Thailand--a hot land

    My last term in UofA is almost done here. I am so excited to my upcoming life and feeling a little bit sad to be leaving Canada soon. One of my favorite things is to start planning for trips with friends after I graduate.


    I still remember the summer which with the most unforgettable time spent with my best friends in Thailand. Which is a truly beautiful country and located at the southeast of Asia.
Thailand is well know for its tropical and humid climate. But hot and rainy were the major impression I got from Thailand. I didn’t bring too much clothes along. So, I did go to the popular Weekend Market in Bangkok to buy myself some traditional dresses. It was so hot outside, I can’t help to wait putting the new dresses on. I saw some local students wearing school dresses singing in the sun for a donation, that was really fun and reminded me of myself when I was their age. I went to a spot which is called Floating Market, appears in some movies, it was very cool to be able to visit places that were in movies! You can just sitt in a boat and the boatman will drive you to the market where you can buy fruits,frames, handiworks, and there are nice views on the river bank.

Also, we went to Pattaya at the next day, which is a beach town, there are bars, hotels, tattoos all along the street. I would also recommend you should go to see a Ladyboy Show in the night.
   Traveling with my best friends always leave me with some beautiful memory.


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Google Docs--Open Peer Review

Created a new private google docs was one of my assignments from ALES204. Google Docs is a wed based data storage service which is provided by google, we are supposed to share a document with other people and all we can edit it in the meanwhile. I did not really know this interesting web tool, and others such as Linkedin and Audioboo so on, until I learned them from ALES 204.


For my first google docs assignment, we need to discuss what is open peer review. I would like to share some information about open peer review on my blog, and then more people are able to read it. As we know that publishers have played important roles in academic communication due to the fact that academic journals are mainly issued by publishers, while being reviewed by professionals within the field. Open peer review compared to the traditional single blind and double blind peer review models has emerged recently, in which way both authors and editors show their names to each others. Open peer review is usually considered as a transparent and open scientific peer review process. Traditionally, the process of peer view is long and cumbersome. Only few articles could be accepted and many splendid articles never come to light because of the relentless competition to publish, also, editors` bias may impact publish possibility. Thus, features, such as transparency and openness, of open peer review are required for every steps of journal publishing.


However, it is worth saying that traditional review process provides a high standard to maintain article quality. As more articles can be published through many different manners, open access is one of modern publishing ways. Therefore, peer review is an important process to ensure the quality, credibility, accuracy and precise of academic articles. Open peer review provides a possible of efficiency communication between authors and editors compared anonymous peer review. Whereas, whether reviewers are professional and expert in the given fields of studies is a common problem concerned for open peer review.

Wikipedia Article

 As always, I can have a lot of new experiences from ALES204 class. for this assignment we are able to become a Wikipedia editor to update or create a stub. This was my first time to become a Wikipedia author and felt quite interesting. Be honest this assignment was a little bit confused me because I thought people who can edit Wikipedia must be knowledgable and professional but not anyone. I got some help from our classmate Junchao Zhang who updated a quite interesting article about Parboiled rice. Although I am using Wikipedia almost everyday to search what I want to know, it was the first time I knew that Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia based on online collaborative editing. Also, I was very surprised to how easy to edit it.

Since we have to post an own article on Wikipedia and shows to everyone, I think it is better to choose a topic form our studying field. I decided to write about CWD(Chronic wasting disease) due to I have done some research and data analysis on this subject this year. CWD is a prion disease, also known as a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) that affects free-range wildlife. It is found in mule and white tail deer, Rocky Mountain Elk and moose. As another animal diseases, CWD is concerned as food risk in our lives sometime. I find that some background about CWD have been update on the Wikipedia, thus I put three paragraphs about food safety concern on CWD this time. 

Although I believe that most editors are responsible to their uploaded materials, I still don`t think it is a good idea to use Wikipedia resources as a reference in your academic works, because I see how easy anyone can rewrite the contents. However, I found that the following references are really good resources that we can use as bibliography.

New Professional Facebook Page!!

Hi, guys! How are you doing?  I have my own professional Facebook page now.  Please come and visit. Facebook used to be a social media through which I simply talked to friends and to have fun. I never realized that Facebook can further my career as an e-resume, even though I use it every day. Since taking ALES 204, I got to know much more about social media websites, including Facebook, making them more understandable for me and therefore more interesting. I created my Facebook page as my resume to allow more people to search my name, read my profile and get to know me better.

I know currently some employers would prefer to read applicants` Facebook profiles rather than hardcopy resumes because they provide more complete information of the applicants. I edited my personal information to include what I did starting when I was born up till now on my Facebook page, as well as my education information and so on. Now people can search my name on Google if they are interested in me, and my Facebook page will be the first link to show up. I get the feeling that I am a celebrity now. It is a good opportunity that my potential employers are able to find me through Google by searching my name. I believe my Facebook page would answer some questions about me for him or her.

Here is my Facebook page link:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Zhe-Chen/179669385441721?sk=info

and, I upload screen shot on Flickr：http://www.flickr.com/photos/avawawa/6183860000/

it`s Me！

Hi, guys. My name is Zhe Chen, I`m a Chinese girl. I`m currently a fourth year undergraduate student and this is my second year at the U of A. My major here is Forestry Business Management.J I transferred from the ZheJiang Forestry University in China at 2 years ago, and I have finished my first degree there, that was Forestry. If everything goes as my schedule, I will graduate at this December.

Communication plays a very important role in my life, since I`m an international student, my english is not so good right now. So I prefer to face-to-face communication with my Canadian friends, because I can understand them much better than we have a conversation on the phone. Also, some online social media like msn, email, skype, facebook, twitter …are very important to me as well, I use them daily to contact with my friends and family who are in the other countries. In forestry field, I think academic communication is necessary and important, have a personal blog is a good way to have “e-talk” with other people. Further more, I usually search news and articles from science journals and the Internet to update my information. I hope I can learn more communication skills from ALES 204 class!