The e-Diary Project : Friday, 14th November 2014, "Somehow I don't feel like it's Friday"

We don't have morning class for Microbiology today!

And nope. It was not cancelled. It's even better. We went to Shah Alam Convention Center (SACC) today to support our classmates and seniors. They are currently participating in competition for National University eLearning Carnival (NUCeL) 2014.

Our classmates as well as Dr Wan have been burning the midnight oil for.... one week? Or maybe less? In order to finish preparing the posters, cards and videos since they are using Aurasma.

Since Dr Wan said that we are going to depart from UPM by bus at 7a.m., she told us to be ready at the bus stop at 6.45a.m.

As the time goes by, it was 7.15a.m. already and the bus was still not in sight. And finally the bus arrived at about 7.45a.m. but we had to let the participants to get on the first bus. Me and the other classmates took the second bus.

The irony was that when the second bus arrived first before the first bus. Apparently the bus driver got lost on his way. Poor the participants though! And also us... there.... at SACC... got clueless while trying to find the booths. Haha.

An uncle(?) hehe I mean, a man asked us whether we are the participants or visitors. "Visitors." We said. And he said that if we're the participants, we have to go register first. "You guys come too early. Not a single booth is set up yet!" Hahaha. I have to agree on that.

Everybody seemed busy too inside the hall. I feel like we were crowding the place due to to our big numbers and scattering everywhere in there or maybe even blocking the way of the people in there. I felt guilty x'D

And we decided to sit at a cafe outside of the hall (while waiting for Dr Wan and the rest of the crews of "Bus 1" to arrive.

After taking two to three group photos at the convention center, Dr Wan and the others finally arrived. Dr Wan asked to help the participants setting up their booths.

And so we went inside the hall where the exhibition is going to be held today. But I didn't manage to help anything... To be honest x'D Because when I went to the booths, they are currently preparing the booths themselves. I don't think I can help anything. Like I said before, we were just crowding the booths instead which I really hope we were not being a nuisance to any of the other participants.

Thus, we decided to go eat breakfast instead since most of us were hungry at that time. We went to the nearest mall which is the SACC Mall and Plaza Alam Sentral. We ate roti canai, tosai, fried noodle and fried rice. So, Dr Wan! I'm telling you, you don't have to be worried or feel.... guilty(?) there wasn't any food provided for us that morning. Because we all make sure we ate well! x'D :D

Afterwards, we went back to SACC. Let's not forget the exhibition, people! :D
The first booth I went was of course, Megat-Choy-Chew-May Ling-Veronica's booth. Hehe :D Followed by the other seniors' booth.

Our class's group did their poster and use Aurasma as their eLearning method.

As for the other (senior) groups, they made cards with questions on it. In order to know the answers, we have to scan the card (using Aurasma) and the answer will be shown along with some notes about it.

Other group also did an augmented reality book called "The Big Book of Microbe", if I'm not mistaken, that is. And they said that, instead of reading books like we usually do and sometimes we can even get sleepy or bored. This book can be scanned (also using Aurasma) and we can watch videos from the book, which is of course less boring.

The other group did something called "The Box of Mixrobe" or was it "Microbe Box" haaaaa I'm really sorry Dr Wan, I forgot the name of their product T^T But it was interesting really! I have to admit that. The box contains microbe models (example : virus, yeast), a staining kit and also a CD which contains some sort of an interactive learning where there are questions, quizzes and slide notes about the topic of "Introduction To The Microbial World". What's interesting about the interactive learning is it is in the form of animation.

And lastly, the last group that I went to was the seniors who did on food studies. They prepared foods too! Since microbes usually can be found in foods like cheese and yogurts. Yogurt drinks were served and cheese sandwiches! I wanted to taste it, but I didn't. x'D It's regretful.

I did a few rounds of the exhibition and I think that the UPM students' booth were the most interesting. Hehehe. Maybe because it was handled by students so it looked more... lively? And fun? The other Also because they use very interesting methods and props like the Aurasma application, the microbe box and the augmented reality book. Overall they all did a very good job! I enjoyed listening to their presentations.

We went back to UPM afterwards and had an evening class with Prof.

We started our class with quite a weather outside. It started to rain heavily. The wind was really strong. And Prof was worried if it was safe for us to continue our lecture. She hold the microphone on the "non-metal" part for safety measures.

We learned about Regulation of Gene Expression today.

1- Regulation of enzyme activity

---->> Feedback inhibition : The end product will be the inhibitor when there are too many products.

Allosteric inhibition

2- Regulation of enzyme synthesis

---->> Enzyme repression : Inhibit gene expression and decreases the synthesis of enzymes (proteins [end product]).

---->> Enzyme induction : Turns ON the transcription of genes and synthesise the enzyme only when its substrate is present.