Date: 29th July
Venue: common room
attendents: Alam, Iris, Jessica Wan, June, Lucia, Nicol, and Wen Yu.
Chairperson: June
Topic: Alam's experience in conference
First of all, many thanks for everyone's contributions to this meeting!! Even in summer holiday, our seven group members are still coming for our meeting although I know each person has their difficulties to make it.
Alam's experience:
1. the fifth Pan-Commonwealth forum on Opening Learning in London. It is a conference to explore how open and distance learning can help achieve international development goals and education for all.
2. The preparation for conference:
submit the abstract six months earlier;
submit the paper three months earlier;
revise the paper and abstract while receiving reviewer's feedback
inform supervisor before attending the conference
3. Alam's role in conference:
be aware of the issues emerged in different sessions, and then do the summaries and recommendations for education policy based on conference, and finally implement in own country.
After conference, Alam was invited to Paris's UNESCO.
4. The information or source of conference (how to choose the suitable conferences to attend?)
asking supervisor for advised conferences;
conferences alert in Internet;
check the key speakers in conference.
We are so happy to receive Alam's souvenir: Bookmarks and cute ballpoint pens with Eiffel sign, Many thanks for Alam's considerations!!
The next meeting is finally considered, and we are looking forward to hearing from Jessica Deng to see if our trip in Guangzhou is still being arranged. 15th and 16th August are our preference.
Have a enjoyable summer holiday!
Best,
June
2008年7月29日星期二
report on our super writer meeting this week
Dear super writers,
I am very glad to report our meeting this week.
Date: 8th July
Venue: common room
attendents: Wen Yu, June, Issa, Jessica Deng, Iris and Alam
Chairperson: Jesscia (Chunrao)
Topic: how to prepare for the comfirmation seminar (Experience sharing by June)
Main ideas from June's sharing:
1.Try to convince the panel that you have solid knowledge in your field, a good
literature review and methodology. But do not be too defensive in the panel meeting.
2. Some questions in the panel meeting could be very challenging. These are questions you might need to prepare before the meeting, such as questions related to your RQs, your framework, the rational of your study, and research methodology.
3.Don't feel bad if you feel you are not "ready" because nothing is perfect. It's very normal that people never feel "ready" and the time they have to face the problem is the deadline. "Deadline" is the time that things are ready.
4.It is a good idea to record the conversation in the panel meeting and the presentation because these are the perfect times for you to invite comments from the people who are not your own supervisor. It is a free consultation. Also, the panel will feel good when you regard their comments very seriously.
5.Panel members might not have time to read your materials very carefully in advance, so your introduction chapter is very important. Try to impress them at their beginning stage of reading your materials. A good introduction chapter leads to good impression.
6.For upgrading seminar (for Mphil students), it is a good idea to write a progress
report (something like cover letter in your materials) to save the panel's time. In the report, show them the things you have done since the comfirmation, your main achievment and progress, etc. This report should not be too long, about 2 or 3 pages would be OK.
Other things we discussed:
1.we suggest that we can share our draft in our meeting. Jessica is willing to share her accepted abstract for a Journal article next time. Every one is welcome to share his/her writing of any kind in our meetings in the future. But we want to make it clear that no one should send the drafts to anybody to avoid the problem of plagiarism.
2. The super writer meeting will be stopped for two weeks because of the summer holiday. The next meeting will be on 29th July.
3.Jessica invites people to her house in August. All are welcome. We want to know your opinions on date, activities, how to go there, etc.
Date:9th-10th August or 16th-17th August (please pick one)
Activities: foot massage, spa, shopping, sports, going to the park (swimming, badminton, PingPong)...(if you have any other suggestions, please write to Jessica) Please tell Jessica if you will go so that she can know how many people will be there.
Thank you for June's sharing in this meeting. Looking forward to seeing you in the next meeting.
Best regards,
Jessica Deng
I am very glad to report our meeting this week.
Date: 8th July
Venue: common room
attendents: Wen Yu, June, Issa, Jessica Deng, Iris and Alam
Chairperson: Jesscia (Chunrao)
Topic: how to prepare for the comfirmation seminar (Experience sharing by June)
Main ideas from June's sharing:
1.Try to convince the panel that you have solid knowledge in your field, a good
literature review and methodology. But do not be too defensive in the panel meeting.
2. Some questions in the panel meeting could be very challenging. These are questions you might need to prepare before the meeting, such as questions related to your RQs, your framework, the rational of your study, and research methodology.
3.Don't feel bad if you feel you are not "ready" because nothing is perfect. It's very normal that people never feel "ready" and the time they have to face the problem is the deadline. "Deadline" is the time that things are ready.
4.It is a good idea to record the conversation in the panel meeting and the presentation because these are the perfect times for you to invite comments from the people who are not your own supervisor. It is a free consultation. Also, the panel will feel good when you regard their comments very seriously.
5.Panel members might not have time to read your materials very carefully in advance, so your introduction chapter is very important. Try to impress them at their beginning stage of reading your materials. A good introduction chapter leads to good impression.
6.For upgrading seminar (for Mphil students), it is a good idea to write a progress
report (something like cover letter in your materials) to save the panel's time. In the report, show them the things you have done since the comfirmation, your main achievment and progress, etc. This report should not be too long, about 2 or 3 pages would be OK.
Other things we discussed:
1.we suggest that we can share our draft in our meeting. Jessica is willing to share her accepted abstract for a Journal article next time. Every one is welcome to share his/her writing of any kind in our meetings in the future. But we want to make it clear that no one should send the drafts to anybody to avoid the problem of plagiarism.
2. The super writer meeting will be stopped for two weeks because of the summer holiday. The next meeting will be on 29th July.
3.Jessica invites people to her house in August. All are welcome. We want to know your opinions on date, activities, how to go there, etc.
Date:9th-10th August or 16th-17th August (please pick one)
Activities: foot massage, spa, shopping, sports, going to the park (swimming, badminton, PingPong)...(if you have any other suggestions, please write to Jessica) Please tell Jessica if you will go so that she can know how many people will be there.
Thank you for June's sharing in this meeting. Looking forward to seeing you in the next meeting.
Best regards,
Jessica Deng
2008年7月28日星期一
Report on our 1st annual conference :)
I am very glad to report that we held the First "Annual" Super Writers Conference in Shenzhen in the past Monday & Tuesday, which was a very successful and happy event. The attendants include: Alam, Chun-Rao (Jessica), Dan-Jun (Issa), JinJun, Ming-Xia (Rina), Wang Xiang (Iris), Wen-Yu (Catherin) and Xiu-Li (Shirley). Some members of Super Writers who could not attend this conference sent their greetings, Lucia also sent a bouquet of gorgeous flowers We were also honoured to have two special guests: Wen-Yu's husband, Mr. Xian Niu and Xiang's husband, Mr. Wen Yi. The conference schedule was as follows:
Monday, 30-June-2008
14:30-15:00 Registion
15:00-16:00 Super Writers Meeting
16:00-17:30 Tea Break
18:00-19:40 Dinner
20:00-23:30 Entertainment: Karaoke
Tuesday, 1-July-2008
01:30-9:30 / 10:00/11:30 Sleep (Although many people had to sleep on sofa or hard bed or even floor, nobody seemed to have any complaint :P On the contrary, somebody felt secretely excited that they had chance to see other fellow students in their pyjamas and evening gowns :P)
Excursion & Entertainment
Route 1: Alam, Jun & Rina: China Folk Culture Villege Park, CoCo Park
Route 2: Local food, shopping at Zero-One
Route 3: Hair Saloon
Route 4: Foot Massage
Now, let me, the chairperson of this Super Writers' Meeting report the content of our discussions in the meeting.
In the first half of the meeting, Issa, who just returned from Holland, shared her
experiences about how to apply for the scholarship of studying abroad. The key points include:
1. Obtain the HKU supervisor's approval and support first of all. Try to convince your supervisor that this experience is relevant to and valuable to your current research.
2. Do some research about the local supervisors in the target universities. Learn about their academic interest and their key publications.
3. Correspondance with the local supervisors (one by one). The 1st email is of vital importance, in which we should briefly explain who we are, what our research interest / area is, why we want him / her to be our supervisor, what we are proposing to do if we go there. We should show our respect to him / her while at the same time not exaggerating the compliment too much. We may also attach a detailed proposal to the 1st email.
4. Once the local supervisor responds to our 1st email and shows interest in us, we can have further discussion with him / her about the arrangement, e.g. we can ask what he / she expect from us.All these things need to be done in a quite short period of time, say, 3 weeks. So we may need to prepare our profiles, CV, proposal etc. at usual time.
In short, it involves a lot of hard work, as Issa said, the application process itself is a very valuable learning process.
Jessica has very successfully completed her MPhil confirmation presentation and PhD upgrading presentation. So with our invitation, she shared with us her experiences and observation concerning how to manage the panel committee and how to make give effective presentation.
First of all, Jessica suggested that the panel committee is there to help us, so in the panel meeting, we should not be too defensive to their questions and challenges. If we do not understand their questions, don't feel bad or pretend that we know the answers. Giving a bad anwer is worse than no answer. We can regard the panel meeting as a learning opportunity so we can even ask the panel members questions and for their suggestions.
As for the presentation, Jessica mentioned the following tips:
1. Rehearsal is very important.
2. Prepare a PPT or other visul aids to help the comprehension of audience. Reading from the paper only is not a good idea.
3. Be careful with the format and layout of the PPT. Make it academic. It is not good practice to change the template for every slide.
4. Be interactive and communicative with the audience. Pay attention to our posture, gesture, and facial experessions. For example, have constant eye contact with the
audience; do not make face while giving presentation.
5. Pay attention to our language. Do not use certain expressions repeatedly; change the wording from time to time.
6. In Q&A session, keep the answer concisely.
Finally, Jessica concluded that many of the tips seem to be common sense that everybody should know, but in fact, many people still make these simple mistakes. We need to be fully aware of these points and improve our presentation skills consistently from
practice.
If you feel that I missed something here, which I am sure that I did, or if you want to add anything else or any comments, you are more than welcome to do so :)
Thank you very much for reading this long report! Have a good weekend :)
Best,
Xiang / Iris
Monday, 30-June-2008
14:30-15:00 Registion
15:00-16:00 Super Writers Meeting
16:00-17:30 Tea Break
18:00-19:40 Dinner
20:00-23:30 Entertainment: Karaoke
Tuesday, 1-July-2008
01:30-9:30 / 10:00/11:30 Sleep (Although many people had to sleep on sofa or hard bed or even floor, nobody seemed to have any complaint :P On the contrary, somebody felt secretely excited that they had chance to see other fellow students in their pyjamas and evening gowns :P)
Excursion & Entertainment
Route 1: Alam, Jun & Rina: China Folk Culture Villege Park, CoCo Park
Route 2: Local food, shopping at Zero-One
Route 3: Hair Saloon
Route 4: Foot Massage
Now, let me, the chairperson of this Super Writers' Meeting report the content of our discussions in the meeting.
In the first half of the meeting, Issa, who just returned from Holland, shared her
experiences about how to apply for the scholarship of studying abroad. The key points include:
1. Obtain the HKU supervisor's approval and support first of all. Try to convince your supervisor that this experience is relevant to and valuable to your current research.
2. Do some research about the local supervisors in the target universities. Learn about their academic interest and their key publications.
3. Correspondance with the local supervisors (one by one). The 1st email is of vital importance, in which we should briefly explain who we are, what our research interest / area is, why we want him / her to be our supervisor, what we are proposing to do if we go there. We should show our respect to him / her while at the same time not exaggerating the compliment too much. We may also attach a detailed proposal to the 1st email.
4. Once the local supervisor responds to our 1st email and shows interest in us, we can have further discussion with him / her about the arrangement, e.g. we can ask what he / she expect from us.All these things need to be done in a quite short period of time, say, 3 weeks. So we may need to prepare our profiles, CV, proposal etc. at usual time.
In short, it involves a lot of hard work, as Issa said, the application process itself is a very valuable learning process.
Jessica has very successfully completed her MPhil confirmation presentation and PhD upgrading presentation. So with our invitation, she shared with us her experiences and observation concerning how to manage the panel committee and how to make give effective presentation.
First of all, Jessica suggested that the panel committee is there to help us, so in the panel meeting, we should not be too defensive to their questions and challenges. If we do not understand their questions, don't feel bad or pretend that we know the answers. Giving a bad anwer is worse than no answer. We can regard the panel meeting as a learning opportunity so we can even ask the panel members questions and for their suggestions.
As for the presentation, Jessica mentioned the following tips:
1. Rehearsal is very important.
2. Prepare a PPT or other visul aids to help the comprehension of audience. Reading from the paper only is not a good idea.
3. Be careful with the format and layout of the PPT. Make it academic. It is not good practice to change the template for every slide.
4. Be interactive and communicative with the audience. Pay attention to our posture, gesture, and facial experessions. For example, have constant eye contact with the
audience; do not make face while giving presentation.
5. Pay attention to our language. Do not use certain expressions repeatedly; change the wording from time to time.
6. In Q&A session, keep the answer concisely.
Finally, Jessica concluded that many of the tips seem to be common sense that everybody should know, but in fact, many people still make these simple mistakes. We need to be fully aware of these points and improve our presentation skills consistently from
practice.
If you feel that I missed something here, which I am sure that I did, or if you want to add anything else or any comments, you are more than welcome to do so :)
Thank you very much for reading this long report! Have a good weekend :)
Best,
Xiang / Iris
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