Well this is it! I am about to submit the last 2 assignments and I must say that I have learnt a lot and really enjoyed this subject. I was surprised at how once I got started with the essay, it all just flowed. I think the hardest bit was just getting started. Now, I am looking forward to continuing on next week with NET 12 and NED11.
- how might the metaphor of an ‘ecology’ impact on the way you think about, understand or use the Internet?
- how are the concepts ‘information’ and ‘communication’ understood within the framework of an ‘information ecology’?
- why don’t we talk of a ‘communication ecology’?
It makes the World Wide Web actually seem like it's own "world". It means that the internet is always evolving and the information we can get from it will continue to grow. People communicate the information, and it is passed on to others. Communication is a part of the process in which we gain information. It doen't grow and evolve as information does. We are unable to get information if we are unable to communicate.
Since my last post I have been putting all my energy into Assignment 1, then I had a little bit of a break from studying used the time to catch up on other things I have been neglecting in my life.
While I was completing assignment 1, I was surprised at how much I was learning as I was analysing each website. It made me think more deeply about each topic and I found it to be very beneficial.
Now I need to start thinking about the essay for assignment 2, and fortunately this blog is assignment 3 so I really only need to fine tune this before the due date. I must admit I am a little worried about the essay as it has been so long since I have done one and I really don't know where to start.
Module 4 teaches research skills for the internet.
Here are my results and observations for Module 4
Downloading tools / plug-ins Task
In your learning log record which programs you downloaded and note which (if any) facets you think might prove useful.
I downloaded Copernic, Bookmark Buddy and PageSucker. I don't think I will use PageSucker much, but if I was using a dialup connection I would. Bookmark Buddy allows me to manage my bookmarks outside of my browser, but it will probably not get much use. I will probably get a lot of use from Copernic. A meta searching program external to the browser appeals to me.
Searching the Web
search engine task
1. Choose your most commonly used internet search engine and do a search with words of your choosing.
- record the first hit and number of hits in your learning log
My brother needed to check his entitlements at work. He works as a printer. I ran a search at Yahoo7 for "Australian country print award".
I got "about 2,360,000" results. I checked the first 100 results - none were of any relevance.
The first hit was:
Urban wins top country music award | The Australian
www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19241711-1702,00.html
2. Using copernicus or similar, set it up to search at least three search engines (including one that will search the 'deep web') and repeat eactly the same search
- record the number of hits in your learning log, and compare to your first search. What differences did you notice? Why? Which search, on first glance gave you the most promising results?
I searched all available search engines on Copernic. I got 1499 results. The 18th result was the information I was looking for. I also noticed more of these results related, at least in general, to the printing industry.
3. save at least the first 5 hits of both searches.
Yahoo7
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... been named top male vocalist for the second consecutive year at the Academy of Country Music Awards. ... award. Font Size: Decrease Increase. Print Page: Print ...www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19241711-1702,00.html - 39k - More from this site
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Cassar-Daley wins top country award. Font Size: Decrease Increase. Print Page: Print ... Country Music Association of Australia's annual Achiever Awards. ...www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20593569-1702,00.html - 39k - More from this site
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Carpentaria named as the winner of the 2007 Miles Franklin Literary Award. ... Gulf country's voice shines in Australian epic. Email. Print. Normal font. Large font " ...smh.com.au/news/books/.../2007/06/21/1182019285824.html - 51k - More from this site
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... the 40th Annual Country Music Association Awards in Nashville, Tennessee, when ... Absent Urban fields country award. Email. Print. Normal font. Large font ...theage.com.au/news/music/.../2006/11/07/1162661685198.html - 43k - More from this site
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... lives sailing to find a future for their children in another country. ... two Australian Writers' Guild Awards for this film and for his community theatre. ...www.australianoftheyear.gov.au/pages/page129.asp - 11k - Cached - More from this site
Copernic
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Boolean searching task
Taking the same key words of your last search, think about how you would best search for the following:
- the biggest number of hits relating to these key words
- information most relevant to what you ACTUALLY wanted to look for!
- information coming only from university sources
- Discuss your strategies with the class and record the exact search terms you used in your learning log
I searched Yahoo7 with the same key words, but added "NOT music". The site I was looking for was the 10th result. Without the Boolean operator, I would not have found this site through Yahoo7.
I was only able to find one site that was of any use to me. The other results were either of no relation to the topic, or applied to awards for excellence in the industry.
I choose to search for the term Leo Laporte and as I use google for 95% of my searches it was the engine of choice. The result was as follows:
Leo Laporte returned 1,120,000 results and the first result was http://leoville.com/
After I finished with google I used Copernic Web Search with the same phrase. The first thing I noticed was the amount of results returned and how low it was at 54. Interestingly it returned the same first search result and it did not mention google as one of the search engine it used to find the listing. I found the results for google were better for what I was searching for, why? No results from the same site in the top 5 and the results were more up to date.
1. Adobe's pdf reader
I have used Adobe reader for many years, but last year I changed to foxit reader. Foxit does the same job but doesn't take up as much space and is less buggy. PDF has really become a format of choice for the web and a good reader is a must.
2. Flash/Shockwave Players
I have just upgraded to flash 9 and I had really forgotten how much I use them. The make the web a much richer place, but it comes at a price as it can bring your system to a halt. The reason I just went through the upgrade was to fix a problem flash had caused with firefox. Flash has even moved on to mobile phones with my nokia n95 running a version of flash, this to me shows how important flash has become to the internet.
3. Media Players
Windows media player 10 came pre-installed in my version of windows vista and I had used many different versions over the years. I also have Quicktime installed on my pc and is the player I use the most as it's intergratered into itunes. Both work really well and I could not work without them. Realplayer is not something I have on my pc for many years as the .rm format is not very well used on the web in recent years. Saying that it is the media player on my phone.
4. Search Manager/Combiners
I have not used a program like this before so I downloaded Copernic Meta. When I tried to search the internet it took me to a webpage with my search results, while they were from a number of search engines used, the results were know better than google.
5. Bookmark Manager
I use a plugin within my internet browser that integrates really well in firefox for the social bookmarking site del.icio.us. This is a tool I use all the time, both for work and fun. This is the way I see the internet going where browsers are going with projects like flock.
6. Offline Browser/Copier
I did not download any piece of software or plugin for this part of the task. Simply I think there is no longer a need to do this with the amount of broadband in Australia both hard wired(adsl, cable) and wireless(3g, hsdpa)
I have decided to use http://www.fabcats.org/ for this task, but I will not be using it for my resource project as it was for my interest only. It will be useful however as a practice excercise.
This site, I originally thought this was an advocacy site, but on further investigation, it only states facts regarding health and welfare of cats and does not try to sway opinions. It was written by the reputable FAB (Feline Advisory Bureau) who are a registered charity. The were founded in 1958 and have been a huge influence in veterinary advances as they funded vets and researched cats extensively.
This site is targeted towards anybody that has information anything and everything to do with cats, from the owner, to cattery's, vets and breeders. It has information on general care, behaviour, diseases and current news.
The purpose for which this site was written is to educate people on the health and welfare of cats, and to help raise donations so that it can continue its work.
I would find the snapshot of the site most useful as it would trigger my memory very quickly, whereas with the annotation, I would have to read it more thoroughly to recall which website it referred to. 2. In term of external users (i.e. if you included this site as a hyperlink or resource on a website) which body of information would best help them judge if the site was useful or of interest to them? The annotation would be more help to an external user as they would most likely skim the details looking for key words before they decide if it would be of any use to them. A snapshot would take up too much space, and if it is too small, it would be very hard to make out the detail.
Blogs are something I am very comfortable with and I have setup a number in the past. I have installed software on my own servers and I have also used hosted services like the service I'm typing this entry own VOX. Both have there advantages and disadvantages. Hosted services are more easy to setup and once they are setup they will run for as long as the company is in business. While a self hosted solution is a little hard to setup you can create a blog that has it's own look, as well as customizing it with widgets.
A blog is a term that is short for weblog and has gained great popularity in recent years. So a blog is just a log of thing you do on the internet and it can take a number of different forms html pages, special blog software, tumble logs and micro blogs. In this task we were asked to setup a blog and the easiest way to do this was with blog software. Since I'm using a blog for the learning log I'll show you a screen shot of it.
Writing an entry
For the next task:
First, choose the best three sources found in the previous task (and be aware all these sources and information can be contributing to your resource bank assignment!)
Using whatever software or tool you think appropriate, record the following information about those sites:
- URL.
- author,
- institution,
- blurb/ summary / screen shot (this can be a direct copy of an appropriate abstract or introductory paragraph on the site: but make sure you record and reference it as such)
Using Copernic, I found the following sources on cat behaviour.
Source 1
Source 2
In this module we reservist the concept of ftp and this time we have to use an ftp program to upload a file. This is something I do on a daily basis for my websites. As I had my ftp program setup for my websites I decided that I would host the page on one of my websites. This took me two minutes to do using filezilla, this is done by clicking and dragging the file into the correct directory.
