Assignment 1

To work out what references and information that i want to find, i've decided to read back over my blog to find out what information i felt was missing, and where i had problems.

Module 1 - Internet and Protocols

* Traceroute time taken - how to calculate!

Using Tracert

* more info on ftp

File Transfer Protocol (ftp)

Understanding How FTP Works

Novice Users Transfering Files

FTP 101: A Beginner's Guide

Module 2 - Internet Communication

* Email

* Writing good Emails (professional)

Writing the Perfect Email: Professional or Casual?

10 Tips to Write Professional Email That Gets Noticed

* Organising emails

* IRC

* Newsgroups

The Internet Tutor: Flaming, Spamming and other Arcane Practices

* Email Lists

* MMORPG

* L33t

* Social Network Webpages

* flaming

Module 3 - e-writing

* hypertext

* blogs

* Linearity vs. non-linearity

* Good webpage writing

Concise, SCANNABLE, and Objective: How to Write for the Web

Module 4 - Using the infosphere: taking and organising

*meta search engines etc

Meta-Search Engines

* website evaluation

Evaluating Internet Research Sources

* boolean web searches

Search Engines "Boolean Searches"


Other Items:

* Glossary of internet terms

* social networks


website design

Discriminating meta-search: a framework for evaluation

Module 4 - Evaluating the Web

Evaluation Tutorial:

1. PURPOSE

Determine the type of content: website

Relevance to your purpose:
Does this website provide the kind of information that i need? yes

Purpose of the site: I believe this site is an information site - it is not trying to sway your opinion or sell me anything, it is just listing the information to inform.

2. AUTHOR/PUBLISHER

Ask: Does the author have appropriate education, training, or experience to write with authority (credibility) on this topic?

yes, resume attached with lots of information on education, work experience and publications.

Ask: Who is responsible for publishing this page?

New Mexico State University

3. CONTENT

Ask:

1. For controversial topics, is the presentation biased (one-sided) or balanced (both pro and con viewpoints provided)?

2. Are claims and arguments supported (with documentation) or unsubstantiated?

Ask: Do other sites cover aspects of the topic that are missing from the site you are evaluating?

Ask: When was the material written? Has information been added recently? Are links functional or broken?

The material was written originally in 1997, however there is a last updated date of 2007.

Through working through this activity for this website, i've decided it is not suitable for my purpose as when checking the links, although they were functional i did not feel that they offered the information i would like so see...

Module 4 - Organising Search Information

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)

Again, using any useful software you have downloaded, or utilising your existing software, record this information on your computer in the way that you think will be most useful to you in terms of preparing for your third assignment (that is, in terms of how easy you will find it to access, retrieve, understand, contextualise and recall why you saved it - and with what!).

Record this information in your learning log, and also detail how you saved this information, what software you used and why

So far i was not happy with any method i had for organising and adding notes on my bookmarks.

Upon reading a previous students net11 blog I found that she discussed two different links for social bookmarking. I decided to give both of these a go:

ma.gnolia

I found i did not like this one so much - was easy to register but i could find no way of importing my exisiting bookmarks (of which i have lots).

del.icio.us

So far this is my social bookmark network of choice. I have installed onto my toolbar the required buttons that enable me to add a bookmark with notes as i find it. I can also add tags so that it can go into a required category to easily find later. To see if this is something that i will continue to use i will have to play some more, but so far i think it suits the purpose.

After reading the discussion board, i have found yet another way to sort my bookmarks which i think suits my purpose even better. This program is called NetVisualise Favourites Ograniser . The good thing about this application is that you can see a thumbnail image of the webpage without opening it up in a browser. I just need to work out now how to add new bookmarks.

My three websites that i have chosen to add are:

Website 1

URL: http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlpubs/crlnews/backissues1998/julyaugust6/teachingundergrads.cfm
Author: Jim Kapoun
Institution: Association of College and Research Libraries (part of the American Library Association)
Blurb/Summary:
"Five criteria for Web evaluation
When teaching the Web to students, I include a section on evaluation. I pattern my Web evaluation lecture like a librarian who evaluates print items for inclusion into a library collection. I base Web evaluation on five criteria that I use for print evaluation: accuracy, authority, objectivity, currency, and coverage. To develop this model I had to first acknowledge that most students today tend to conduct research with speed rather than accuracy and rarely evaluate resources. So the criteria I present must be digestible and almost transparent to the student. In other words, the student must be trained to evaluate a Web document like second nature."
(Kapoun, J, 2007)


Screenshot:


Website 2

URL: http://lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/evalcrit.html
Author: Susan E. Beck
Institution: New Mexico State University Library
Blurb/Summary:
The Good, The Bad & The Ugly: or, Why It's a Good Idea to Evaluate Web Sources

This site lists 5 Main evaluation criteria including: Authority, Accuracy, Objectivity, Currency and Coverage. It seems to be the most popular of all the sites I've found being sited on many other sites as a reference.

Screenshot:



Website 3

URL: http://www.taftcollege.edu/newTC/Academic/INCO48/sec6-4.htm
Author: Betsy Richmond
Institution: Taft College
Blurb/Summary:

Ten C's For Evaluating Internet Sources

The "Ten C's" provide criteria to consider in evaluating Internet resources. Sections of this document include:

Content Credibility Critical Thinking Copyright

Citation Continuity Censorship

Connectivity Comparability Context

(Richmond, C, 2003)

Screenshot:

References:

Beck, Susan (October, 2007) The Good, The Bad & The Ugly: or, Why It's a Good Idea to Evaluate Web Sources. Retrieved January 20, 2008 from http://lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/evalcrit.html

Kapoun, J. (May, 2007) Teaching undergrads WEB evaluation: A guide for library instruction. Retrieved January 20, 2008, from http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlpubs/crlnews/backissues1998/julyaugust6/teachingundergrads.cfm

Richmond, B. (June, 2003) Evaluating Internet Sources. Retrieved January 20, 2008 from http://www.taftcollege.edu/newTC/Academic/INCO48/sec6-4.htm

Module 4 - Boolean Searches

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

The best way to get the biggest number of hits relating to the key words is to use an or statement. I've gone back to google so i can compare my results.

Under "advanced search" i selected "must contain at least one of these words" which means it will include one or the other or both (an OR statement). The number of results were almost 30 million.

To ensure that the information is more acurate, and that it is more what i'm looking for, in this case an AND statement would be more appropriate, or under the advanced search it would be "with all the words". The number of results returned was 162, 000.

Adding the word university into the AND statement (with all the words) i got 156, 000 results.

If i wanted to ensure that the searches were not just containing the word university, but also from an education site, i could also say in the advanced search taht i wanted the demain to be .edu.au. When i do this i get 8,710 results.

i can vaguely remember doing boolean searches in my computer science days, and venn diagrams in both previous uni courses so this is a familiar concept to me.

Module 4 - 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 search engine of choice is always google.com.au - i have this set as my home page!

I searched for "evaluating websites" and got "about 160,000" hits.

The first website listed was:

Evaluating Web Sites
The User Context: The most important factor when evaluating Web sites is your search, your needs. What are you using the Web for? Entertainment? ...

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?

When using copernic agent the number of results was much less significant - getting 32 results. On first glance it looked like the google search was better as copernic gave me a lot of sponser links that were not at all related to what i was looking for, however once the sponser links dissappeared the results left all looked like they had potential - mainly being .edu sites.

I think the reason that there are less results is that copernic agent does a more concise search, and although it is using more search engines (14) it seemed to all be the sort of information i was looking for.

3. save at least the first 5 hits of both searches.

Google top 5 results:
1. Evaluating Web Sites: Criteria and Tools
2. Evaluating Web Sites: Criteria for the Classroom
3. Evaluating Web Sites
4. Evaluating Web Pages: Techniques to Apply and Questions to Ask
5. The Good, The Bad & The Ugly: or, Why It's a Good Idea to Evaluate Web Sources


Copernic top 5 results:
1. Evaluating Web Pages: Techniques to Apply and Questions to Ask
2. Evaluating Web Sites
3. Evaluating Web Sites: Criteria and Tools
4. Evaluating Web Sites
5. Evaluating Website Content

Copernic Desktop vs Copernic Agent

Well after wondering why the Copernic i was using wasn't offering me all the options that were mentioned in the activities i started to wonder where i had gone wrong so figured it was time to hit the discussion board.

After lots of reading about the activities i finally found a post from Wayne that mentioned he had downloaded Copernic Desktop instead of Copernic Agent. I knew this was what mine was called but didn't realise that there was another option on the same screen! (must have been half asleep!)

I now have the correct Copernic installed and working :)

Module 4 - Downloading Tools cont.

The second tool i chose to download is the bookmark buddy.

I'm not sure as yet if this is something that i will use. I have hundreds of bookmarks, and try to organise them by folders as i have a new area of interest that i research. At the moment i use Firefox as my browser, and just keep the bookmarks side tab open. I'm sure there is a better way, but i'm not sure that bookmark buddy is it.

So far it seems relatively simple to use. I have imported my bookmarks, and set my preference for my main browser.

The program has added in its own bookmarks, but these are american/british based, so will be something that i would instantly delete if i were to continue using the application.

On a whole it probably has potential, but i see it as a slower way of me to get to my bookmarks quickly...

Module 4 - Downloading Tools Activity

I have - as suggested - most of these tools already installed on my computer, however there were three that i did not have:

4. Search Manager/Combiners
5. Bookmark Manager
6. Offline Browser/Copier

I chose 4 and 5 as i can't see myself using the offline browser much. With unlimited broadband, and a fast download speed, my husband and I never have our computers offline anymore.

4. Search Manager/Combiners

I chose to download and test out Copernic Meta for PC

I'm terrible at reading the licencing agreements, and am really slack and the majority of times just agree to them. The main statements from this agreement were that this product could only be used for free for private use, that it could only be used on one computer by the user, and that you can make and keep one backup copy for private use.

So far i have one complaint of the product that it has rearranged my taskbar - it has taken up half of it and compressed all my tabs. I usually have a number of programs going at once (my one requirement with any new computer i purchase is that it has the capability to multi-task) and these are all now very small. I will need to see if this is something that can be easily fixed...

By unlocking my taskbar, i have managed to resize the copernic quicksearch bar which has fixed this problem for me.

At the moment the program is running through an index. Indexing is essential for all searches, which i remember from my computer training days. Indexing does a once over putting things into an alphabetical order so that when you do search you don't have to search everything everytime, instead you can go directly to that letter, number etc. This makes it longer to begin with, but makes every search from then on much quicker.

On first glance this seems like a useful application. It will search not just the web, but all aspects of my computer as well helping me to locate files, images and emails.

The usability of it seems pretty simple, selecting the type of file etc that you are searching for, then choosing the specifics of your search, and going through with the search. The quick search box enables you to search for your files directly from the taskbar making it quick and simple.

The program has both in-program help, and additional inforation on their webpage. I can't test any further capabilities of the program at this point as the application is still doing its initial indexing making it hard to do any searching.

Module 3 - Extra Activites

Will be leaving this space to come to these activities when i can better concentrate - headaches and assignment stress have got the better of me at the moment.


WWW Standards

Make a summary of what you believe are the 5 most important ‘rules’ for writing online. Think about any differences between the articles: for example, is the advice in Nielsen’s paper -- written in 1997 – still current?

• Record your summaries and comments in your learning log

1. Firstly is to be aware of any copyright laws, and to always reference any quotes.

2. Website documents should be written non-linear. Not many readers of internet sites start at the top and work their way down. Firstly they will skim the first paragraph to see if the site is going to be relevant to their needs (so you should include a good summary of your website in this location) and then they will jump around the website to what is relevant to them using any links etc to navigate around.

3. I believe good language is important. Just because a piece of writing is for the web does not mean that the writing should suffer. Good english is always important.

4. writing numbers as the numerals instead of as the word. Particularly when readers are skimming this is important. numbers are much easier to read the reading the word.

5. Using good fonts and colours. There is a large range of fonts, colours, backgrounds etc available when writing on the web. This does not mean they should be used! Pink writing on black background may look appealing to the author, but will tend to give most readers a headache. A good general rule of thumb is to go with a light background a dark font. You shoudl also think about who your audience is going to be when applying this rule. Are you writing your website for adults? professionals? teenagers? This will also determine what font, colour backgrounds etc that you use.

Module 3 - HTML Tutorial

After a busy Christmas away at mum's and a nasty rea11 assignment i am back! and it is time to do some major catching up.

I have some limited html/css knowledge that i have self learnt through manuals, web searches, and just playing around. My best website to date is at http://www.neopets.com/~Errhum It is nothing fancy - just some information and links i wanted for myself for this website, but it does include the basic concepts that we learnt through this tutorial including tables, headings, graphics, links and some basic customisation.

As a result most of what was in the htmldog basic html tutorial i already had some knowledge of, and had no problems completing the activities. I have a huge interest though in getting some forms up and running and learning more about where the collected information is stored, and then being able to access that information again. Hopefully that will come with time.

I have uploaded my "index.html" file to my group 16 location. I worked out that i was meant to upload my file here first, then read the discussion group on this matter.

No difficulties to report.