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.
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.
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
I was just reading through Boolean Searching on the Internet, and would you believe cat behaviour was used as an example! I'd chosen these search words before I read this article, as one of my cats was behaving strangely and it was the first thing I could think of.
I used google once again to search cat behaviour and just using these keywords gave me the most results as expected with 6,960,000 hits.
To get information on what is most relevant to what I was actually looking for I tried cat AND behaviour, but came back with exactly the same amount of results. Google tells me that the AND is unnecessary as it includes all search terms by default. +cat +behaviour also had the same amount of hits. Next I tried "cat behaviour" which is what I would normally use when I want to search these exact words and had substantially less results with 50,900 hits.
To find information only from university searches I entered cat behaviour site:edu in google and returned 138,000 hits.
I used google.com.au to search cat behaviour and got 6,910,000 hits.
This is the first result
Cat behaviour problems answered ![]()
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Please click on the problem topics that interest you or scroll down to All cat behaviour problems below to see a list of all the problems: ... |
I was having a few problems with Glooton so I tried using copernic for searcing the deep web and this returned 45 hits using the same words. These results seemed more relevant from a research perspective, but I was surprised there was so very few results. Looking at the results from the google search, it seems that google had a lot of irrelevant results from pages that contained these 2 words but had nothing to do with cat behaviour at all. The results also included a lot of online stores. Copernic was definetly more relevant and promising with its results.
I decided to install a bookmark manager as my bookmarks are a complete mess. I have just been adding websites to my favorites in Internet Explorer. I was using folders, but its all getting out of control now, particularly since I started this course.
Bookmark Buddy is a free program that was quick to download and install and is very easy to use. I have started organising my bookmarks just to see how it works, but I will need to put a few hours aside to finish this job!
This program is very useful for someone like me that has an Olin business and on-line studies that is constantly book marking sites and forgetting what they are or where they are. My office is always organised but my computer is another story!
As I already have most of the programs listed on my computer, I decided to install a Search Manager/Combiner as I've never heard of these before and chose Glooton. This program performs searches on several sites simultaneous. This is a free program and very quick to install, then launch. It searches sites and search engines with compatible plug ins to Glooton such as google, eBay, excite, yahoo. I decided to do a search on beads. This was a mistake as it seems the search will never end.
This program would be useful for searches on something very specific that you would like information from a range of sources on, such as for a research project. For just a basic search, google would be sufficient. A problem with Glooten is that I don't think I can just search within Australia only and this is what I commonly do. This program may be useful further in my studies though, so I will keep it installed on my computer.
1. Pick a topic and stay on that topic. Not everyone wants to know everything that is happening in your life day to day, but they will read your blog regularly if it is a topic they are interested in.
2. Stick to the facts. Make sure that what you are saying is actually true.
3. Up date your blog frequently. Readers that check regulary may not come back if there hasn't been anything posted for a while.
4. Make sure it is clear and concise. Make sure you proof read and check for spelling mistakes, and that it is easily understood.
5. Use keywords throughout your bog so that your blog will come up in search engines. I just did a google search on tips for new bloggers and in the top 5 sites was another NET11 students blog!
