are a very expensive one, in that they eat up time. As a result, many blogs are not updated, thus damaging rather than enhancing the reputation of the organization. Organizations are not democracies. The web makes many organizations look like disorganizations, with multiple tones and opinions. Contrary to what some might think, the average customer prefers it if the organization they are about to purchase from is at least somewhat coherent.

As an individual, I would highly recommend that you have some sort of publishing strategy, whether it is a blog, newsletter, writing articles for magazines, website or whatever. This is an age where you will build your professional reputation word by word. Start off by finding something people care about and that you care about. Happy Blogging everyone…♥

CONCORDANCE

The language corpus has been used as the basis of dictionaries and teaching materials. It may help students to 'look at the systematic of language as an interesting linguistic puzzle, rather than a set of boring rules to be memorized’.

Concordance software can be used to help analyze the language data. It is easily disturbed by the huge amount of data available. It has used a local learner corpus in order to highlight the existence of such corpora as well as the efficacy of these corpora in corpus-based studies.

The result of the concordance and analysis indicate some form of development in terms of language production as well as vocabulary range and sophistication. The article demonstrates that corpus data can be analyzed to inform language educators of language development. While development in this study is examined cross sectionally, it may be possible to introduce a longitudinal element in future analysis.

The data used in this study was taken from the EMAS corpus collected in 2002.Similar data can be collected from respondents of the same age group in later years and compared against the values found in the study.

THE DIFFERENCES AND SIMILARITY BETWEEN SMS, E-MAIL AND CHAT.

Sms, chat and e-mail are very popular among people nowadays. People use all of this three things to communicate with each other. Sms, chat and email are the easiest way to communicate for the people who live in a difference places.

These 3 things have become important things in our daily life. It becomes popular because it is very simple, cheap and faster. There are some similarities between sms, chat and email. As you all can see, sms, chat and email are faster if we compare to the letters mailing because it will take a couple of day. Besides, sms, chat and email are very cheap.

If we look, sms only charge for 1 cent if we use the same service line provider, and for the different line provider it only cost us 20 cents. If we are having a chat, it only cost us RM2 at the cybercafé. The other similarity is in context of using short forms. Sms, chat and email use the same short forms like 'btw' for 'by the way', oic for 'oh..i see', r for 'are' in order to save time and space.

Now, let's look at the differences between sms, chat and email. For sms, we use a mobile phone to send a message but for email and chat we have to use a computer. Anyway, nowadays there is a lot of mobile phone that can send e-mail and also chat and that means it’s also will be the similarity.

Besides, chat is faster than email and sms. This is because chat is synchronous or online typed conversation. Email is a asynchronous or not simultaneous. Sms can be categorized as synchronous because it is also faster and depend to the receiver whether to reply it on time or not.