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ProjecTattoos

Title: ProjecTattoos

Our project aims to help youths who are planning to get tattoos to make an informed decision. We are planning to do this through digging out the issues and perceptions regarding people with tattoos, and to include these into our novella. By proving to them the public's opinion of people with tattoos, they will thus be informed about how people perceive their tattoo as opposed to their own perception, and thus be educated in the sense that they know the consequences and act accordingly.


Our target audience would be youths aged 14-16, as we assume and through surveys and interviews prove that this is the period they start contemplating getting tattoos. This age group is also easier for us to communicate with.

Jonathan; We encountered some time management issues and the project overall had been a huge challenge for us as we try to overcome them. We respected the copyright laws by writing out the novella from scratch. Despite certain group issues and time issues, we persevered and managed to complete 75% of the project with only the editing of the novella left to do. In the future, we hope to be able to expand the length of the novella so that it would be able to address more issues regarding tattoos such that it would be a more well rounded novella. In the future, I hope to improve on the division of labour, such that no members lags behind or become uncontactable(never mind I suggested FEDEXing him a letter. We hope that through this project, we are able to pick up skills about team management, and see how the society has changed in their opinions about previously taboo issues.)



Jin Hien; Which project is not challenging? Maybe those in primary school. However, this is secondary school. Life is undoubtedly tougher. Tattoos is somehow a rather unfamiliar topic in my opinion. I have never really researched into this topic before. Therefore, as it is the first time, we encountered much difficulty. We had problems finding people with tattoos to interview. In the end, everything was rather rushed. In this aspect, I am rather disappointed but I think we can do better in our time management next time. However, we enjoyed the project as a whole by learning more about each other. Though there were set backs, which is a sure thing in projects, we still thought it was a fantastic learning experience. After all, which project is not challenging?



Ding Han; I feel that this project has been very challenging on the group as it is overall very hard for us to find people with tattoos, and yet willing to do an interview with us. Also I feel that we have done a good job interviewing. I hope that minor glitches that happen within the group (such as being uncontactable) will not happen in the future. Throughout the project, we managed to learn how to apply skills that were taught in primary school, like conducting surveys and collating the following results, writing a report concisely yet still in detail. I also learnt myself that only when the whole group comes together then constructive work can be done the best.



Hong Wei; This project, up to now, had been quite a challenge for us. Part of this would be due to the steps we would have to take before writing the novella, but most, I would say, would be due to the difficulty of contacting each other, as well as meeting up. There would be occassions when most of us can meet up, but one of the member could not. We thus had to improvise, doing whatever we can. However, I think that we have done quite well so far, as we are able to split the work according to the abilities of each other.

Tan, Pearly. "They break rules to mark experiences ".
New Paper. 15/3/10 . <\br>
Tan, Pearly. "Too Scared to remove tattoos". The New Paper. 15/3/10 . <\br>
Watkins , Terry. "TATTOO the mark of rebellion". Dial-the-Truth Ministries. 15/3/10 . <\br>
Chan, Vivian. "Teen works for loan-sharks to get cash for tattoos". The New Paper. 17/3/10 <\br>
Ho, Lian-yi. "She could not bear the pain". AsiaOne/The New Paper. Last accessed: 6/7/10 .<\br>
DeVine, John. "More teens getting inked". ABC12 News. Last accessed :6/7/10 . <\br>
-, -. "http://www.squidoo.com/howtomakeanEbook". -.Last accessed : 6/7/10 . <\br>
Fialko, Jared. "Teens and Tattoos, A Growing Trend". 59 WVNS. Last accessed 6/7/10 . <\br>
http://faculty.mwsu.edu/psychology/Laura.Spiller/Experimental/sample_apa_style_litreview.pdf<\br>
http://www.asiaone.com/News/AsiaOne+News/Singapore/Story/A1Story20100214-198619.html (Not available any more)

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long ago.

July 2010

Appendix containing Questionnaires, List of Tables, Figures, Graphics, Diagrams, etc. Anyway this are the website that you should visit to learn more about our project.
Free website - Powered By Wix.com 1. www.tinyurl.com/pdaysemis 2. www.tinyurl.com/tattoosproject Look out for more!

1. Conducted online surveys and gave out survey forms to members of the public, to obtain their opinions about people with tattoos..

2. Conducted in-depth interview with a person with tattoos, to find out the reasons for his decision, and whether he faced any complications after getting the tattoo. We also conducted an in-depth interview with a person without tattoo to fully understand what he felt about tattoos. During the interview, we videoed them and made them available on the website so that members of the public could view them. We conducted as well phone interviews with people with tattoos and recorded them and saved it.

3. After gathering information, we were able to supply our target audience with evidence, and we aim to encourage them not to get a tattoo.

4. From these ways to gather data about opinions, we gathered the majority idea, and included them into our novella, making it as real as possible.

5. Novella is converted into PDF format so that ebook readers can download it easily, and other phone users whose phones support java would be able to view it as well.

We applied what we have gathered from both the surveys and interviews and came up with the main concepts, and decided how to make it more Singaporean so that our main Singaporean readers can identify with the setting, characters and purpose easily, so that they can connect with the novella, and hence make education and enlightenment easier and more effective. They can find a link to the novella and hence make it efficient in transferring the message that we intend to send the younger audience, so that hopefully we can change their viewpoints of tattoos. Not that we wish to deter them from tattoos, for it is an artform people can express themselves in, but rather enlighten them on the implications of having a tattoo.

* Content (Application of knowledge) - show the evidence of analysis and transfer of knowledge
We saw that many members of the public still opposed the idea of having a tattoo, for they seemed to appear that the person was from a mafia or trying to show off, be it his courage or his tattoo, which meant that people who had tattoos may stand to be ostracized for that matter, or they may be shunned to a corner of society. This reveals the usefulness of our project, for we can seen that through surveys and interviews, people still didn't generally accept the idea of having a tattoo, probabaly due to the fact that we are an Asian country and are normally more conservative than the Western countries; hence mindsets towards tattoos may not be as open and forgiving as our Western friends. By showing people who wan to have tattoos these links to society today, they would probably think twice about getting a tattoo, or face the consequences that are chained along with it.

* Content (Data presentation) - provide summaries (can be visual organizers) on the key content of the product The product is a novella and a website which through advertising, we will try to educate many youths about the social implications from getting a tattoo, and hence make our project useful as it fulfills our aims. The novella is a story which dictates a story of a Singaporean boy, in a Singaporean context and local names that would be familiar to many of the youths today in Singapore. This will help our readers to easily identify themselves with the story and find a link to their lives, and since our novella is based on results from our interviews, surveys and research online, and thus is quite factual and based on many real-life accounts. This will make our final product very realistic and informative and accurate, such that it can be trusted as a learning point from which teenagers who intend to get tattoos can find themselves in a similar situation(s) and find out more about implications of harbouring a tattoo. From which they will know that the society will view them this way and it is their choice to make if they wish to continue, but statistics from our results should actually strive to dissuade that mindset.

* How the group made effective use of available resources and materials to meet their objectives


We managed to find a flash website which we uploaded the content of our project and final product. This flash website will appeal to people of younger ages as it is visually attractive. We are also using Blogger, a favourite networking site used by many teenagers today. Prezi is used as it does have its advantages as compared to the commonly used Microsoft Powerpoint, as it will stand out amongst the crowd and be different. We aim to find other online software that can be used to enhance our presentations and to use Facebook, an extremely popular social networking website that we think can easily assume many friends to join our cause, and give opinions and feedback to help us improve our project.