evantanp2

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Overall reflection

To summarise, I felt that Portfolio 2 and FSD have been a great experience because I’ve learnt more about group collaboration especially working in a project with close friends. There were some conflicts for sure. Also adapting to Agile and Scrum framework that made submissions quite tight, juggling with other modules and projects at the same time. It was quite meaningful that we have chosen our project on ‘Smart Campus’. As we went along deeper into our face recognition project, we began to realise the full capability of our system and web page. If developed to the fullest, I am sure it does have the potential to inspire the integration of smart solutions to our everyday life.

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Week 16 (Final)

Yayyy finally we're approaching the end of this project. We've managed to implement most of what we've initially planned to do (however some functions were left out due to time constraints).

New function: To prevent students from tricking the system by showing an image of his friend to the system, we have implemented the 'blink' function that requires the student to blink once to get their attendance taken.

We also did our slides for our final presentation

This is the student’s homepage when he or she has logged in. The name and id will be shown as well as the attendance for the module. The chart that shows statistics that provides insight into a student’s attendance

All the information is pulled from our google sheets database

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Week 15 (Sprint 4 Week 1)

Its the start of a new sprint and we are feeling quite positive. We are trying to implement the drop-down list where lecturers can choose from the modules he/she are teaching and view the list of students under the module class. The search function is also working quite well where the list refreshes every time a student name or id has been entered.

 Meanwhile, we are still trying to finish the log-in student / staff credential security, session state and partial views for individual log-ins, boost the face recognition system performance and populate the student homepage with his/her individual attendance statistics

Meanwhile, we are still trying to improve our main program to prevent tricking the system

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Week 14

It’s the second week of sprint 3 and we have not really progressed. Currently, we are trying to retrieve each row and column of the students’ attendance from the google sheet to be displayed on the asp.net core web page, and then from there populate the graph (all these customized to the person logged in)

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Week 13

It’s been a long long break, with nothing done. But now, let us get started.

For Sprint 3, I am trying to retrieve json data from the google sheets attendance list that acts as our data UI for editing as well as backend database. The data will then be transformed and interpreted as graphs that displays insights into attendance of anyone. Next, the charts will be able to be filtered by students, classes or even those who’s attendance is so low, they might risk debarment. This then allows teachers to keep a lookout and notify them.

Main concern: Not enough time. with assignments pilling up, we are not confident in be able to complete all the tasks. Thus we aim to complete the simpler basics first such as making up simple useful graphs and designing the webpage to include useful functions.

We have also added new requirements and have updated our scrumboard (except the chart)

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Week 5 (Hackathon)

Jeez. Hackathon is finally over. These few days were a neutral experience for me. 27 days of totally focusing on our project, nothing else. This was difficult for me because it was intensive and shag. However, I am quite satisfied of going through the process because this would be how it is like in the IT profession, when working on a IT project. Our team had lots of difficulties on working on the project due to planning and technical errors

Difficulties:

1) The further we were into the project, the more requirements we discovered that could benefit our system, such as a online web-page that students and teachers can view their data and manipulate search filters to take attendance viewing to a more comprehensive level. (which was started on during the last day of the hackathon).

2) Because we could not identify enough requirements for each and every team members to work on, it was quite difficult to delegate jobs and thus, we could not utilize one another’s potential to the fullest. This contributed to a slowdown in projected progress in Sprint 2 (the hackathon)

Some progress:

1) Implemented a GUI for the user taking attendance to ease the procedure of using the system

2) Rough idea on extracting json data from google sheets into asp.net to build a webpage

3) Design of google sheets maintenance and organization (such as the fields necessary to extract and those identifiers for each attendance entry)

[evantanp2]

Week 4 (Sprint 1)

So the brains behind the face recognition development were hard at work and YAY! We managed to come up with something, although not a lot. What it does is it detects the facial points and structure of a person through the computer’s webcam and displays the name of the person if the facial data is found in our database. We decide to use firebase to store the data of the face records and names and the program is connected to the database. However for now, some stuff are still hardcoded to get a picture of how the system shall be done. Some modules imported are firebase library for python, open cv.

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Week 3 (Sprint Planning)

We started on our sprint planning on the scrum board and the online one called Trello. We wrote down several tasks to be done, wrote more user stories and sized them according to the time possible for us to complete them. We also finalized the inception deck this week. Tasks like finding the right environment to program in, setting up the database,

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Week 2 was quite interesting. We had the chance to start on our scrum board outside the ICT classrooms. It was wonderful as we finally took over the whiteboards that were previously used by our seniors to note their projects in the past. We quickly set up the board with user stories. We also prepared for our inception deck assignment which was to pitch our project idea according to the stages that we were taught.

Being part of a project that would last a few months would mean conflicts are bound to happen. Thus, conflict resolution and group development studies were shown to us to further understand how to take appropriate measures to counter disagreements.

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Portfolio 2 ------- The Prelude

In week 1, we had to choose our challenge statement. I chose ‘Smart Campus ‘because the topic is dynamic where I feel like we can best express our ideas and thoughts as it is very relatable to us students. For the week, we were just given a refresher on the Agile methods to prepare us for the next few months, as well as an overview of smart campus solutions in Singapore. 

My group comprised of 5 of my classmates. I look forward to working with them as this might be the last time we get to, before our internship next semester

[evantanp2]

Industry Engagement

Nature of the talk/seminar

1)    Echelon Asia Summit 2019 @ Singapore Expo

Echelon 2019 is essentially a platform for people to learn, discover and meet for opportunities to grow their business. This annual technology event takes place in countries across Asia. The event consists of 100+ exhibiting start-ups from Asia looking for collaboration and networking opportunities. This is the perfect ground for startups, investors and especially aspiring entrepreneurs like me to look at and discover the requirements and gaps that remain in our society, where technology can help to solve.

1)    IDEAS: Smart Nation Connect (by Singapore Computer Society)

As part of the nation’s initiative to push for technology advances to create technological solutions, The Singapore Computer Society hold this event to invite corporate and individuals to hear more about various IT projects that are currently in preparation. The informal networking and sharing session hope to bridge concerns and provide the opportunity to meet those challenges. The guest speakers were vivid in their presentation in how such the initiative is essential to the development of a SMART Nation and most importantly, the challenges that they face in the project.

Why I chose to attend

I have chosen to attend these two talks/seminars because they are medium-to-large scale events that are presented with many opportunities that could fulfill my curiosity and progress in the IT industry. I was fascinated to have the chance to witness the activeness of the entrepreneurs and enterprises of the industry in pushing their products into the market and the message they sent across through these engagements with the public.

My takeaways

At the events, I was able to satisfy my hunger on knowledge about various fields of Information Technology. Such as for Echelon 2019, I went around the ground and kept a lookout on booths that I was interested in. The booths that caught my attention were marvelous as I was fortunate enough to hear more from the experts who gave me a comprehensive understanding on what they are trying to achieve and how it works.

At the talk by the Singapore computer society, I was looking forward to this more as the brochure gave me a sneak peek on the respectable and renowned professionals who will be giving insights into the current and future understanding of a SMART home. The initiative consists of many projects that are taken up by various industrial experts who come together to solve real-world issues using technologies. The Q&A session with the professionals was amazing as individuals in the crowd started bombing probing questions to the speaker. My ears were wide open when the speakers answered so vividly to this question “How will this government project affect the commercial companies”.

Such opportunities are so precious as while the government and companies can implement this and that and claim to help the society to improve its functionality, in the long run, it is crucial for individuals to understand the risk and opportunities that comes along with it so as to best support the betterment of society.

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Service-Learning(S-L) Post Reflection

The specific outcome of this Service-Learning program is for us IT students to make good use of our IT skills learnt in life and apply them in solving real-world issues. In this case, by teaching a group of senior citizens the effective ways of utilizing a smartphone. This program also brings awareness to how the government is active and determined in promoting ‘Silver-IT’ and a “SMART-nation”, as well as allowing us students to have a personal experience with the elderly community.

The program was held at Radin Mas Community Centre in the month of April and May. There were many parties involved in supporting this wide-scale event, and distinguished guests who played a huge role in providing monetary resources to kick-start the event. Representatives from corporations like Huawei and Singtel were present and the Member of Parliament for Radin Mas was also there. Along with student volunteers and lecturers from Ngee Ann Polytechnic. It was then I felt really fortunate and happy that there are so many people who are willing to step out and support such initiatives to help those who are less fortunate and does not have the ease of access to technology.

What we did

This S-L consist of many sessions, where we only partook in two of which. The role I had in this event is to teach and guide the elderly to utilize the functions of their smartphones. The lesson plan was pre-designed to cater to covering the most crucial functions that an elderly can use. Each of us was assigned to a specific function and we would plan accordingly. The session would be like a lecture where a presenter is Infront presenting the slides and students would have a 1-to-1 interaction with the elderly to guide them and answer their doubts.

The elderly were split into the English-speaking and Chinese-speaking classes as this would cater to their individual lingual needs. Being born in a Chinese-speaking family, I felt obligated to help out at the Chinese-speaking class as they were lacking student helpers. However, I am not as proficient in explaining in Chinese especially technical terms like ‘operating systems’, than in my conversational skills. I could not risk and hope that my conversational skills would suffice as this would show that we students are unprofessional. So, the night before the first session, I took some time to look at the slides that my class has prepared. The presentation slides contain explanation and step-by-step instructions that were translated into both Chinese and English language.

In the midst of the lesson, I got a glimpse of my peers in the classroom and many of them were either laughing or smiling. The delight we got from the interaction with the elderly sure brought a grin to our faces. Everything seemed fun-filled and soon, I did not feel like I had a job to do. I was just enjoying every moment of it.

The elderly I was attached to was an elderly man in his 60s. He came along with his wife who was assigned to my friend behind me. He had smoky-grey hair with wrinkled creased skin. However, he was as energetic as if he was 22-year-old. At first, he was patient with my teaching. But halfway through the session, he wanted me to teach him only what he wanted to know, such as using the smartphone to answer calls, reply texts and phone configurations. To my surprise, he was not interested in other functions like apps such as WhatsApp or the Internet Explorer. The most amusing thing that happened was towards the end of the session. What he did was he whipped out his flip-phone and said: “This is so much simpler than what you’re teaching me now”. I was a little bit turned off at the moment as the lesson has gone on for about 2 hours now but in the end, he was not interested. The way he expressed himself was very calm and peaceful. As he showed me how he would call with his flip-phone, it indeed seemed much simpler than calling with a smartphone. Honestly, I was very impressed as the user interface seemed more simple and friendly than an average smartphone. Functions, like messaging others and saving people’s contacts, were also much faster and simpler. That was then I had to agree with him that his flip-phone was much simpler and more optimized for usage of most elderly. It was then I have accepted the fact that not every elderly would be interested in using a smartphone and sometimes the smartphone seems too complex for the elderly to want to use it.

 Academic Learning

As student helpers in this Service-Learning, there are a certain degree of skill and sets of skills that are required to successfully execute our plan to teach the elderly. Some skills that I feel are mandatory includes interpersonal skills, digital literacy and the ability to manage diversity. These are skills that are essential to fulfill the technical nature of this event, which is having knowledge of technology and specifically the use of a smartphone. The event is also catered to the ‘elderly’ age group, specifically those that belong to a low-income household. Some topics are more sensitive to the elderly, such as children and their financial status. Due to the large age difference, there will be age gaps and thus we have to avoid saying or doing things that may make them label you as ‘unprofessional’ or ‘rude’. This is where interpersonal skills come in place. I feel that our role is primarily to teach the elderly how to use a smartphone and secondarily to promote the importance of Information Technology in our lives. Areas of IT such as e-payment, information confidentiality, and crime-prevention affect almost all of us in Singapore. I used all this information learnt in school to educate them and bring awareness to IT vulnerabilities so that they can be safe when using social media services or e-commerce applications. For example, I taught them how we can identify risky websites that can steal personal information.

 The senior citizens have generally learnt what I intended to teach. Although there was a lesson plan that includes topics like shopping online (which involves connecting their bank account) and setting internet-banking apps like Paylah!, I was still very concern with the elderly having too much access to their money. This is my personal concern as there have been a handful of senior citizens who have been scammed of large amounts of money as they were unaware of how IT can be manipulated to exploit monetary and sexual gains from its victims. However, I did ask the elderly I was teaching whether she would like to learn all these things. She refused with an astounding ‘NO!’ as she was also aware of the danger that e-payment brings. The senior did learn the more important things like downloading applications onto the phone and how to manage their mobile data. I made sure the elderly would remember what I taught her by reiterating my points and after demonstrating a function, I would ask her to do the same action to use the functionalities.

If I were to rate on how well I have applied my skills to teaching the elderly, I would gladly give it an 8/10. Initially, I chose to study IT as the aspects of it is extremely dynamic and it appeals to me. In my daily life, I picked up very important life-skills that cannot be learnt from normal lectures in the classroom. These skills would be essential in the working industry.  I was able to solve all of the problems that the senior citizen had. I also included in my teaching what could potentially improve their usage of smartphones. I focused mainly on security, like how public Wi-Fi hotspots can steal information unknowingly and how to set strong passwords for their phones and accounts. Overall, I felt that the senior I taught had learnt a lot as I could infer that her knowledge on the smartphone was getting stronger every minute as she was soon giving examples and small details to her questions. Although I did not follow the lesson plan exactly, I was still able to cover other topics that I had.

 Personal growth (Particularly in gratitude)

During the experience, I felt hopeful and fulfilled. It is amazing to know that you have the potential to drastically improve the lives of the senior citizens though tech-enabled solutions. Despite the fact that they may not find the teaching helpful, hosting of such an event will promote the message that technology does not exclude anyone because even the less-privileged has the rights and opportunity to gain access to common technologies like a smartphone. Previously, I have assumed that technology can help everyone to make their life easier and interesting by giving them information on everything available. I have never really considered the harm and disadvantages that technology can bring to its victims when used by people with bad intentions. My general perception and stereotype on the elderly remained the same. Not all elderly will be versatile enough to switch from their traditional flip phone to an advanced smartphone. However, most of them are receptive to exploring technology to increase their standards of living.

Through this service, I have learnt the most important value from them, life-long learning. Firstly, I was quite shocked to see the number of senior participants who attended the sessions. This proved that they were kin to come down and learn something that is so foreign to them. I was genuinely impressed by how participative the seniors were during the 1-to-1 session. Their questions were in-depth and I almost couldn’t keep up with their enthusiasm. If I were in their position, I would probably be satisfied with my life and would not attend such an enrichment programme. Thus, I really admire how hungry-for-knowledge the seniors were throughout the whole event.

 Gratitude

To me, gratitude is a value I hold very dear to my heart. It is how we appreciate what is given to us and hopefully, we are able to give back and share the joy from it. In this case, I am firstly thankful to my lecturers and peers. Without them, this Service-Learning would not have taken place and us student would not have been able to learn so much. Most importantly, I want to thank the organizers who were so generous. Huawei sponsoring tens of thousands of dollar worth of smartphones and Singtel coming down to provide free SIM-cards to the elderly. In an increasingly competitive society, it is becoming more difficult to have the heart to contribute especially in terms of money and actions. I am also grateful to the seniors who participated so actively and try their best to learn as much as they can.

 I think someone can show more gratitude through 3 different ways. First, a word of praise. To be thankful to someone for being positive or helpful by saying “Hi, I think you did very well today and I’m proud of you!” Words may be simple but a single praise can make someone’s day. Second, through actions. We can impact someone the most by showing our appreciation to them. Showing gratitude is not necessary through the mean of rewarding them. It can be as simple as bringing food from the snacks station to the elderly so they do not have to travel much if not convenient. Then thank them for coming today. Such small actions may even make an impact on someone’s lives forever. Third, I feel that this is where gratitude starts from. To mentally acknowledge those who helped you. Even if you are too shy to show appreciation, knowing that the person did a good thing for you is as good. The first step to solving a problem is to identify it. This can be shown by how I was helped by many strangers before. Although I could not show my appreciation as much, I can carry forward the gratitude and help more in need.

In my personal life, I can show the same gratefulness to my friends, family or even colleagues. Things like working hard in life to make my parents proud for working so hard to provide for my 3 other siblings and I. Thanking my friends for patiently guiding me in my academics when I needed it. The most grateful person I know is definitely my mother as well as other parents out there. Our parents had to invest so much time, effort and money to raise us and they never ask for any rewards for it. They view us as a gift in their lives and not a burden. They show so much thankfulness and gratitude for having us that they can selflessly slave their lives away in a 9 to 5 job for half of their lives, all to nurture us.

 I feel that Ngee Ann Poly is not doing a good job in teaching the value of gratitude to the students. There are almost no events or platform for students to show our gratitude or to still gratitude. Even if there are, the information is sent to our email which is often ignored. The culture is to the extent where teachers and students would not even know one another’s name by the end of the term. Ngee Ann Poly can teach the value by simply introducing platforms that allow students to show their appreciation to teachers. Such as booths set up by volunteers where students passing by can write a small note with positive messages to the specific teachers. This can also be done by making it mandatory for a session between the student mentor and the students. However, I feel that being grateful to others is not as easily instilled into students. It requires constant visible efforts to develop the culture of appreciating and giving back.

 Civic Learning

From the seniors’ sharing of their life stories, I learnt more about the thoughts of the elderly in Singapore. In the sense of their daily needs and activities and how they spend most of their time. I also learnt to be a good listening ear as some of us may not be as interested in listening to what they have to say about their past but we have to understand that they share their personal experiences with us because they want us to learn to not take things for granted.

 I feel that the venue, Radin Mas Community Centre was a perfect place to hold the Service-Learning due to the abundant facilities and it is located near the residential areas. Fortunately, due to much support from the government and society, such an event was able to run smoothly. The background-end of the entire event was very smooth which brought ease to the execution on the actual day, thanks to the volunteers and staffs at Radin Mas CC. Events like this are the perfect opportunities like elderly and families can gather and spend their weekends wisely, through fun-filled and enriching activities.

  Conclusion

As a result of completing this reflection, I learnt that we should all be grateful for what we have and what is given to us. Hearing life stories of seniors who reflected on how when they were our age, they had nothing no technology at all for entertainment purposes. This really reminded me to not take what is given to us for granted. This matters a lot as it is the most important thing society needs to develop to achieve peace and graciousness. In the future, I hope to be able to look into more events like this that helps enrich the lives of others and maybe participate as volunteers so as to see the smile on the faces of people you’ve helped once again.

[evantanp2]

Service-Learning Pre-reflection

Background info: 

As part of the ‘Silver IT’, ‘Smart Nation’ and ‘Digital Readiness’ initiation from the government, the Ministry of Communications and Information (MCI) & IMDA have partnered The People's Association to launch the Digital Access Pilot programme at Radin Mas Community Centre.

This programme’s purpose is to 

- Study the digital needs of low-income elderly

- Encourage this group of elderly to embrace and benefit from Technology 

The programme’s plan includes giving out a package that includes a smartphone and a one-year subscription of a pre-paid sim card, which are sponsored by Singtel and Huawei.

The beneficiaries of this service-learning project are mostly low-income elderly who live around MacPherson and Radin Mas. These elderly have previously signed up and were chosen from a list of registrants to receive the ‘Digital’ package. 

My perception

Our responsibility in this project is to assist the volunteers at Radin Mas CC and facilitate a lesson plan that the elderly will attend. This lesson plan is devised by us students of Ngee Ann to explain the features and functions of the new phone to the elderly. By getting them to better understand such technology, they can then fully utilize the smartphone and connect themselves with the digital world. 

My opinion on the Service-Learning beneficiaries is that I really appreciate the elderly coming down to register and partake in such a program that they are so unfamiliar with. Most of them have lived their lives without information technology and suddenly they decided to take up this challenge of learning something new that can better their lives.

Luckily for me, I have experienced something similar to this. It was about 6 months ago where I volunteered to be a student helper at Thiong Bahru Community Centre to teach the elderly how to better use their existing mobile phones as well as solve their technological problems. The program lasted about 2 hours. It was split into Chinese and English classes according to the participants’ needs. As they were lacking helpers in the Chinese class, I felt obliged to help out there instead due to me speaking Chinese at home, although my Chinese vocabulary was limited. There were some moments of hiccups where I was not able to smoothly deliver my instructions to the individual elderly but I still managed to get it done by using simpler terms.

From this experience, I learned that these group of elderly in Singapore are really participative as they were really enthusiastic and patient when listening to my explanation. They also kept asking me probing questions so I was quite busy then, running from row to row to help out different elderly with their individual needs. Then, I felt really helpful and fortunate to be able to solve their problems. By doing all this, they can then better utilize technology to empower their lives with ease of access to information.

I feel that getting to go through such an experience again at a different place with different people (this time), is really a bliss for me. I really look forward to the main event on that day at Radin Mas as I now know better what to expect and most importantly how to help such a group of elderly. I also hope that with my prior experience in teaching a large group of elderly with technology, I can apply what I’ve learnt to further enrich this FP2 project.

[evantanp2]

IT01 :) See ya tomorrow

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CONCLUSION

TO FIND OUT MORE, VISIT US TODAY AT NGEE ANN POLY (BLOCK 22) LEVEL 5 FROM 4-6PM !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SEE YA THERE JAKE PAULERS

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Conclusion 

Here’s a snippet of our final prototype.

What it does is it

ENCODING

- Captures one image of an individual

- Analyzes it’s 128 nodal points to retrieve information of for say the depth of a person’s nose

- Stores the data locally

DETECTION

- Capture one image of an individual

- Matches the detected face with previous locally stored faces (in the encoding phase)

- Returns an error or a success message

HOWEVER

We scrapped the GUI (user interface) as it was complicated the program code and too bad it’s not able to be captured by a 360 degrees camera mmmm @attend360

[evantanp2]

[30 January 2019, 4.13pm]

A sense of accomplishment overwhelms our dog-tired body, granting us with the last straw of energy that pushes us to complete this assignment.