Week 7

Lecture
Lecture Summary In today's lecture we talked about EndNote. We reference so that we are able to distinguish our ideas from those of others and acknowledge our sources. This also enables to reader to follow up if they are interested in the source we have used. EndNote is a database that can be used as a reference manager and a bibliography maker. EndNot can be used in two ways
Standalone Program
Integrated into MS Word.

EndNote works as it is a flat-file database system, where the content is displayed in columns and rethe references are displayed in a chosen style. You can get EndNote through the ECU Library Web page. We then learnt how to open an EndNot Library and how to save it. We use Endnot to keep track of a growing number of references, display a variety of recognised styles of referencing,handles a variety of types of references, searchings of records of references associated with a specific project and it can be integrated with Microsoft WORD.
Some things one should know when using Endnote is to not expect to get your results first time, eliminate clutter from the display interface and back up your library


Tutorial

Workshop One
In today's workshop i have to review the online referencing guide and include examples of referencing five different types of electronic format material. The five types i chose are:
Ebook

Wilkinson, R., & Marmot, M. (Eds.). (2003). Social determinants of health: The solid facts (2nd
ed.). Retrieved December 2, 2007, from http://www.euro.who.int/document/e81384.pd

Article in an electronic journal based on a print source
Capper, C. (1998). Critically oriented and postmodern perspectives: Sorting out the differences
and applications for practice [Electronic version]. Educational Administration Quarterly, 34
(3), 345-379. and applications for practice [Electronic version]. Educational Administration
Quarterly, 34(3), 345-379.

Report: Electronic version
Mulligan, D., & Bickmore-Brand, J. (1998, July). Outreach, access and support programs for
socio-economically disadvantaged people at Curtin: A feasibility study. Retrieved November
27, 2007, from http://eesj.curtin.edu.au/local/documents/les.doc

Website
Harris, R. (1997). Encouraging students to use technology. Vanguard University of Southern
California. Retrieved July 24, 2000, from http://www.vanguard.edu/rharris/techuse.htm

Wiki
Rutledge, J., & Blackford, T. (2001). Pathway to undergraduate study: Academic discourse in
foundation studies. Paper presented at Australian Association for Research in Education 2001
Conference, Melbourne. Retrieved September 3, 2005, from
http://www.aare.edu.au/01pap/rut01660.htm


Workshop Two
Exercise One
In workshop two i had to go into the web site provided. I had to configure Endnote and type in the information provided. After i had done this Endnote provided me with a reference of the details i had entered.

Exercises Two
In exercises two i had to go on this site http://computer.howstuffworks.com/blog.htm and type in the same requirements for Endnote but with the information of this web site. Endnote gave me a reference of the details.

Exercise Three
In exercise three i had follow the further ins ructions attached to Endnote worksheet. I had to go through the ECU library database, find an article and use it as a reference on Endnote. I then had to transfer my findings onto WORD. This shows a quote from the documents with and in-text reference and an end-text for the texts. Here is a screen shot of my work:




Workshop Three
In this part of the workshop i had to click on a link provided and follow the instructions. Here is a screen shot of my work:





EndNote



Readings
In today's Reading I have to summarize a resource called "Guide to Endnot v9 @ ECU" from http://www.research.ecu.edu.au/grs/data/tmp/guide_to_endnotev9ecu.pdf. Endnote is a program that stores, manages and searches references in personal libraries that are set up by the user. Endnote saves hours of time as a reference only needs to entered into the Endnote library once. Endnote will produce the reference in citations and reference list. Using Endnote, it will ensure that there is no mistakes and no missing items. To build an Endnote Library, select New from the File menu then select a directory from the Save in list. To add a reference to the library select New Reference from the reference menu. Then click Reference type, a drop down box should appear with type of referencing. Select the type you want and a list of titles should appear, enter your information into the fields, you will be able to view the reference by exiting out of the pop-up window.

Week 6

Lecture Summary

In today's lecture we learnt about elvauation and authentication of a Web site. We were told about the context of the World Wide Web such as:
Open protocols
This contains swift and convenient information exchange and anyone with access to a computer can create a web content.
Open architecture
This has no enforceable quality control and non-enforced classification and met-tagging system.
Not all sites are created equal and to evaluate the IQ on the WWW there are some principle to consider such as:
Content
Visual Feel
Navigation
ease of use


Information resource exist so it can provide a unique insight into the information so that it can be found. Accuracy helps evaluate the IQ of the WW as anyone can publish anythin gon the Web mand can make the information un-credible or reliable. Authority is an issue aswell as it is often hard to determe a web page's authorship, even if the page is signed, the qualification arent usually given. Objectivity is an issue as frequently the goals of the sponser/authors are not always cleary stated. The currency's issues is that publication or revision dates are not always provided and may have various meaning. The coverage issues is that the web coverage often differs from print coverage and is frequently difficult to determine the exten of coverage as sometimes web information is just-for-fun.
Some things to consider with authentication is where is the site, is it a personal hompage of offical sanction. Try to find a name, position and credentials to see who wrote the text. Other considerations is the sources of information, validation of information and references.
Some tips are to look at the URL before you click to view the page. Look to see if it is a personal site, is the domain name appropriate for the content and if the text is published by an entity that makes sense.
We were then told about a group assignmnet that we will be doing of a production of an easy to use guide on how to evaluate, validate and authenticate web-bases information and resources.


Workshop1
In today's workshop i was asked to read an ICYouSee critical thinking page. http://www.ithaca.edu/library/training/think.html this page contains stratagies for evaluating the information found in websites. A stratagie i learnt, is to make sure you are in the right place, this tells me that you can not find everything on the internet. But to make sure you are in the right site is to check if the site addresses the topic you are researching and if the page is worth visiting.

The next stratagie i learnt was to look for ambiguity, manipulative, reasoning and bias to check if the information is credible as anyone can put information on the net. Question the authority of all the web sources and do not just accept an authors word without checking for supportive evidence.

The next stratagie i learnt was to consider the source. Try and find out who wrote or created the web pages, not just from their names but from something that indicates they are a good source. Some pages usually provide an 'about the author'.
Another stratagie is to identify why the web page was created. Is the purpose to inform, persuade or is it to sell you something.
Another stratagie i learnt was to check for grammer and correct spelling, this will show me if the page is authentic as a person who has written it for a purpose would have better skills and put more effort into their presentation.
The last stratagie i learnt was to distinguish web pages from pages found on the web, you can do this by deciding if the page was originally an article and not the for the purpose of the internet.


Workshop 2
I now have to read two more articles and compare it to the previous article i just talked about to see if there is anything else i can learn.

The second article i read is called Evaluating Internet Source at http://www.taftcollege.edu/newTC/Academic/INCO48/sec6-4.htm. From this site I have learnt that when you find a an article from a electronic source in a library, then the chances are that it is a reliable source as the librarian has previously evaluated the article and has found it acceptable. But if you use an article of the internet no one has elvaluated it and may be un reliable. I also learnt is to see when the page was lat updated, if the page was has not been updated recently then the laws or facts could of change by now making the information un-credible.


Workshop 3

The next part of the workshop i had to click on a link http://www.ithaca.edu/library/training/think60.html and complete the excersise required. I have to choose two of the attached five links about the sixties and evaluate the websites. The first article i chose to evaluate is American Cultural History: 1960 - 1969. To me this site does look as credible source. This is because at the bottom of the page it shows the date it was created, the copyright sign, statistics of the sixties, a hyperlink of the writer, the designer of the web page, when it was last updated and the logo of Lone Star College Kingwood Library. This shows me that the website contains actual information that may be correct and has been reasearch, another page that goes to information about the author, the fact that it came from a libray database meaning it has been evaluated previously and that it has been previously updated.

The second web page I decided to evaluate was sixties project Sixties Project. To me this site is not as credible as the one i just evaluted. This is because it does not go directly to the information about the sixties. The webpage was last updated in 1999 this shows me that the information may not be as credible as it is not recent, there is no information about the person/people that created the web page but only has an email and address. This could be seen as a credible source but does not have as much information as the others. The page does have some design but to me this would not be as effective as the other becuase it dosnt get straight to the point.

Week 5

Lecture

In today's lecture we were learning about search engines. There are three categories of infromation that you can find on the web, such as :
The Free, Visible Web.
The Free, Invisible Web.
and Paid Databases over the Web.

There is only two catagories of search tools, these are :
Search Engines
and Directories

A search engine is a web-based applicaction which crawls the internet, making indices of websites, usually from the information of text contained on them. Example of search engines are
Google
Yahoo
AltaVista
and AlltheWeb

Some problems that can come across when using search enginges could be that there are too many results, limited relevance or quality filtering of results to a search queary, misuse of page scoring/ranking system and building enormous indicies that include erroneous, irrelevant and out-dated results to user.

We then leart about directories which are human-edited pages. Web pages that get submitted to directored are reviewed and added by manual submission to ensure quality of the site. This can prevent pages being submitted automaticially which leads to troubles. There are many types of directories, here are some of the most reliable sort:
DMOZ....................................http://dmoz.org/
Google Directory .................http://directory.google.com/
Yahoo Directory...................http://dir.yahoo.com/
Look Smart ..........................http://www.looksmart.com/
About ....................................http://www.about.com/

Some search tips could be to use several search tools, read the search tips or help information at each search engine, for keyword searches use several words, guess a location, Select the wheat from the chaff by thinking about what you want, back up to find out where you are and use advanced search functions to narrow down the search.


Tutorial

I went onto the Monash website to read the information and four strategies that will help me to structure a good search in my Learning Log was
1) Keyword
2)Phrase
3)Boolean
4)Advanced / engine features
In the tutorial we had to do a quiz which in this quiz i finished all the questions but needed the Internet to help me out with the answers. to get the answers sufficiently i used the main point and used inverted commas and brackets.


When searching for a quote on a search engine it is best to enclose the question in quotation marks, for example "To be or not to be". This will force the search engine to search for the words in this exact order, and will reconize the phrase as a famous quote from Hamlet. If this phrase is not done this way the search engine will chokes because they will become stop words, (unimportant words which are too short and too comman to be considered relevant strings on which to search.)

When searching for a a web page of authors or genre's, for example writer and mystery it is better to enclose the text as a phrase, you would have a better chance of getting better hits. If you enter the text as they are the search engines would most likely send back hyperlinks to all Web documents that contain those words, this could contan hundreds of thousands of URLs.
If you know what topic of your questions is use a web directory rather than a search engine. Directories will probally not give you as much references as a search engine would, but are mostly likely to be on topic.

If you are wanting to find a Web page which is published from Yahoo, then select the Computers and Internet Topic, under this you should find a subtopic of the World Wide Web. By clicking on this link you will find another list of subtopics, many of which are relevant to your search. Selecting one of these subtopics will eventually take you to Web pages which have been posted exactly for the purpose of giving you the information desired.

These exercises will help me through out university as it will make it easier for me to find my information and will cut down the time i am using to search and put that time to completing my work.



Reading 1
A search engine consists of the boundry you use to type in a query, When you use a search engine, you are asking it to look in its index to find matches with the words you have typed in. Regional- Some search engines are limited geographically. For example, only information on Web sites in Australia may be indexed.
Targeted- limit themselves to one subject, like biography, medicine, graphics, art, fishing,
Reference-These provide information from a set of reference works, such as an encyclopedia. Britannica.
Directories- Directories are categorized lists of sites picked out by human editors. Directory databases are therefore much smaller than those of search engines.

Reading 2
when searching about topics using a "sum" can help it as an example is: use +history+medieval, or documents mentioning both, another way of getting a specific topic is using 'Boolean' logic example is: use history AND medieval for documents mentioning both.

Reading 3
Keyword Analysis,
Setting your Benchmark - Includes recording your current ranking for every keyword phrase in the search results, how many page have been indexed and much more.
Search Engine Optimisation - Completion of the search engine optimization, carry on the search engine and directory submissions.