Task 5: Abuses of Mind Mapping Technology

The emergence of every new technology will certainly cause some effects on both positive and negative sides. As to mind mapping, if correctly used, it can be very helpful in mental illnesses’ treatment, psychological therapy and criminal investigation; while abuses can also happen if it is used unethically to predict and control people’s thoughts or to reveal privacy. Even if it is used by ordinary people without unethical purpose, it can bore our everyday life. In spite of all possible abuses, the technology itself is useful, therefore, researchers need to predict and minimize the potential unethical abuses so as the technology can be applied fully to improve our society.

First of all, to predict the potential unethical abuses, the technology must be tested through strict procedures before it is commonly applied. As to mind mapping technology, it can be tested in some hospital or in the court, or anywhere else that the technology can help. After testing, researchers might discover some unpredicted results, and then they have to analyze the results and see whether there is anything wrong with the technology.

Secondly, to minimize the abuses, researchers must make sure the technology is accurate; otherwise it may cause some negative effect even if it is ethically used. For example, when the police investigate a suspect using the mind mapping technology, if it is not accurate, the innocent suspect might be penalized unjustly and the criminal might be let off wrongly. Similarly, it the technology is not accurate, a normal patient may be treated as a psychotic which is very bad for the patient.

Finally, restrict must be made on the accessibility of the technology. Since mind mapping is a high technological application, not all people have appropriate needs to use it. Thus, there must be some legislation or restraint of facilities to distinguish particular groups of people, such as doctors, consultants, police and law officers, who have access to use the technology so that other people will have no chance to abuse the technology in unethical means.

In conclusion, the mind mapping technology is quite a helpful technology in some professional areas. However, before it can truly benefit the society, researchers need to put great efforts into reducing the potential unethical abuses

Task 4: Writing in Engineering Classes

Since we are still on the very basic stage of engineering study, we have not encountered much writing in our engineering classes yet in the Sem1 modules. However, taking my previous writing experience for the GEK module as example, the major difficulties that I have are vocabulary and academic writing style.

On the one hand, most of the writings in engineering classes are related to certain academic areas, such as MLE1101 is about material science and engineering, and EG1109 is about mechanical engineering, which are not usually mentioned in our daily casual conversation and involve a lot of specific academic vocabularies. Therefore, when I write on such topics, I usually feel that I’m repeating words and the essay looks very unprofessional and boring due to my lack of academic vocabulary. To resolve this problem, I have to read a lot on the topic that I’m going to write about beforehand so as to gather some vocabularies on the particular subject. In the long run, I think I’ll consist on reading academic essays and news articles and accumulate my academic vocabularies.

On the other hand, another most serious difficulty I met in my writing is the academic style of writing. In academic writing, we need to use an objective tune and cite examples and references for each of the supporting points. However, in my writing, I tend to explain my point base on my own logic and have difficulty in citing the appropriate examples. In addition, the format of academic writing also needs to be observed. In resolving this difficulty, same effort is required, that is to read more academic essays or journals and learn from their writing style. More practices may also help in familiarizing with the format of citation and reference.

Task 3: Advance personalized learning

For a long time, experts and researchers have debated about the best way of education between phonics and whole-word recognition. Throughout the educational system, children as well as adults have been educated similarly following a “one-size-fits-all” approach regardless of individual differences. However, recently “personalized learning”, in which instruction is in accordance with a student’s individual needs, has gained a growing appreciation.

 

Why is personalized learning useful?

Learners can be divided into several categorizes. Some are highly self-motivated and learn best exploring a realm of knowledge. Some prefer a more structured approach. Another type is more motivated by external rewards and may learn best with step-by-step instruction. Others resist learning and do not have any motivation or interest in achieving goals.

The categorization of different learners is the base for developing personalized instruction. However, the truly personalized learning can be more individualized. According to their learning type, students prefer differently among learning examples, solving problems and so on. Under different conditions, people can also switch their preferences.

Many personalized learning approaches make use of computerized instruction. There are “intelligent” Web-based education systems, “recommender” systems that guide individual learner using Web-based resources, and algorithms that adjust recommendations to the abilities of the student.

 

What personalized learning systems are available now?

Web-based education systems are common. Systems that deliver and facilitate individual learning and multimedia modules that provide various forms of information have been designed. The delivery of instructional material is an important part of personalized learning. For instance, the instructional contents are delivered in different sequences in intelligent tutoring systems tailored for each individual. Many methods have been explored to optimize the order of presentation.

Recommender systems are widely encountered on the web also. These systems are more often designed for specific learning problem, such as mastering a second language. For example, some systems recommend books or reading lessons that most suited to an individual learner by tracking student’s errors and learning weaknesses.

 

What can engineering do to improve learning?

Ongoing research in neuroscience is providing clues to refine individualized instruction. A major challenge for the software engineers is to develop teaching methods that optimize learning, given the diversity of individual preferences and the complexity of each human brain. Engineers will play roles in most aspects of these complex problems. Mastery of these processes in advanced software could make learning more reliable.

 

 

Reference:

Advance personalized learning. (n.d.). Retrieved September 30, 2008 from http://www.engineeringchallenges.org/cms/8996/9127.aspx

Task 2: Sentence Fragments

Sentence fragments, defined as incomplete sentences, can be a kind of common mistake students make when writing English. There are mainly two kinds of sentence fragments mistakes. The first ones are pieces of dependent sentences that are disconnected with the main clause. Usually this kind of sentence fragments mistakes are also punctuation mistakes at the same time. For example, the sentence “I don’t like this lecturer. Because he cannot explain his points clearly.” The second part of the sentence is not a complete sentence. It is merely a phrase or dependent clause. One way to correct this kind of mistakes is to remove or change the punctuation. Then the sentence becomes “I don’t like this lecturer because he cannot explain his points clearly”, which is complete and correct. Of course, there is another way of correction which is related to the second kind of sentence fragments mistakes. In the second case, fragments are usually incomplete main clause, lacking subject or main verb or both. The sentence “Toys of all kinds thrown everywhere” is a good example of this kind of sentence fragments. In this sentence, there is no main verb, therefore it is incomplete. To correct it, simply add an “are” before “thrown”. In some examples like the first one we mentioned above, both subject and main verb are missing. Therefore, we need to add both of them in order to complete the sentence. After correction, the first example should be “I don’t like this lecturer. It is because he cannot explain his points clearly.” There are now two independent sentences.

Practice exercises:

Of the three sentences in each group, select the one that is NOT a sentence fragment. 
1.  
 Mrs. Blanco gone to visit her mother at the hospital.
 Finding a parking space there is usually easy during the week.
 Driving in the city during the evening rush hour.
2.  
 To apply for a job at the new store in the mall.
 Asking the interviewer how often he would have to work on weekends.
 Shaking his new boss's hand, Tony knew he would like working there.
3.  
 By the time Frances found out how expensive the wallpapering job would be.
 After getting estimates from five contractors, she decided to do the work herself.
 Before picking out an interesting wallpaper pattern that went well with her furniture.
4.  
 Who borrowed Stefanie's car Saturday night.
 The nineteen-year-old car looked out of place next to the new models.
 Which the salesman was surprised to find in such good shape.
5.  
 While waiting for her neighbor to move the car that blocked the driveway.
 To avoid hitting the other car, Michael had to back across the corner of the lawn.
 By making sure that no one will park across the driveway again.
6.  
 Because Manuel was sure he had heard the same strange story many months ago.
 Although I will never forget how cold we were when we lost our heat last winter.
 Since Anna wasn't at the meeting, I took notes so that she wouldn't miss anything.
7.  
 When my cousin moved to Troy, New York, after he finished school.
 After he went to all the trouble of fixing up his apartment.
 While living there, he made very few friends.
8.  
 My brother has been running a charter fishing boat for five years.
 Many of his customers coming back three or four times over the summer.
 His business been so busy that he has very little time for anything else.
9.  
 In the hiding place that Carl had been using for years to get away from the noisy house.
 By the time that everyone had quieted down, my favorite television show was over.
 Before planning another family get-together at the already crowded park.
10.  
 Although I knew she might wear something outrageous, I was still shocked by her dress.
 Because she didn't want to tell where she had bought the strange outfit.
 When we finally heard that she had made the dress herself.


References:
1. http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/g_frag.html
2. http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/GRAMMAR/cgi-shl/quiz.pl/fragments_add1.htm?cgi_quiz_form=1

Task 1: Systematic and Critical Thinking Minds ------ The Most Important Quality for Engineering Profession

Throughout centuries, engineering shows its driven power in development of the entire world. As time passes along, future development of humans calls for more comprehensive qualities from engineering profession. As far as I am concerned, “systematic and critical thinking minds” ([2]), defined to be cross-disciplinary and cross-industrial capabilities, will be crucial in the future engineering profession.

The importance of “systematic and critical thinking minds” can be illustrated from two aspects, the challenges of engineering and working areas of engineering students. On one hand, the grant challenges of engineering require engineers’ highly cross-disciplinary capabilities. Engineering, as traditional understanding implies, is to provide solutions for the “broad realms of human concern”; however, different from what is tradition, engineers now must consider all influential factors synthetically instead of merely providing technical solutions. For example, in solving the problem of new energy sources, engineers need to balance technical problems, environmental issues as well as economic feasibility; once all these factors are integrated in finding the suitable solution, engineers must have considerable understanding of all those three disciplines. To solve other grant challenges like political obstacles and uneven distribution of “engineering’s gifts to civilization” ([1]) also requests engineers to have systematic and critical thinking minds to combine their political, social and economic talents together with their engineering profession. On the other hand, the expanding working areas of engineers proves that one of the most important qualities of engineering is cross-industrial capabilities. Current trend of engineering education is so flexible and diversified that many engineering students are also recruited in non-engineering fields, such as banking, finance, logistics, management and service sector ([2]). Future engineers must be cross-industrial capable with systematic and critical thinking minds, otherwise, they will not be qualified once employed into a non-engineering working area.

All in all, to be the future qualified engineers, the most crucial quality that we must be equipped with is the systematic and critical thinking mind. We must be able to combine our multi-disciplinary knowledge with the reality as well as to integrate our methods with the desires of all fields


References:
[1] National Academy of Engineering, “Introduction to the grand challenges for engineering,” [Online document] Feb. 2008, [2008 Jun 3], Available at: http://www.engineeringchallenges.org/cms/8996/9221.aspx
[2] S. Ramakrishna, “The expanding world of engineers,” The Sunday Times, 5 Aug., pp. 25, 2007.