Technology As Innovator

High school of Foreign Languages, a member of National University Hanoi introduced a new class structure for students.

Read the story here

Summary: classes are groups into Houses which resemble Hogwarts Houses from the novel series “Harry Potter”. The name of the Houses are oriental holy creatures which protect the country: Thanh Long (Oriental Green Dragon), Bạch Hổ (White Tiger), Chu Tước (Oriental Phoenix), Huyền Vũ (Tortoise).

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This model is an interesting when we look into details.

Originally, there are a number of classes.

Because they major in different languages, students doing the same major naturally share closer bond between one another to those doing different major.

For instance, students from English class 1, English class 2, English class 3 and English class 4 are usually closer to one another than an English student is to a Russian student.

This forms Career Orientation in these students.

Students from different major might want to prepare themselves for their careers in different ways. A rough scenario might be: German major students may want to acquire domain knowledge on heavy industries, telecommunications while Chinese major students might way to know much about trading and consumer goods industry.

What the school is doing is: group different classes into Houses, each House consists of classes doing all different majors.

For instance, the Green Dragon House could consist of English 1, French 1, Russian 1, Chinese 1, German 1, Japanese 1; the Phoenix Dragon could consist of English 2, French 2, Russian 2, Chinese 2, German 2, Japanese 2… and so on.

The benefit of this model is that it resembles real life organizational structure.

In an organization, people with same expertise form a Group of Expertise. However, different individuals are usually put together to form a Team to achieve certain goals.

For example: In a Software company, there should be Project Managers, Product Managers, Software Architects, Business Analysts, System Analysts, Consultants, Software Designers, Implementers, Graphical Designers, Testers… This forms Career Paths.

Different individuals then assigned to form a Project Team which consists of different people playing roles. This establishes Organizational Divisions.

Theoretically, Project Managers should gather in either both formal or informal meetings to share their experience in managing projects. Similarly, Consultants should also share their lessons in consultancy skills with one another. The same for Testers with testing skills. While a Project Manager can provide certain on-the-job guidance for beginning Testers, it is usually better if knowledge sharing and mentoring is done from Tester to Tester.

Career Path is vertical. Organizational Division is horizontal. Organizational Division makes sure the organization achieves its objectives by combining the skills of different resources. Career Path ensures the growth of individuals within a company, knowledge management and organizational expertise.

Let’s get back to High school of Foreign Languages Hanoi. The new organization structure should equip the students with knowledge of organizational behavior, team work and collaboration and thus prepare them to work for organizations later on.

Yahoo! just released Yahoo! 360plus Vietnam, the blogging platform-social networking hybrid that is expected to replace its Yahoo! 360.

The Vietnamese version is developed based on its HongKong counterpart, and many R&D activities are done in Singapore.

Additionally, Yahoo! is planning to open its office Vietnam, rather than managing remotely from Singapore like currently.

Overview functionalities

Generally, it takes current features of Yahoo! 360 and merge with functionalities that are common across many blogging platforms.

The server(s) is still located outside Vietnam.

No real innovation has been observed.

It’s worth mentioning that in recent years, Yahoo! has focused more on branding, while Google on products and Facebook on user experience. Result?

About Vietnam market.

There are now 20 million Internet users in Vietnam, most of whom are young people under 25.

The Vietnam market is the 5th largest market of Yahoo!

Vietnamese Internet users depend heavily on Yahoo! Messenger, Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! 360. The number of Yahoo! 360 accounts is approximately 2 millions, comparing with 5 millions users of this service worldwide.

Yahoo! is trying hard to maintain its user base and seek to acquire even more by launching its new platform.

Yahoo!’s competitors in Vietnam

Social networking

Facebook is increasingly spreading in the English-speaking, tech-savvy communities.

yobanbe from Vina Game

tamtay, a MySpace clone

Vietnamese cyworld

faceViet, a Facebook clone

Blogging

Some, frustrated with the buggy 360, have switched to other blogging platforms including blogger, opera, multiply. A small number of techies endorse WordPress

The local ngoisaoblog service

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Addendum: my initial feedbacks to Yahoo! 360plus Vietnam team.

Improvables

1. How do I communicate with friends who don’t read Vietnamese with Yahoo! 360plus?
2. No option to return to Blog Homepage but only Master Yahoo! 360plus Homepage
3. No feedback option
4. No FAQs
5. Font size not consistent in Firefox
6. Translation
7. I choose two-column theme with the hope that width of the main column will be larger. However, my assumption was wrong, as width is still fixed.
8. Some formatting HTML tags don’t work. i.e. headings
9. Only jpg images are allowed.
10. No auto-invite option.
11. Javascript not supported

Improvements from Yahoo! 360

1. In Firefox: Enter gives paragraph break, not line break as in Yahoo! 360 (like that of WordPress)
2. Favorites are displayed directly in the blog page.
3. Person tagging in the entry (like that of Facebook)
4. HTML for comment (like that of WordPress)
5. Extraction (like that of WordPress)
6. Edit time for entries (like that of WordPress)
7. Draft (like that of WordPress)
8. Categories (like that of WordPress)

The Word form English lesson

English is not my native language, so I learn it my whole life.

From the lesson of word form, I learned that

• Verb is the most effective form
• Noun and noun phrase come next
• Adjective is less direct

For example:

• “The Beatles influenced many subsequent rock bands.” is more effective than
• “The Beatles was an influence on many subsequent rock bands.” which in turn is more effective than
• “The Beatles was influential on many subsequent rock bands.”

In a grammar test, the using of word form should be considered for effectiveness of the options given. Noun form, though commonly used, must give way to its verb counterpart in these test of standard.

How Verb is stronger

Maybe more than once you have heard a complaint about life. “My life has not been good lately…” and such. The fact is, these people may forget that they Live their Lives: they do their jobs, perform their roles, fulfill their missions. Their Lives are shaped by these actions. Reactive people accept the conditions placed upon them. Proactive ones, on the other hand, seize opportunities from challenges, and set things right.

The root is Live (verb). Life (the noun) is the product of the Action.

So if one takes the responsibility to Do and focuses more on Verb side, s/he is getting stronger toward achieving effectiveness.

Mapping to individuals

From the core inside, it’s what we Do (Verb) that shape our character. We commit, we response, we empathize, we love.

Character is reflected on the surface as personality by Nouns. We have commitment, responsibility, empathy, love.

Outermost is the interpersonal level, where we are usually described by others as committed, responsible, empathetic, lovable.

In conclusion, the root of all is what we take the responsibility to act upon.