How to take notes from the text book?

I must confess, I don't have a great memory, reading books no problems but recalling is a very difficult task. Despite reading few titles, its not an easy task to recall a single passge during presentation or discussion. Now, I'm doing some research, if there is a way or process to keep a track.
great article on tacking notes

Recommended, to write down the title, author, and page number and then a summary of whatever key message.
http://notesaboutnotes.com: A website with general suggestions.
Useful article on http://www.wikihow.com/Take-Notes-for-a-%22Chapter-Book%22--Book-Report
I came across this great website while browsing sites

Characteristics of Critical Thinkers //from http://www.studygs.net/crtread.htm//

• They are honest with themselves
• They resist manipulation
• They overcome confusion
• They ask questions
• They base judgments on evidence
• They look for connections between subjects
• They are intellectually independent

THE PROJECT WITH NO NAME

Introduction
This project invites you to engage directly with the marketplace, bypassing or seducing its gatekeepers, to achieve a profitable intervention in the creative economy.

Brief
Despite the smell of fear induced by recession and fears of recession, we live in a culture with an appetite for novelty. This project invites your team to conceive, create, promote and sell a completely new product or service. There are no restrictions on the nature of the offer itself, beyond the need to adhere to the law of the land (nothing, for example, dangerous, fraudulent, or copyright infringing). Your product may be something tangible, it may be a service or event, or a virtual product. But whatever your product is, it must represent both innovation and application skills that allow it to connect with a commercial framework.

Exhibition Planet ME

It was a fun days after days of research, most of us had a very good feedback. Some of us showcased interactive artifact.

Here is the manual of my artificate:
Metaphor: Planting ideas -- A seed is planted in my mind which I nurture with water and sun in the faith that it will sprout and grow

Details: The polished spherical pot is made of white cement, clay and set with marble chips. White cement is suitable for production of attractive and durable visual concrete. Marble and cement rely on each other in order to sustain. The pot can grow flowers, vegetable or just lie there. Unless seeds are planted nothing can grow. Also these seeds can change over time and behave differently in different weather.
I relate the pot to my mind (the pot is my mind). Everything else is immaterial i.e. the body can take any shape. The process of thinking and breathing becomes synonymous. The walls are porous- which is a feature. When the wall dies, so do I, the walls do not symbolize a closed in feature. The walls are hidden within the pot itself: inside of the walls. The roughness of the sphere can be similar to the walls of the mind. The sphere isn’t empty and has great ideas to generate. The pot is made of cement, clay and marble stone (for example), which mean over time it ages and eventually breaks, but the walls of the pot can be made of any material.
The brain cells help us relate to our surroundings and other people. When the sphere is closed, anything that comes from the pot needs to have been grown from the pot; therefore, my actions are a consequence of my thought process.
The pot has a hard surface that define me a person of strong character, a person of integrity, dignity, who is also honest, fair, positive and hard working. It shows a set of thoughts, actions, reactions and feelings. Having a strong character mean I’m responsible, family oriented, good citizen who concerned for the community and care for earth or Gaia, who have been involved in campaign in saving Gaia, our Mother Earth in Singapore.

There are stones or marble chips placed on the sphere; some are more visible than others, which show the direction of my actions and thoughts. According to known author Prof. Dr. Klaus Grawe, the neural structure that develop within individual therefore, mirror the individual’s cultural, societal, and familial context. The marble stones are all over the planet and this represent my ideas and knowledge to share with the world by travelling to different parts of the world. This is also solidify my interest in cross cultural design, to look for an opportunity to learn different cultures, customs and values and the impact of cross cultural design on businesses and strategic business decisions.

Acknowledgment and reference:
Klaus Grawe. Neuropsychotherapy
Betty Edwards. Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. HarperCollins Publishers, 2001
Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson http://www.cleanlanguage.co.uk/LearningMetaphors.html

Visited London graduate fair

I have been struggling to find a part-time jobs and came to know the website "http://www.gradjobs.co.uk". The website's slogan "The UK hottest job" is self explanatory. I registered and attended the fair this afternoon. The fair was flooded with people from all over the UK but very few companies :( and there wasn't any part-time jobs for me, daMN!!!. It wasn't a fruitful journey since I was interested only in part time jobs. Contact Singapore booth attracted most people and I felt kind of proud of being a Singaporean (I must say a Pakistani born) after hearing hell of great comments/view about Singapore, though most people shared common view about Singapore law -- perceived to be harsh.

Barbican Tube Station station Inside the exhibition hall

nearby buildings

a narrow road to exhibition hall

Project 4 - PLANET ME

Introduction
Its about self discovery and giving dimension and access to the process of self-analysis.
The project was handed over on Feb 18 and will be exhibited on Monday 9th March and will be reviewed by peers and tutors.

Brief [key points]
I. Clarify who you believe that you are, who you like to be by creating your own planet
II. Planet should take the form of an artifact.
III. Should not exceed .75m in any dimension.
IV. Sustain life and therefore evolution.
V. A brief manual
VI. A metaphor.

Our Presentation on March 4 - Life Changing Experince

We choose nostalgia and use multisensory approach to change or at least try to give our target audience a life changing experience. We used three senses--smell.sight. touch. to create thought provoking nostalgia.

How
We used, pencil sharpening, soap and vicks vapor rub, all are linked to childhood from visiting your grandmothers house, to drawing at school, to being at home in bed with a cold whilst your mother looks after you.
Three of us, Trish, Carla, and David went to Brick Lane to experiment with group of people. It was very interesting as some of target audience, indeed recalled their childhood.

Reading
I was reading Unmasking the face by Paul Ekman and many online articles on facial expressions and their universal ability to communicate, Smells, nostalgic smells, etc.

Video
David compiled couple of videos of their experiment. Videos were much relevant to our research and presentation and left a great impact on audience

Metaphor: To discover the child within
People are simply referring back to a specific point in their life, not necessarily childhood.

Final Presentation Structure
What is nostalgia? //run slides on screen, while simplifying nostalgia
Video
Q/A

Project 4 - Life Changing Experince. Wednesday 4 March //delay blog //

The project brief handed over on Feb 18, right after our presentation --MIC.
I have been so busy with finding a way to settle into my new life style (so many days of without shopping, sharing house, cheap coffee and foods, finding part time job, etc) and therefore, had little time to update blog. I'm hoping to update it as soon as I get free time [but this is possible after I overcome stress].

Project Introduction
To evolve a multi-sensory strategy to create something that is intended for interaction with a small target group that will lead to a positive enhancement of their experience.

Project Brief
The project will also introduce you to the need to establish a relationship with a target group that you do not know intimately. Identify target group, who might benefit from a life changing experience. Explore the role of language in the transactions and interactions that shape our experience and perhaps condition our responses.Find a way to give the [multisensory]dimension

Our Presentation on February 18, 2009 - hearts and minds //dedicating this to Rahul, Yui, Steph, Rein, Justin, Jimmy

As I have mentioned in my last entry, we are touching the stereotypes against the Chinese products and therefore, we name our project "MIC” or made in China". It was a risky project and was hard to differentiate really good product from poor product and to change people’s perception about government, culture, labor market, people, labor law and many other factors. We all work best to prepare for some constructive, stupid, and harsh comments but it was a wonderful presentation. We all prepared to answer any questions. At the end I was very relived and happy about choosing MIC for our project, as I always felt close to anything that is Chinese :)

Target audience
I. Target people for their lack awareness of how much they are dependent on these products for sustaining their lifestyle.
II. Simply generalize based on a couple of bad experiences with the Chinese products.
III. Lack awareness of the positive side of made in china products.

Final structure of our presentation
Our presentation consist of a play, a video, and couple of slides, all of us involved. Here is the structure of our presentation.

Our Play: MIC Life
We had three scenes, Justin (best buddy, protagonist, main character) play "MIC" or made in china play enact what we speak throughout the presentation.
SCENE 1: MIC’s mum (Jimmy played his dad and humble Yui from BK was his mom) packs bags while Dad gives him advice. They hug him and wave goodbye as he walks away.
Narrator: Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen. What we are going to show you today is not a presentation - this is in fact, a story. The story of MIC. Born to a very devoted family in China, his parents always taught him that the world was a kind place. They taught him to care for people, give to them strength, honesty, loyalty and make them happy...with this advice, MIC left home with the wish to spread what he had been taught.
SCENE 2: MIC Knocks on the door. Rein and I play a typical stereotype couple rejected MIC. MIC explains that he is new and looking for somewhere to stay. Couple shakes their heads. Girl crosses her arms. Boy tells him to leave and closes the door.
Narrator: When he went out in the world, what he found wasn’t what his parents described it to be. He found that it was filled with untrusting, stereotypical people who didn’t want anything to do with him. They thought he was cheap, unreliable and untrustworthy. He was not welcome in their home. And so, They sent him away.
SCENE 3: MIC Knocks on the door. Girl opens door. MIC explains that he is new and looking for somewhere to stay. Couple nod understandingly. Boy invites him in. MIC bows slightly and he goes off to his room. As soon as his back is turned Girl whispers in her partner’s ear.
In this couple (played by Steph and Brian) kind of accept MIC but doubt and never respect wholeheartedly.
Narrator: And even though he found people who welcomed him into their homes and on some level, appreciated him...he soon found that they too fell into a stereotype. They were too quick to judge him on the basis of others who did not have the same values as him
And he felt sad.
MIC sits on a chair depressed, while there is a slide show of good products and bad products shown on the projector.
Narrator: He wanted to tell the world that there are two sides to every coin – and china is no different.
He wants to show the world how many of his trustworthy brothers are helping to make people’s lives better, easier and contributing to their happiness all around the world…and how only a few of his bad brothers are spoiling the name of his country...
He wants to ask the world to stop oversimplifying, to think of the two sides of the coin, to open their hearts and minds.
In this part, we spoke about the stereotype of made in china products being perceived to be low quality and bad in general because of various factors including violations of labor laws/human rights, being excessively cheap etc often forgetting the fact that there are some great products as well. This perception of "made in china" reading as a warning label and generalizing all that comes from there to be bad is what we want to influence. Some examples are Television, Mobile Phones, washing machines, etc. We also touched on specific Chinese examples of good and bad products like the (popular products/brands manufactured in china like Lenovo, Sony, Nike, H&M, Apple etc) and a couple of (fake and cheap products from china like iphone, iPod, etc). After few slides we had a play.

Playing a Video
Our great/greatest videographer, Jimmy from HK edited video fantastically showing the good side of Chinese product. The main characters of our video were Rahul from India (I called him idea factory), sweet sweet Stefanie from Cyprus (I cant forget her, when she always agrees with Rahul) and me. I will try to put video here soon. We wanted to show the existence of good and bad in almost everything that we interact with in our daily lives.

Another play: CAN YOU LIVE WITHOUT MIC
Narrator: Here is a play called “can you live without MIC: a tale of MIC and MII. We get a glimpse of what can happen when you reject MIC without any second thoughts. A tale of MIC and MII (MIC girl friend). We get a glimpse of what can happen when you reject MIC without any second thoughts. A silent play enacted by MIC and his girlfriend narrated by speakers, starring Justin as MIC and Brian as the wig-wearing girlfriend. The play shows what happens when a stupid girl decides to dump his Chinese boy friend. MIC takes all his made in china stuff and leaves and that entire girl is left with is an empty room. The play will underpin the theme of how dependent we are on Chinese products and how important they are for us to sustain our lifestyle.
Narrator: Its half past one on a Sunday night. MII (the girlfriend of MIC) is looking rather agitated. What could be wrong? She checks her watch again and again. Suddenly she hears a loud knock on the door.
Knock knock…
MIC (walking up in drunken stupor with beer bottle in hand): “Sorry darling, I”
MII(cuts him off): What time do you think you call this? I’ve been waiting up all night. Your dinner is ruined. AND you’re pissed as a fart!
MIC: “I’m so sorry, I met a friend, then we were helping an old lady, then we-
MII (cuts him off again): Just stop! I’ve had enough of you and your drunken lies. I can’t take this anymore.
Mic: “But baby, I –“
Mii: “No! I want you and your stuff out of here. Tonight.”
Mic puts all the stuff into the black bag and leaves.
Narrator: He tries in vain to give Mi a kiss but instead receives a slap. With Mic gone Mii looks around the house and sees how bare it is. She misses MIC and wonders if she’ll be able to live without him. Could you?
Narrator: Mic wants to ask all of you. Is there anyone who still thinks that Mic is untrustworthy? Put up your hands!!!

Brain storming, generating ideas and finally agreeing on MIC

fine tunning of our video. From left, Rahul, Brian, Yui, Rein, Shan, behind me Jimmy and Steph

Just before our presentation

Humble Yui!! ain't ya proud of your product!!

hei MIC (our Justin on the screen and Jimmy)

A great ending, well done Rahul!!

MII(the GF of MIC). Brian, sweet Irish bloke, played a MIC GF role :)

and after presentation. Is there anyone who still thinks that MIC is untrustworthy? Put up your hands!!!