Reflection (Week 3a)

          This week we moved on to our 4th Assignment (Literature Review using online materials) on the THINK, PAIR, SHARE activity. This assignment is related to the topic for assignment 1 -- Original and Licensing Software. Following are the guidelines to complete the assignment:-

• Literature Review:
• Online material: Plan, search, evaluate and select 2 journal articles from UKM subscription research databases; 1 article from google scholar; 1 books.google.com.
• Topic related to Assignment 1.
• Using OpenOffice Writer, write a report on what should be done in Malaysia (identify the research problem).
• The report should cite the references you use to support your argument.

          From this activity, I have learnt to search for reliable online materials from google scholar, google books and the UKM online library. Materials are available in various forms of articles, reports and journals. Before this, I only used google search most of the time instead of going for more choices of articles from google scholar, google books and the online library. When we first registered ourselves for the degree program, we are informed about the use of UKM's online library. However, we are not provided with the username and password. We tried with our student ID and the password given for SMPWeb but it was not accepted. Finally, I can now have access to it with the username and password provided by our course coordinator, and I find it extremely useful as there are numerous types of journals and articles of various courses can be used as references. Online library enables self-learning and encourages people to become independent learners through reading.

          I read and picked up some relevent sources as my references. Later, my partner and I came up with a report about our findings on the issues of original licensed software and software piracy in Malaysia. This time, we are required to use OpenOffice, an open source software to write our report. Before writing, I downloaded OpenOffice 3.3 software from its official website http://www.openoffice.org/. It took me few minutes to finish downloading and to install as well. After that, I started to work on our report. I found it almost the same as Microsoft Office except for certain features. Since some may not be able to afford the licensed Microsoft Office, they can consider using OpenOffice as an alternative instead. The software is free after all. OpenOffice is not only available for text documents but also others such as spreadsheet, presentation, drawing, database, etc.

          By the end of this week, I was able to produce a critical report on Issues on Original Licensed Software and Software Piracy in Malaysia with proper citation. With these further readings from various journals changed my previous thoughts on the issues concerned. I began to see both perspectives from different authors. Looking forward for further explorations in Computer in Education. =)


Xin Txin