week 8

Lecture
In this weeks lecture we learnt about oral presentations. We learnt the techniques for properly preparing for the presentation. We also learnt how to use PowerPoint for our presentation to enhance its audio and visual effect. Lastly we looked at how you structure your presentation.

Tutorial

In this weeks tutorial we learnt how to use MS PowerPoint. The first task we had was to go to http://www.personal.psu.edu/uxg3/blogs/undergraduateresearch/2008/02/online-resources-for-how-to-pr.html and than list five strategies that will enable me to deliver a good presentation.
These are:

1. To design your slides with your audience in mind meaning you have to know your audience so you can use the appropriate level of expertise for your audience.


2. When presenting your talk take it slow it is more beneficial to give your audience a chance to take in what you said and have quality information then to have lots of information but the audience not being able to take that information so inevitable only getting low quality information.
   
3. In order for your audience to absorb more information from your presentation you have to keep it simple so they are not overloaded with information.


4. To make sure your talk goes smoothly you have to practice your talk so you have almost memorised it completely so that you can do your talk on automatically so you can not be put on the spot with Miss understanding of what you are saying.
   
5. When doing the slides on PowerPoint use colors with high contrast, including contrast with the background and adjacent colors.
   

The second task we had to do in our tutorial was to Construct six slide a PowerPoint presentation on my ideas about how to give a low impact PowerPoint presentation:

This is a title slide






This is a introductory slide

The first main body slide

The second main body slide


The third body slide


Summary slide

week 7

Lecture
In this weeks lecture we looked endnote a computer program. Endnote is a program designed to make referencing alot easy for students conduction essays, reports or any type of paper you have to complete in a particular unit for every assignment needs to provide proof of where your information has come from.

Our lecture explained that we should use the standalone program of endnote for it is the easiest form to start with for a research project. Once a student has their reference information prepared, for example and author, title, year, place published etc, they type the information into endnote in the appropriate areas and endnote puts the reference together and saves it automatically. This is how endnote works.

We use endnote because it keeps track of our references in case we want them for future reasons, because it has a variety of paper typed suitable for most referenceing needs and it has an easy search system that allows people to locate references with a particular project when saved in a specific category.

Tutorial
In todays tutorial we had to review an online referencing guide and include examples of referencing from five different types of electronic format material.

• The Web-page:

Stop climate change. [n.d.] Retrieved April, 2008, from Greenpeace: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/climate-change

• Article in an internet journal:

Tom. (2007). The legacy of Ronald Ryan's last day. [online].Retrieved April, 2008, Quadrant,51, pg 53-60. from http://0search.informit.com.au.library.ecu.edu.au/fullText;dn=20070330;res=AGISPT>

• For an Online Encyclopedia

Graffiti. (2008). In Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved April, 2008, from Encyclopedia Britannica Online: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9343951

• For an E Book

Mccall, Grant. (2002).Rapanui Cuttings from the Chilean Press. Retrieved April, 2008 from http://hdl.handle.net/1885/42305

• For an Electronic report

Mulligan, D., & Bickmore-Brand, J. (1998, July). Outreach, access and support programs for socio-economically disadvantaged people at Curtin: A feasibility study. Retrieved April, 2008, from http://eesj.curtin.edu.au/local/documents/les.doc

a screen shot showing Endnotev11 Exercises for Vista’ (showing 3 references)

a screen shot of Cite while you write Endnote Exercise

week 6

lecture

The lecture was about how Anyone can post information on the web because the information provided on the net might not be accurate, truthful or relevant so it is important to evaluate websites.

This is done by firstly finding out who published the web page and whether they are reliable. secondly finding out why the publisher published the web page and finding out what their goal or objective in publishing the web page. Thirdly finding out what is published on the web page- whether they're up to date with the information posted est.

Tutorial

The first part of today's task was to summarise the strategies provided on the website:



ICYouSee Critical Thinking page http://www.ithaca.edu/library/training/think.html

These strategies and tips were:

• Make sure you are in the right place.

This strategy is asking us the purpose of using one’s web. Because everything might not show up on the net, maybe the information you’re looking after is in a book that can be easily accessed in less time then with using other sources.

• When in doubt, doubt.

When we look up information on a website, we should evaluate the sources, because some of the information is misleading, therefore we need to consider bibliographic citations or supportive evidence

• Consider the source

By checking up on the author you will know if he or she has the proper authority and expertise to make their publication trustworthy. It is important not only to check their name but also to research it to find out if he or she is a qualified person that has other publications elsewhere.

• Know what's happening.

Determine the motive of creating the page, understanding the motive can help you judge the page.

• Look at details.
  

While we are in the website, we should look more depth of the website such as the words that are link together and the spelling, the links in the website does it works. These things should able to tell you whether the website is reliable.

• Distinguish Web pages from pages found on the Web.

Sometimes the text on a website was actually written for something else like a book, journal, or newspaper article. If the text seems written like this, the site must provide the reader with the correct original references. If however, the website does not provide this, it is best not to use the information

The second part of to days tutorial was to evaluate and compare strategies for evaluating information found on websites using the following webpages:

INCO 48: http://www.taftcollege.edu/newTC/Academic/INCO48/sec6-4.htm

This website has the same properties as the first website I evaluated except it was in more depth and had a few more topics it looked at such as copyright, censorship and compare information.

Good, the Bad and the Ugly: http://lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/eval.html

The website the good, bad and ugly had the easiest format to follow when finding information it also had easy to read dot points on Authority, Accuracy, Objectivity, Currency and Coverage.

We were then asked to Complete the "Reliving the Sixties: a Web Site Evaluation Assignment" exercise on the ICYouSee website.





http://www.ithaca.edu/library/training/think60.html. .

The website I chose to evaluate through this web site were

The Psychedelic Sixties

This site was made by the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia. From reading through some of the links from the home page I think most of the information on this page may not be all completely factual and probably not a very good source of information but i also don't believe that all the information on the site is untrue. I think that this site was put together by students and is mainly made up of stories and interviews from people who lived in that generation.

American Cultural History: 1960 - 1969

This website appeared to be very well designed on a plain background with any bright colours to distract the eye. The purpose of the website was to provide information on American culture in the 1960’s. It did have a lot of facts about the 1960’s with links to confirm the facts as well as a lot of general information. The authors name was clearly written at the bottom of the page as well as the page designer and who the article was written for. I believe the article would be good for research on American culture in the 1960’s.

week 5

Lecture
During this week's lecture we took an in depth look at search engines in general and the different types of search tools and options that are available to us.

A search engine in itself is a web-based application that looks through the Internet, creating indices which are most often based on textual information.

There are hundreds of search engines on the world wide web, but the most popular include, Google, Altavista, Yahoo and Alltheweb. Whilst search engines are extremely help full they do still have several problems. The major being that they return far too many results due to the fact that they have very weak relevance or quality filtering of these results.

This is a problem that is becoming increasingly worrying, because of the fact that the Internet is growing exponentially and this issue is not being dealt with.There are, however, several other smaller problems with web based search engines.

These include things such as not filtering broken links, misuse of the page ranking system, and building endless indices that include completely irrelevant results. Luckily for us there are some things that we can do to ensure that we receive more accurate results.

First of all we must remember to only use appropriate keywords and refrain from using commonly found words.

Secondly you must know what he is searching for. For example, if you were to search for a phrase, it would be much more effective to use ' '"(quotation marks)' at the beginning and end of all phrases. You may also use the '+' & '-' signs to add or remove certain additional topics to your original one. For example if one was to search 'jaguar' + cat, he would receive information on the animal jaguar, whilst if one was to search 'jaguar' -cat, he would only not receive any information on the word jaguar in relation to animals.

Last, but not least, most search engines have advanced options and in many cases familiarizing yourself with these can lead to much more accurate results as well.

Tutorial

During this weeks workshop we were required to complete three tasks. The first was to work through an interactive tutorial on search engines, listing four strategies that will help in structuring a good search. The next task was to complete an online quiz and take a screen shot of our end result and finally to discuss and summarise what we have learnt so far about information on the Internet and using search engines.

The four strategies that help in structuring a good search are:

1. For keyword searches, use several words.


2. Read the search tips or help information at each search engine.
   
3. Use many search engines, not just one- you will get a greater variety.


4. Select the appropriate search type, in many cases you will find relevant information in directories rather than search engines.
   

The second task was to complete an online quiz at http://siteseen.co.uk/questions/generalknowledgehard/ and post a screen shot of our end result.

The final task was to discuss and summarise what we have learn about information on the Internet and the use of search engines. In my personal opinion the Internet is a great source of information and we just simply have to learn how to sift through the useless junk to get to the use full data. It is all there, we just simply have to learn how to get to it. This is why the innovative minds of today have given us web based search engines. Whilst at times they are not as effective as we would hope, with some basic knowledge it is very easy to come to the results that you want. Whether it is using Boolean operators or simply taking advantage of the advanced search option, the tools are there for us to come to the right information. As the Internet continues to grow exponentially we can only hope that so too, do search engines and their effectiveness in presenting relevant results.

Extra Reading

Internet Search Tips and Strategies

http://www.virtualsalt.com/howlook.htm

This website takes an in-depth look into using Internet search engines and what tips and strategies can be used to maximise the effectiveness of our results. It covers everything from the different categories of information on the web all the way to the different search tool types, tips and strategies. I found this to be very help full is it is probably the most user friendly comprehensive list of searching tips and strategies. All of them are quite straight forward, but are things that many of us miss and can easily learn to end up with much better results.

Chapter Four: Search Engines

http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/history/ivh/chap4.htm

This website actually covers the history of web based search engines. It takes a look at how search engines first started, how they work and all the forms of search engines that are used electronically in today's world. This website isn't necessarily something that will help people in retrieving more accurate results but serves the purpose of informing people of their background history. I personally found all of the information interesting as most of it was very new to me and I would image that very few people actually understand or know about the history of search engines.

Search Engine Optimisation for Companies

http://www.websight.net.au/search-engine-optimisation.asp

This website is a Search Engine Optimization for small business marketing strategies to Australian and international companies.