Week 11

Lecture;
In todays lecture we learnt how to organize the received knowledge, sometimes we have far too much information which is often irelevant and not required, so we must have good methods of how to sort through this. We went over the different options and why they are necessary.

Dictionary Definitions

Data - facts or figures to be processed; evidence, records, statistics, etc. from which conclusions can be inferred; information

Knowledge - An awareness of factual information. Includes actual knowledge (positive or definite), personal knowledge (based on one’s own observation), and constructive knowledge (based on other circumstances).

Information - something told; news; intelligence; word

Wisdom - the quality of being wise; power of judging rightly and following the soundest course of action, based on knowledge, experience, understanding, etc.; good judgment; sagacity

My definitions;

Data - data is information that is real and proven, it is information you can relie on. Data can include things such as statistics, records, facts, figures and evidence. Things that are genuine and not made up.

Knowledge - Knowledge can be either personal, contractual or actual. They are all from different sources but usually knowledge should be genuine like data.

Information - Information is something you can learn, find or hear from a person or own instinct.

Wisdom - Wisdom is how wise a person is or can be. Or the wisdom of a certain source or thing.

Week 10

Lecture;
In today's lecture we went over; Information management, sometimes with lack of management, we are given information about using computer processing power to manage information, we can receive vast quantities of information it's how we sort through this and gain constructive information. Organising skills, using text, documents, images, web pages, bookmark, presentations, assignments, citations and references.


Activities;
The Pros & Cons of Using Atoms & Bits
The author goes on about the future use of bit and atoms saying how a digital world is an inevitable future. Pros of Atoms & Bits is that it gives you the ability to download products you purchase from the Internet, also goes on how atoms are not caught in customs so how we would be free to gain access to anything without consequence this in some retrospective is a bad thing, we would have access to anything we want in seconds. Cons of Atoms & Bits the ability to take anything we want without the threat of consequences. The ideas expressed by the author are fantastic and sound some what unbelievable but are the really what we would want in as our future.

Week 9

Lecture;
In today's lecture we discussed Email.
Email has passed the telephone as the preferred means of communication, Email works effectively as it is free, its ubiquitous, its asynchronous, you can infact communicate with people all over the world day and night. The Internet - Email, Skype and MSN have taken over Phone conversations. They are much cheaper and more efficient.

Week 8

Lecture;
Oral presentations are not the most popular of types to perform in front of numerous people. Usually a university study would much prefer to write some other form of assessment up like an essay, report or portfolio and then submit to a teacher. But fact is, we have to do them. So for those people who are more keen on the written assessments and for others who need improvement, here are some tips for your presentation.
Apart from discussion on your topic you should always include: compelling data, support your data with proof, visual evidence or facts, emotional connection - so show your audience you are passionate about this and back your facts up, if not the audience will loose all connection with your presentation, generate energy - using more levels, moving around and even pointing or facial expressions, more proof that supports your facts and arguments.
As written assessments normally format, you should also use the structure of, Introduction, Body paragraph and Conclusion. This will help you keep everything in order too because if not it's not very easy to follow for the audience. Never read off your PowerPoint, you should always have memorised parts so you can allow yourself to make eye contact with your audience 50% of the time.
Covering all these steps will assure you a well prepared PowerPoint/electronic presentation, But except for all this you should also prepare palm cards (optional), practise your speech, pace your talking, preparation with technical items.

Week 7

Lecture;
End note is an excellent source of referencing. It is a program which allows quick and reliable referencing, citations and bibliographies.
End note can be used in two different ways, you can use it as a standalone program, to reference for a research project or integrated into Microsoft word, to help organise your bibliography for a written assignment.
End note is set out with different windows allowing you do to numerous items at a time, it records them all and organises how you should use them depending on the sort of documentation it's for. It is a fairly easy program to use and you can add it to your Microsoft word doc lists, it's also available on vista and from there you have many different options of which reference you wish to conduct. You should use end note because it is a reliable and common program for referencing.


Activities;

Week 6

Lecture;
Evaluation and authentication are the two key steps to finding decent information off the Internet. To find a reliable site there are other things you must take into account. For example, the type of site, .com (commercial), .org(organisation), .fghrewkhf(random letters will normally be spam). An organisation website will normally have bias information because they are trying to support one side of something, that's what organisations are about. So you should never rely on these sites when you want both opinions. 90% of the time they will only speak of one side.

You should also look for an Author or Editor. Usually at the bottom of the web page there will be a full name with the editor or author of some sort, some sites may not have one mentioned but if so it's best advised to then run that name into a search engine and find some background info on that person, so you can be certain they are a professional or academic and not a bias person.

The date is a very important matter in web searching, sometimes you could be reading an article and think it was a great source but then find somewhere on the page it was last edited in 1995, that would be no good if it was a subject that's changed over that time. So you must always identify the date and time the site was last edited or proofed.

If the site contains a Sponsor that is another excellent source of finding the authenticity of a site. If you find a sponsor you should immediately search them and determine whether they have a good reputation and are they reputable? This will also allow you to find out how reliable the site information will be.

Activities;
The Site http://www.ithaca.edu/library/training/think.html evaluates how to use the Internet. The first strategy explains why the web was originally created and how it is used today. It suggests you should make sure you are using the appropriate site and that the Internet is the best way of getting the information you’re looking for.

The second strategy suggests that you should be skeptical of what you read on the Internet. Don’t necessarily trust what is written and always look for other sites to check that the source is credible.

The third strategy talks about finding out whether an author of a source is credible. It explains how to search for an author on a site such as explaining things like truncating the URL to find out who created the site.

The fourth is to see who put their money into the site, who set it up, who sponsored it and what it is talking about. Since money talks, you have to make sure it is not biased and make sure it has documentation such as citations or a link. If there isn’t you should probably not use the site for research.

Fifthly, make sure the website has good grammar and spelling, has good facts and sources and check when it was last revised. Don’t always pay attention to the graphics; it may just be a gimmick to look pretty.

Finally it suggests you make sure the website is a website rather than a magazine or article, as the site says “distinguish web pages from pages found on the Web.”It also suggests the criteria of authority, accuracy, objectivity, currency, coverage and value.

Week 5

Lecture;
Week fives lecture was on search engines. We discussed what a search engine is (a web-based program that gives you links to other sites relating to your search) and we also went through the different search engines used today. Google, Yahoo, AltaVista and AllTheWeb are the most commonly used yet there are many many more, some you might never have heard of. There are different sorts of search engines, some are created to only specify in one certain area of information. For example there is: SearchEdu.com, which is specifically for university sites, and specific branded search engines like MSN search which is from Microsoft. We also viewed some statistics from the U.S. search engine rankings in September 2007 and Google, a predicted was on top of them all with 57% followed by Yahoo on 23.7% then Microsoft, Ask and AOL all with low percentages. From this lecture i learnt that Google is definitely the top search engine throughout the world.


Activities;
Tips for using search engines

1. Use keywords
2. Refine your search (be more detailed)
3. Relevancy (keep your search relevant)
4. Try using indexes