Maria's: 2008

Friday, 12 December 2008

Merry Christmas & HAppy New Year

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

I hope everyone of you to have I great time with love!!!

Monday, 8 December 2008

Seminar Privacy Cases

Here, are some of the web sites on which I found some interesting ideas for our seminar.

The last one, is a debate on the BBC radio about 'Is privacy Dead?' it's really nice to hear it!!!

''Privacy and security are those things you give up when you show the world what makes you extraordinary. ''

Margaret Cho Margaret Cho's Weblog, 07-05-04

Also, I read the article which Jim post on his blog and it help me to answer all the questions for the privacy definitions, why privacy is important, the situation in the UK and at the end for the impact of the European convention on Human Rights on UK law.

The question is If in our days there is privacy???

In my mind of view, no we don't have any kind of privacy. The main cause for this change is the technology and how it change our lives. For instance, we can think for a second the 'Facebook' and how many information we can find there for other people. I believe there is still privacy only in health problems! If there isn't we have to respect this privacy, because is sth personal which must me protect for all of us.

Good night!!!

Thursday, 4 December 2008

The Parthenon

The Symbol of Democracy and Freedom.......

Furthermore

If you really like to watch at photos from different landscapes, countries etc...

Just visit this site there are some amazing photos!!!

http://si.smugmug.com/gallery/1674201_UxZmP#114390527_JuQmb

The above photo is from this site!!!

Good night.........

Task 11. Listen an online lecture

ANCIENT GREECE

I watch an introduction lecture from Yale University, about ''Ancient Greece'', from the professor Donald Kagan.

It was a really interested lecture with a lot of information about the Ancient Greece.

Below there are some of my notes and then a summary of the whole lecture!!!

WHY Ancient Greece deserve the attention of people in 21st century????

The truth is, there are a lot of reasons but the most important is because it's

TERRIBLE INTERESTING!!!

Position: the most significant starting point of the western civilization

Characteristics of the western civilization: institutions of science, law, politics, etc..

Civilization is NOT the result of inevitable process BUT a result of unique humanity.

Modern world: shaped by the western

West Science and Technology participating in:

political freedom (privacy of reason and pressure of objective communication, characterised as essential to freedom and characteristics of the western civilisation)

..............................

Summary

The professor Donald Kagan describes why people should study the ancient Greeks. He argues that, it is important because they create a big part of the Western civilisation with their achievements and contributions but also they create a lot of fields such as politics, law, science, health,etc..furthermore they had an unique perspective of humanity. In addition, the Greeks men were the vital element for the greatest achievements and the worst crimes he was both great and important but also mortal and fallible. All the modern world shaped sightly by the west basis.

In conclusion, according to the Donald Kagan ''to study the Greeks is to study the nature of Human experience'' (Donald Kagan, 1999)

Pomeroy, Burstein, Donald and Roberts. Ancient Greece, Oxford University Press: New York, 1999, pp.1-40

Task 17. Reflection Writing

A LECTURE

The last weeks we listened to many lectures, I found the two first lectures easy to understand and to taking notes, but the last one it was quite difficult, probable because the vocabulary it wasn't common to me.

I found very interesting and useful the way, which we used to taking notes, because in the past i used to take notes every day, but sometimes my notes were very confused. I think I will follow this way in the future, because it is very easy to understand from these notes!!!

In conclusion, I believe if you know something about the topic which you listen to or you watch on a lecture is easier to take notes than if you don't have any idea about the topic or if the vocabulary are very unknown!!!

A good advice is just to read some vocabulary before the lecture if you know the subject!!!

Wednesday, 3 December 2008

Subject-based resources for you subject

My subject area it was on Marketing!!
Some useful links are:

www.emerald.com

www.brandrepublic.com/marketing

www.marketingessentials.co.uk/marketing.html

On this sites, you can find any common definition or examples on Marketing Field.

I read an article relevant to my undergraduate degree. This article it was for the cereal industry ''The ready-to-eat Breakfast Cereal Industry in 1994''. Usually, on Marketing, the authors analyse an industry, for instance cereal industry, car industry, clothe industry, etc.. or they write about one company (for example, how it seems to the market, the highlights of this company, how it reacted in a special situation etc..), which usually call this ''case study''.

The analyse of the article include:

The history of the company or industry

The environment in this sector (for instance, technologies which companies use, distribution, advertising, promotions and pricing, new product introductions)

Competition ( here they have to analyse about their main competitors, for example Kellogg General Mills, Philip Morris, Quaker Oats, etc.. You have two include all the main competitors in your analysis because they will be a threat for your sales)

The private label threat

A turning point

All the above bullets are one part of a ''marketing plan'', a marketing plan usually include:

product/services and your unique selling proposition

pricing strategy

sales and distribution plan
advertising and promotion plan

Attention!!! you must be carefully, because a lot of people are confused with marketing plan and business plan, the main difference between these plans are that: ''marketing plan is a section of business plan''.

Analyse my own language abilities and skills

Very Good____________________________Very Weak

Speaking ___________________X_________________

Writing ______________________X_______________

Reading _______________________X______________

Listening______________________X_______________

Pronunciation______________________X____________

Grammar__________________________X___________

Vocabulary_________________________X___________

Academic Skills______________________X____________

In my mind of view, I can understand the whole meaning of reading or when someone speaking or on listening, but I can't understand something specific and this is my main weakness in English.

I find very difficult to understand the grammar and I can remember the new vocabulary or how the words work together. Generally, I believe in all the above sectors I have some severe weakness, which I need to improve, If I want to learn this foreign language. As a result, in the future, I have a lot of self study to do, because I want to do my master next year. So, I will try to do my best!!!

''Television is no way a true mirror of society''

Brief Essay outline

INTRODUCTION

As Alan Corenk once said “Television is more interesting than people. If it were not, we would have people standing in the corners of our rooms’’. It is sad but true to some extent at the same time. Nobody can argue with the fact that television has become an obsession of our society. Paddy Chayevsky refers to it as “a menace that everyone loves to hate but can't seem to live without”. And that is specifically what it has become today. It used to be a channel of information, enabling people to learn at any time what was going on anywhere in the world. Today there has been a lot of criticism whether TV is still educative and informative or has become just a useless piece of furniture. Some people believe that violence, sex, reality shows etc., gives us the exact duplication of our society.
On the opposite side, others think that despite some individual’s bad intentions, television does not in any way reflect who we are or the world we live in.
Indeed, in some cases, the images shown on TV are based on some real facts. The sad thing is that these images have been distorted and exaggerated. Every member of a society is not a part of an unemployed cast of a reality show, neither someone who spends time gossiping about celebrities or revealing his feelings on a talk show. This essay will try to fairly analyse the positive and negative effects of Television on our society. The next step will provide a logical explanation for this “hate” that started lately to surround the word “Television”.

PARAGRAPH 1: Negative effects of TV on our society

PARAGRAPH 2: Positive effects of TV on our society

PARAGRAPH 3: Reasons for negative perception of TV

PARAGRAPH 4: Impact of today’s Television on our society.

CONCLUSION: I agree with this statement, because even though Television does sometimes show some depressing images of our society, we have to understand that they are just exceptions. After all, if we were reflected by some TV images, we would not be able to define that “picture” of the society as wrong because it would look normal to our eyes.

References
The quotation page, 2007, [WWW], Available from: http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Alan_Corenk/, Accessed: 25/11/2008

Monday, 1 December 2008

Seminar Reflection No.2

Hello, everyone,

Yesterday, we had our second seminar about the 'surveillance society'!!

I think it was better in terms of quality and content than the previous one, because my group and I managed to communicate, discuss and in some cases interrupt someone politely, in order to add a different point of view. I believe that, all members spoke enough and were able to support their ideas with good examples and arguments!!!

Finally, it was a really good experience and we all learnt a lot about the surveillance society and how it affects our lives in London, as well as, in our countries!!!

How good was I? 2
Had I done enough reserach and preperation? 2
Did I speak enough during the seminar? 2
Was I agood listener? 1
Did I argue my opinio clearly? 2
Did I give reasons, examples and evidence to support my opinions? 2
Did I ask relevant questions to other people? 1
Was the language I used accurate? 2
Had I prepared the language I needed before the seminar? 2
Did I direct the discussion or help keep the discussion moving the right direction? 1
Could other people clearly understand what I was saying? 2
Did I work well the other people in my group? 1

Our conclusion for the seminar:

Generally, the students in my group feel safe in London, because it's considered as a surveillance society! Furthermore, we don't mind being constantly watched, because after all these years we got used to it!!!

Finally, we believe that technology has two different "faces". The sad thing is that the negative side always find a way to overcome the positive one. We, as humans are used to turn anything good into something bad especially when it comes to technology. After all, let's admit that we do need technology. Maybe in smaller "doses" but still, it has become an indispensable factor of our society so let's keep in mind the positive effects and try to get along with it!!!

I wanted to thank one more time all the members of my group for their lively interaction and participation.

Nightey night everyone!!! :-)

Sunday, 30 November 2008

Preparation for the seminar

My research for the seminar tomorrow!
We can characterise London like a ‘surveillance society’, while as you can see in a lot of articles, there are a significant number of CCTV cameras in London, also at Heathrow airport start to use biometrics, the police use DNA database to indentify the murder of a crime or the robber, etc.. In my opinion, all these techniques are suitable and useful in our days, because people became more violent and we need this safe!!!
At these sites, there is an opposite opinion about CCTV cameras, while some people believe that CCTV cameras didn’t solve any problem of crime or robberies

Below there are some articles for DNA database

Electronic tagging

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article722844.ece

In my opinion, electronic tagging isn’t so good, because isn’t the ‘correct’ punishment for these people who do soothing bad in our society! It is more strong to be in a prison than to stay at home and if you stay at your home you could see all your people who love, so that it isn’t a punishment!!

For and against using or increasing these forms of surveillance technology

Surveillance technology in the future

http://ezinearticles.com/?Surveillance-Technology-Now-and-in-the-Future&id=1266580

‘We have to move ourselves into this new world. It is a great challenge for us.’
But the question is: how safe is this new world????
I believe, people could never feel safe, because always there are improvements which are more powerful than us.
Goodnight...

Saturday, 29 November 2008

Here I am!!!

Hi everyone,
On Friday, I search on the internet the definition of these words:
Surveillance, Footprints, fingerprints, biometrics,etc.. (all the words which mentioned in Jim's Blog).
I found the definition from the on line Cambridge dictionary and also used this site http://www.answers.com/, from which you can find how the words used and with which words you can use these words.
Furthermore, I read some of the articles which are in the list and I found them informative and interesting, because in my country we don't have so effective systems, we use some of them like CCTV but not so effective like here and there aren't everywhere! In my mind of view, these cameras are very effective, because citizens could feel safe!!!
Also, cybercrime in recent years is incresed gradually and this is a problem for the developing countries, because they don't know how to solve this problem. At this site http://www.crime-research.org/library/Schetilov.htm, you can find, the typical examples of such kind of crimes are, list of crime which could mentioned as cybercrime, the main features of cybercrimes, etc..

To be continued tomorrow....

Tuesday, 25 November 2008

Seminar Reflection

Good morning, everyone...

Yesterday, we do our first seminar, about the media!! I find it very interesting, but sometimes when you want to interrupt someone for your group you can because he or she just continue to speak and you can stop him or her!!Anyway, i found it very informative, because we have in depth discussion about the first part of the seminar ''television viewing habits around the world'', so I learn a lot about the laws and the current situation of TV on different countries around the world.
In my mind of view, for the next seminar I would like to do some improvements, because I want to learn how to interrupt someone more polite or how all the members of our group to do some questions and not only the one, because i think tis isn't a seminar but I ''mini'' lecture in four people!! furthermore, if all the member have one more active role the seminar will become more interesring and interactive!!!

How good was I? 2
Had I done enough reserach and preperation? 2
Did I speak enough during the seminar? 3
was I agood listener? 3
Did I argue my opinio clearly? 2
Did I give reasons, examples and evidence to support my opinions? 2
Did I ask relevant questions to other people? 3
Was the language I used accurate? 2
Had I prepared the language I needed before the seminar? 2
Did I direct the discussion or help keep the discussion moving the right direction? 3
Could other people clearly understand what I was saying? 2
Did i work well the other people in my group? 2

Below you can find some of my resources for the media, sorry I didn't do it before the seminar because I didn't have enough time!

Have a nice day!!!!

Friday, 21 November 2008

Vocabulary

Test: vocabulary for TV
http://www.world-english.org/media_vocabulary.htm
The 500 Most Commonly Used Words in the English Language
http://www.world-english.org/english500.htm
The 100 most commonly used verbs in the English Language
http://www.world-english.org/100verbs.html

That's enough for today!!!

Thursday, 20 November 2008

Television in Greece

We live in an era, in which human deings spent too much time at home watching TV(television). This fact has a dramatic effect on our community in terms of socialization.

In my country, like in most other countries all over the world, people exposed to a whole range of different programmes. In Greece, the vast majority of channels are free, except if you want a better image quality, as well as, cable channels, such as, Filment, SuperSport, E!Entertainment, etc.. A significant number of Greek TV shows are national and a smaller number of them are American films and series.

Furthermore, there is limited censorship from the government. The only obligation is that channels must put an appropriate symbol to define who's permited to see the show which is on-air.

In addition, we have a good quality of TV shows, because during the day you can watch a lot of educational and informative programmes. On the other hand, like in any other country there are reality shows. In my opinion, reality shows must be stopped due to the fact that a lot of young children are influenced by them.

Overall, in my mind, the government should stop the reality shows, because in Greece viewers are influenced by them and there is no point in watching other people's routine. The cast in these shows is mainly unemployed people who decide to join it, in order to make ''easy money''.

Referencing & Plagiarism (Self Study)

Referencing

While completing written work at university you will make use of a variety of sources of information, including the work og other authors.

Original sources are:

1. be clear and explain about all your sources NEVER copy anything

2. do not copy whole sentences, phrases or paragraphs if you want to use them just replace some words with other or similar meaning.

Harvard System

(the most popular system of referencing)

1. Books
AUTHOR(S) (Year) Title, Edition. Place of publication, Publisher

Do not forget the title of book must be in italics such as the exaple above

e.g. Mandelbort, B.B. (1982) The Fractal Geometry of Nature. New York: WH Freeman

2. Books with two or three authors

e.g. LI, X. and CRANE, N.B. (1993) Electronic style: a guide to citing electronic information. London, Meckler.

3. Books with more than three authors Give the name of the first author, followed by ‘et al.’ (and others).

e.g. LEVITT, R. et al. (1999) The reorganised National Health Service. 6th ed. Cheltenham, Stanley Thornes.

4. Chapters in books

AUTHOR(S) (Year) Title of chapter. In: AUTHOR(S)/EDITOR(S) Book title. Place of publication, Publisher, Pages (p. or pp.).

e.g. TUCKMAN, A. (1999) Labour, skills and training. In: LEVITT, R. et al. The reorganised National Health Service. 6th ed. Cheltenham, Stanley Thornes, pp. 135-155.

5. Electronic information Electronic references should contain the following elements:

AUTHOR(S) (Year) Title of document [Type of resource, e.g. CD-ROM, e-mail, WWW] Organisation responsible (optional). Available from: URL address. [Date accessed].

e.g . UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD LIBRARY (2001) Citing electronic sources of information [WWW] Sheffield, University of Sheffield. Available from: http://www.shef.ac.uk/library/libdocs/hsl- dvc2.html [Accessed 6/8/03].

6. If you are referencing an item, such as a journal article, use the normal format for that item then add the type of resource, URL and accessed details, as for electronic information.

e.g. DREXHAGE, J. (2004) Still up in the air. Carbon finance, January, pp 16-17 [WWW] Available from: http://www.iisd.org/pdf/2004/climate_still_up_air.pdf [Accessed 12/2/04].

The most common type of reference are these which mentioned above, although sometimes we use and some of these which mentioned below, so you can see how you can write these references.

7. Exhibition catalogues

ARTIST (Year) Title of exhibition [Exhibition catalogue] Place of publication, Publisher.

e.g. HARRIS, W. (1983) William Harris as designer [Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Whitworth Art Gallery, 3 May – 4 June 1983] London, Arts Council.

8. Journal articles

AUTHOR(S) (Year) Title of article. Title of journal, Vol. no. (Part no.), Pages (p. or pp.).

e.g. LU, H., and MIETHE, T.D. (2002) Legal representation and criminal processing in China. British journal of criminology, 42 (2), pp. 267-280.

9. Media (video, film, or broadcast) Title (Year) Type of media. ORIGINATOR (e.g. director). Place of production, Producer.

e.g. Rebel without a cause. (1983) Film. Directed by Nicholas RAY. USA, Warner Bros. A television broadcast should also include the date and time of broadcast, where possible. e.g. Dyslexic children. (1999) TV. Channel 4, July 29, 1900 hrs.

10. Newspaper articles

AUTHOR(S) (Year) Article title. Newspaper title, Day, Month (abbreviated), Page(s).

e.g. BROWN, P. (2002) New foot and mouth outbreak suspected. Guardian, 27 Feb., p. 1.

11. Online images Description or title of image (Year) [Online image] ORIGINATOR (if relevant). Available from: URL address. [Date accessed].

e.g. Hubble space telescope release in the space shuttle’s payload bay (1994) [Online image] Available from: http://explorer.arc.nasa.gov/pub/SPACE/GIF/s31-04-015.gif [Accessed 1/10/ 96].

12. Papers in conference proceedings

AUTHOR(S) (Year) Title. In: EDITOR(S) Title of conference proceedings. Place and date of conference (unless included in title). Place of publication, Publisher, Page(s).

e.g. GIBSON, E.J. (1977) The performance concept in building. In: Proceedings of the 7th CIB Triennial Congress. Edinburgh, September 1977. London, Construction Research International, pp. 129-136.

13. Publications from a corporate body (e.g. Government publications)

NAME OF ISSUING BODY (Year) Title. Place of publication, Publisher, Report no. (where relevant), Page(s).

e.g. DEPARTMENT OF THE ENVIRONMENT, Development Commission (1980) 38th Report. 1st April 1979 to 31st March 1980. London, HMSO, 1979-80 HC. 798, pp. 70-81.

14. Theses and dissertations

AUTHOR (Year) Title. Designation (Level, e.g. MSc., PhD.), Institution.

e.g. MARSHALL, J. (2002) The Manuscript tradition of Brunetto Latini’s "Tresor". Unpublished thesis (PhD), University of London.

Plagiarism

When you copy from the web or from any other type such as article, newspaper, book etc, something which someone else said is plagiarism, and it is unacceptable. So the best way to avoid the plagiarism is just to use the references or to rewrite with different words or you can use synonymous!

If you want some further information about references and plagiarism, you can visit these links:

http://libweb.anglia.ac.uk/referencing/files/Harvard_referencing.pdf

I done my self study with this site, so my reference is this site:

De Montford University, [August, 2008], ''The Harvard system of referencing'', [WWW]. Avaliable from: http://www.library.dmu.ac.uk/Images/Selfstudy/Harvard.pdf,

[Accessed, 20/11/2008]

Have a nice day!!!!!!!

Chip an' Dale

Writing Paragraphs & articles about ''The effects of TV on Society''

I found, finally these pages!!!
You can, just go to the site of bbc and search about ‘’future on TV’’, and then you can see them!!!
First of all, you can visit this site to see how you can write a good essay or what you must avoid for an essay!
http://kimberlychapman.com/essay/badwriting.html
You can also see at this site
http://www.actstudent.org/writing/prepare/build.html.
Here, you can find a lot of examples of essays
http://www.exampleessays.com/viewpaper/15889.html.
And this one http://www.planetpapers.com/Assets/3312.php, also about the writing paragraphs and essays!!!
They are very interesting, especially this one
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6168950.stm
(Online video 'eroding TV viewing', which is mentioned how youtube change the habits to watch TV on internet!!!
And, this one ‘Millions turn to net for pirate TV’, which mentioned how people nowadays, download their favourite series to watch it on PC, because they can wait until it is on TV, such as ‘Desperate housewives’, ‘24’, ‘Lost’, etc..
Some on line articles about the effects of TV on our society, in this site you can find some essays about how people feel with TV, it is not scientific but you can take some opinion, http://www.dooyoo.co.uk/discussion/detrimental-effects-of-television-on-society/1001904/.
On this article you can find some good ideas and suggestions about the effects of TV (it’s really nice and helpful on our first essay) http://www.echeat.com/essay.php?t=30171.
Have a nice day!!

Wednesday, 19 November 2008

Tuesday, 18 November 2008

''The woman in Black''

One of the most exciting and successful theatre events ever staged, ''The Woman in Black'' has been seen by over three million people.

Yesterday, I saw on the theatre this performance ''The woman in Black''. You can find this performance at this address ''Fortune Theatre, Russell Street, London WC2'', and if you want some further information about the tickets, or more about the plot, you can visit this web site http://www.thewomaninblack.com/index.html.
it was really amazing this performance, because only two actors and one ghost could keep you interesting and qurious about what wrong there or what will be happen!! the truth is, at the end of the first part you feel a little boring but please don't leave for the second part it is the best! at the second part you start understand the story!!! I would like to mention that, sometimes is a little bit scared........
I don't want to say something else, because it's better to see it!!!

Monday, 17 November 2008

Second Month of Pre- Sessional academic English

This month, I would like to continue my previous self-study, which are in collocations, grammar, vocabulary, watch DVD and TV programms in UK TV, pronunciation etc (all of my previous study they aren't on my blog, because I prefered to do it on paper, but now I don't have any other choice...). Furthermore, I would like to work on ''Preparing for further study: Reading'', because I need it and for my IELTS course!!

Also, I would like to use more the library than the previous month, ''Library resources for seminars/writing preparation, understanding plagiarism and referencing, listen to an online lecture etc., because it will be useful to find some books about our new assignment!

My plan is:

Every day to read an article (from the web page www.bbc.co.uk or from someone else online newspaper or if I found sth else which are interesting and relative with my first degree which is in Marketing). Then, to search on the library about our first essay and to decide which topic I want to write about!! Finally, my plan for this week about my self study is to understand plagiarism and referencing!!!

That's it, at the moment!!

I will inform you tomorrow, if I do sth or If I found sth useful!

Have a nice day!! CU

Sunday, 9 November 2008

I found sth intresting, on this web page http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/xyz.html, you can find phrases and what they mean!

This weekend, I read about Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling, from this site http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/index.html, it was very useful!!!
Generally, these sites from owl, are really good!

Wednesday, 5 November 2008

Today, I do my homework for tomorrow and now I want to write my findings for the report, which deadline it is on this Friday!!!

Tomorrow, I have to occupate with my blog and to upload my all self study until today!!!

Have a nice day!!!

CU tomorrow... :-)

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