Week Four

LECTURE SUMMARY

The week 4 lecture concerned the world wide web (www). This included understanding the difference between the net and the web. The web was described as an abstract virtual space that has a non-physical connection through hypertext links which can help to obtain documents, music etc.
Though the web cannot exist without the net, the net can exist without the web. This is because the connections in a network of computers is due to cables (physical connection) which allows the web to exist.
The history of the net is also discussed, focussing on the beggining of the net in 1965 where the first wide-area network was ever built in California. The when and why of the web are also explained.

When: Tim Berners-Lee (Researcher are CERN) in 1989
Why: To make the communication of information easier to send to one another

The 4 protocols for the www are also mentioned: TCP/IP, HTTP, DNS, URL
I also learnt about the different types of website eg: .org .com etc, which gives me an idea of the websites function and purpose.
A few slides of the lecture are dedicated to internet browsers: The types of functions it has and the differences between different browsers.
This lecture offers great information about the world wide web that most dont know. Searching for information on the net is much more efficient with this knowledge which can make future work much more efficient and of more value.

READING ACTIVITIES

A Brief History of the Internet

This page discusses various advancements of networks between computers and the creation of the internet. There is first discussion of the origion of the internet, explaining Leonard Kleinrock at MIT thought of the first packet switching theory which was the first step with the network between computers that could send information to and from. The page then continues on by explaining the concepts of internetting with packet switching with ARPANET which became the internet. The author also describes the introduction of TCP and IP as a communication protocol.Later through out the page the growth of the internet in the mid 70s is explained. A wide infrastructure was needed which invented the community which is existing today. Commercialisation also was a big point in history when there were buyers for this technology which led to network management to be more importantly maintained. The last paragraph explains the recent development of the internet which goes into much more specific details concerning the evolution that has occured and will occur including the advancements of broadand made and the investments needed to continue this growth.I found this page very interesting though there is a lot of technical jargon which makes it hard to follow though reading this has given me a general idea of how the internet became.

History of the World-wide Web

The website http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/history/ivh/frame_theorie.html holds five chapters concerning the history of the internet. The first chapter explains the evolution of technology with communication becoming much more advanced as the time went by, allowing the reader to understand how the telegraph became a great head stone in the timeline and how computers evolved to produce benefits to society through out time, especially in world war 2.The second chapter describes the creation of the networking system "ARPANET", where protocols were also made to help recieve and send data to other networking machines 'computers'. There also an explanation of how the ARPANET became today's internet and without it there would be nothing compared to what we have today 'WWW'.The third chapter discussed the becoming of the electronic mail better known these days as email. Searching is discussed in the fourth chapter, with search engines being constructed to allow collecting information to become more efficient and easier. The fifth chapter contains various statistics about different countries usage of the internet and internet coverage in the year 2000 and as can be seen, there are not many who used it at that time which shows how much the internet can change in such little time.

TUTORIAL ACTIVITIES

http://www.martinlutherking.org/ ACTIVITY

Before visiting the site

My best guess is that http://www.martinlutherking.org/ will be an organisation about continuing with Martin Luther Kings mission to eradicate racism only because of the 'org' at the end of the url.

After visiting the site

I found the site to be of some quality, giving articles and reports concerning King's movements with references to support them. There isnt a large amount of biased content which allows for this website to be of reasonable quality. The information is also backed up by the civil rights library presented which holds information that uphold the accusations within the website. The site is also an organisation hence the ".org" which one can assume that this is an authentic site which can be relied on.

http://haggishunt.scotsman.com/ ACTIVITY (AUTHENTICATING)

Determining the authenticity of the 'Haggis Hunt' website was quite clearly not to be taken seriously. This site has flaws that can be recognised to know it should not be used for any professional assignment. Some of the flaws include the belief that haggis is actually some sort of animal repeatatively shown on every one of their pages when actually it is minced organs of a sheep.

There are also advertisement which are far from relative to the purpose and information on the website.

I also spotted a spelling error in their 'fact comment' which is a very unprofessional thing to do.

A scotsman.com search bar is up the top of the page which includes a link to a dating source which is unprofessional.

http://www.molossia.org/ ACTIVITY (AUTHENTICATING)

I knew the Molossia website was not to be taken seriously as a professional source by a few clues sighted...

Firstly the website holds a shop, which led me to ask myself what country has a shop on their national website?

As far as I know, there is no country in a state of USA and even with a little research my first beliefs were confirmed when no quality searches appeared concerning the Republic of Mollosia.

A quote by 'His Excellency, The President' shown in a thumbnail screenshot below shows how unprofessional and informal the language is presented.

A photo is presented with 'the president' aboard the M.S. Wombat. As you can see in the photo below, it is a photo to be taken lightly with laughter as the president is seen in what is meant to be a millitary vessel though a blow up boat.

Week Three

LECTURE SUMMARY

This weeks lecture concerned information about online libraries & databases. I learnt that online databases are a collection of information and were great for researching and gaining this information about particular areas of research. I learnt that the advantages of online libraries have current information, easy to use and make notes from and can be accessed any time of the day, though there are a few disadvantages such as various content can be hard to find and may take some time to find.
Some of the online resources spoken in the lecture are:
- Text Repositories
- Electronic Journals
- Electronic Books
I also learnt the importance of referencing these resources, the copyright issues and how to complete it.
This lecture was very useful to me as I now know how to research information on the ECU library and processes of finding valuable information quickly.

TUTORIAL ACTIVITIES

MEDline Search Engine
The MEDline plus website has a very useful search engine that provides access to medical information. I typed in "Cannabis" and a brief summary of marijuana appeared on a new page. The information was too brief to find any specific information about the drug though there were a few links at the bottom half of the page which connected my to another websites information about Marijuana http://www.nida.nih.gov/Infofacts/marijuana.html. This website held facts, statistics, a detailed explanation of cannabis and the effects on the body.Overall Medline plus was great tool for learnign about Marijuana with useful links to great sources.

MEDline plus Website
I found visiting the MEDline plus website very interesting as I am interested in human biology and various diseases. The website has given me an enormous amount of information concerning health and drugs which can be obtained by clicking on one of the link at the left of the homepage. One of these links is "Health Topics". Here you can gain information about disorders, conditions, diagnosis tests, therapies, learning to stay healthy and demographic groups. The "Drugs & Supplements" link also provides useful information, from prescriptions to herbs. The search process for this information is very easy as it gives you an alphabetical online library.The rest of the MEDline plus website offers search processes to find doctors, local resouces for medical purpose and including an online medical encylopedia.Knowing this website, I can now use it to add to my knowledge diseases, which can also help me as a resource for an assignment for doing my Bachelor of Human Biology next year.

The 10 useful functions or search tips on ECU Library are:


1) The 6 'find' link categories to help find what type of text you are looking for.

This helps to decide what type of text you are searching for which leads you to more specific categories to identify what type of text you wish to find.


2) The ecu library catalogue provide easy access to the library's resources. This is a helpful search option to help find what you're looking for.

You can use useful search functions like 'keyword' searches or 'subject' searches etc which allow you search results to be more specific.


3) Finding journal articles is made easy with the journal article database which gives you 6 categories to find databases.



4) By going into the 'website' link through the 'find' box, you are given a choice of subjects to choose from which are relative to the information you're trying to find.



5) The reserve collection service allows you to reserve material which will be saved for you to loan at a later date.



6) MetaQuest is another function which helps to find particular databases with up to 10 at the same time which can make searching easy and efficient.



7) Search by faculty. This allows you to obtain search result relative to the faculty you want your results from.



8) The SFX article locator allows you to find a full text article that may even be hard capy in the library or on e-reserve.



9) If your wanting to find results via the subject you chose, another selection of sub subjects is available which gives you the option of next choosing a database, website or guide.



10) Once you choose your faculty/category/subject etc, you are led to a number of databases which you can choose from. These databases differ with search results depending on what type of result you wish to obtain.


Week 3 - Journal Research (Economy & Global Warming)

The task of researching for a journal concerning economy and global warming was easy to complete using the ECU library of journal databases. The library allows you to search for journals via a large number of journal databases. It only took five minutes to search for a quality full text journal which contained valuable information written with facts and quotes from experts and important figgures in the world, eg: 'Tony Blair'. The article discusses countries like USA who have not yet signed the Kyoto Protocol because President George Bush didnt want economic damage upon USA even though USA is the largest producer of greenhouse gasses. While Bush makes this decision, it is said that there will be major temperature increases with droughts more commonly occuring; contributing to gradual economic damage to not just USA but to all countries if not solved quickly.This task shows how simple the ECU library allows research for quality information to be.http://0-proquest.umi.com.library.ecu.edu.au/pqdweb?did=1153840031&sid=2&Fmt=3&clientId=7582&RQT=309&VName=PQD

READING ACTIVITIES

Finding what you want on the webAn article on the BBC news website posted an opinionative comment by Bill Thompson, a technology analyst who comments on the difficulties of searching through the web. Thompson discusses how Google is his primary search engine for researching current information though sees flaws that make his research somewhat difficult. Thompson says that he has tried many other search engines and one of them being MEDline plus, which is an example of one not being indexed with other search engines like Google adding to his difficulties. Thompson uses "Debbie", a librarian as an example of how efficient searching is done. Debbie uses more than one search engine to gain her information, more than a simple search and a click on the button. This implies that gaining great results from searching can take time and effort.This being an opinion piece has me to agree or disagree. In this degree I agree as I have found that searching for quality information is extremely troublesome when using little resources of just one search engine, even if it does have a large amount of data as Thompson said.

Bare bones Lesson 7: Basic Search Tips
The Bare bones Lesson 7: Basic Search Tips page in the USC Beaufort Library helps readers to search the web efficiently with ease which simple additions of symbols when typing in the search boxes. I tried the assignment at the end of the page with typing the important keywords in the search first, because I havn't realised this before unlike the other useful search tips. For this i used google and typed in economy indonesia history and then history indonesia economy and found that the first search held better quality sites at the beginning of the hit page. Knowing these tips I feel confident that searching for information for future university assignments which gain me more valuable information.

Week Two

LECTURE SUMMARY

Starting the Preparation Course in the second week, beginning with my Accessing Knowledge lecture, I found all of the information very familiar. The lecture concerned various internet browsers, Windows applications and the differences between Microsoft XP and Microsoft Vista. Helen discussed the ways of working with these applications with both XP and Vista. She also showed us the statistics of the use of various internet browsers with Internet Explorer being the most commonly used, which was no surprise. Though It wasn't until the tutorial that I realised the differences between the two operating systems because I havn't yet used Vista.

TUTORIAL ACTIVITIES

Microsoft Word

Using Microsoft Word 2007 was very fustrating to use as I have never previously used it and having to produce this having 2003 instructions. After completing this task, I have found that Microsoft Word 2007 is much more convenient and efficient to use than the previous Microsoft Word application that I use personally.
This task allowed me to learn how to double space, double line, make headings appropriately, create the contents section with a clean format and how to reference my resources.
I have created some screenshots of my end result of this task displayed below.





By epsilon890 at 2008-03-10

Microsoft Excel

Completing the Microsoft Excel task has given me the ability to learn how to create tables that hold information which can then be made into presentable pie and coloumn graphs. I found the graphs hard to change the axis labels though overall I am happy that I have learnt the skills needed to present information needed for possible assignments in the future.





READING ACTIVITIES

Graphic File Formatshttp://www.knight-web.net/tutorials/photoshop/ (Graphic File Formats) teaches you about the various types of formats of a image file. Some of these are Join Photographic Experts Group (.jpg), CompuServe (.gif), Bitmap (.bmp), The Tagges-Image File Format (.tiff), PhotoShop Document (.psp ~ .psp ~ .spp).Each format has advantages over others. An example of this is a jpeg. A jpeg format contains all the colour information of a RGB image. This enables jpegs to be best for the internet, which explains why this is the most commonly used format. While TIFF is used to transfer files between different types of computers which use different applications, for example: Mac -> Microsoft. This is where the other formats fail.There are many more advantages of these formats which are explained on the site. This source has given me a great understanding of why there are different image formats and how they are used.TIFF is used to exchange files between applications and computer platforms as it can be readby both Macintosh or IBM compatible / Windows (PC's) computers.

Week One

Having read the blackboard unit recourses I was able to look back on the first week's lecture which I found very handy because it contained valuable information for a person starting this course. This information included the course outline: assignments, where I can obtain information, student responsibilities and plagiarism.
I found the first lecture's information more useful to me than the 2nd, though likely because I'm already partially computer literate. The tutorial was also great, learning all about blogger and the blackboard.

Screenshot



READING ACTIVITIES

PC Lube and TuneMy first reading task included directing me to http://www.yale.edu/pclt/default.htm to read about PC Lube and Tune (PCLT). This site is to enable any person to access knowledge concerning tutorials, computing technical subjects and introductions. They author of the site explains this as a similar tool to a service station where the user is able to gain knowledge. The website contains specific understandings of PC Hardware, handling Java and C#, Graphics user interphace, computers/video files and HDTV, technical perspective on The Microsoft Antitrust Case, the tragedy of Microsoft and Java, chracter encoding and web standards, microsoft.NET framework, distributed applications and the web, das boot, the storm before the COM, introduction to SNA, introduction to TCP/IP and APPC and the Ethernet. All of these are directed through hyperlinks from the homepage, which I found very easy to access because it had a clean format.

How Stuff Works http://www.howstuffworks.com/pc.htm. This website offers excellent information to those who are beginners to computers. I have a little experience using computers, leaving this website somewhat repeatative. Though later down the page, the information begins to become more specific concerning the computers hardware and what their functions are. This a little interesting to me because there were 1 or 2 hardware components that taught me more about them.