Thursday, January 31, 2008 - The most important lesson in UIR :

Throughout the entire course of the UIR, i have learnt many things that would be valuable to me in my future projects or work life. Valuable information and skills such as technique of searching for information online and the evaluation of the internet resources.

I think that the most important lesson that i have learnt, is the evaluation of internet resource. Evaluation meaning, the critieria of judging, how to sort out the different types of website, and how a website is good or bad. This is important as, everyone can find information online, but not everyone can evaluate the website found, and determine whether the information is reliable, useful or related. Therefore, i think that this is the most important lesson that i have learnt in UIR

Fats RANTS 6:31 PM

- Week ... the week after e-learning week 2 :

This week, we beefed up our assignment 2 Wiki and other stuff during lesson. Originally planned to be doing practical worksheet 8.

So anyway, i went ahead and do practical worksheet 8. Among all the work i have done in poly life, i find that this one , is the most pain in the ***; Bibliography.

There are SO MANY different ways of citing something, in A.P.A style. Also, there is also more than 1 style of citing. That really confuses me. But through all this, i further understood why there is a need of citing the source that you use. Imagine your own work being used by others as a reference, and they claim it as their own.. How pissing would that be?

It is always important to cite and refer to the source where you get your information. It is of the utmost importance. Plus, remember the citation format and make sure it is done properly.

Fats RANTS 7:39 AM

- E learning week 2 :

This week is e-learning week again. So.. no lessons.

We're supposed to do practical 7, which is about updating our Wiki with the information we found during practical 6a and 6b.

I find that the Wiki is a very very powerful tool in the internet now. Previously, people have to subscribe to their own WWW, to get their own website. However, with Wiki, anyone with a computer and internet connection would be able to create a blog or a Wiki. Blog may seem better then Wiki. However, blogs do not allow strangers to edit your content or contribute. A Wiki allows everyone to contribute, and i think that is a very powerful tool. Things improve because people contribute and give comments. Therefore, i think that Wiki is a great way to start a discussion on a new topic and share your views with everyone.

When i look at Wikipedia, i think that it is very complicated to and time consuming to create a page on a particular topic. But after going through wetpaint Wiki, i found out that, creating a Wiki is actually very simple, and it serves as a great tool for project communication. If the Wiki is only for our group, it can also be used as message board, to inform the other group mates of the progression of the project.

The Wiki would definitely help me in my future project or work... cause it FREE!

Fats RANTS 7:28 AM

Thursday, January 24, 2008 - Week er.... E-learning week. :

There is no lesson this week as it is an e-learning week. However! we had assignments tasked to us. we were supposed to do practical 6b.

After doing 6b, i found that, there are actually many sites out there, which gives you the same information, but varies in terms of site quality. An example would be that a site might look horrible, non-professional and unorganized. However, that site actually gave more information then another professional website that is 10 times better then the previous one.

I've also learned that evaluation of websites is not as simple as it looks. You have to go through every single page of the entire website. So if a website has tonns of pages, good luck. looking through those pages, you have to compare them, whether they are consistent, the layout, the user friendliness and the information given. You also have to check whether the information on the website is accessible for free or might need a log-in to get hold of it. It is interesting to find out that there are so many different small details that a common user will not take note of when they visit a website. I've also learned that, those small details, would add up to a good website.

Fats RANTS 6:51 PM

- week 7 :

We had a short class quiz this week and i scored 9 out of 12 for it. Not very good for a simple quiz though =p

Ok, so assignment 2 officially commences... We formed up in groups and my group topic is "impacts of drug abuse".

This lesson, i learned the different principles and ways that a website can be evaluated. Not only by the looks of the website, but also the information provided, the design, the user-friendliness and much more. We also had to see whether the information provided was up-to-date and accurate. Having done web design and creation myself, this lesson was very important for me, to evaluate my own website, in order to improve it. It would definitely be a good lesson to remember for my future projects or work life.

We also started on the practical 6a, which although is named practical, is infact part of the assignment 2 itself.

Fats RANTS 6:42 PM

- Week 6 :

Finally ! assignment 1 is due, and handed in. Thats 1 load off the shoulders.

This week, we learnt about the different search strategies we should use when searching for information on the internet. It was an enriching lesson, and would definitely help me refine my search in the future. I never knew there were so many different strategies that we can use while searching for information on the internet. This topic should be made compulsory in every course!

We were also told that assignment 2 would start during the holidays ( :( ) and what we were supposed to for it.. Holidays are gone.. again..

Fats RANTS 6:38 PM

- The Search Operators :

This week, we did the practical that was to help us with our assignment 1. It was an interesting practical exercise as i finally tried out the different search facilities that i have learnt in the other lessons. Search facilities such as the meta search engine and subject directories. I've also learnt that the way we phrase our search, our keywords and the boolean operators in between are extremely important in order to retrieve a good search result.

So anyway, a meta search engine as i have mentioned before works like a combination of many different search engine. Sounds convenient and good right? In fact, it is not. Although the results retreived consists of a variety of websites from different search engine's index, many operators such as " " or AND, cannot be used. Some of the meta search engine does not recognise those operators. I find that using the original search engine such as google itself can result in a far better search as compared to the meta search engine.

What is the most interesting is the subject directories search i made. It returned alot of websites that are related to what i was searching. Compared to google, which might sometimes return you junk. I tried searching many different things in the subject directories, and all the results returned were useful. However, the number of results returned might sometimes be pathetically little.

It was an interesting lesson, and would definitely help in my future projects!

Fats RANTS 6:24 PM