Credibility of Internet Sources

When looking for information on the internet to use for doing assignments, MANY students will simply use the first website that appears on a search page. 

Just because a source is the FIRST on the list, does not MAKE it the BEST source to use. Just because it is ON the internet, does not MAKE it true.

Read this News article

Then think about these questions about the article:

• What is news biscuit? 
• What types of articles do they write? 
• Who writes them?
• Who wrote the article above?

When evaluating any sources on the internet you need to think carefully about the following:

• Source: 
• Who wrote the article? 
• What organisation or business published the article?
• Was it peer reviewed?
• Date: When was it written?
• Purpose: What was the motive or reason for this information being published?
• Relevance: Is the article or text relevant to my particular topic?

Guidelines for finding "better" / more credible sources: 

• Google books
• Google scholar
• Bookboon.com (free e-books)
• EBSCOHOST
• E-Brary

Improving your searches with Boolean Operators:
Boolean operators - see associated post

Boolean Operators

Notice how some small changes in the search term affects the number of search pages

TECH TERMS

Do some surfing of the net to understand the meaning of the following terms:

• Podcasting
• Videocasting
• Screencasting
• Live Streaming

Write a post on your own blog describing these terms. 

Make sure you reference all your sources

Technology Advances - TED TALK

What is "Haptology"? Watch this interesting "TED TALK" about the subject.

http://www.ted.com/talks/katherine_kuchenbecker_the_technology_of_touch

Blogging 101 - Following & Commenting on BLOGS

COMMENTS:
Although BLOGS usually involve an individual or company regularly publishing posts, being the primary contributor to content, it is usually possible to post comments on people's posts.

On one of my posts, or on a friends blog, publish a comment on one of the posts.

FOLLOWING:
To make it easy to keep up to date when someone posts on their blog, you can "follow" them by e-mail so that you automatically receive an e-mail when they post to their blog. If they have included an "e-mail following" gadget, you can put your e-mail address in the space and 'subscribe' to their blog. Alternatively, if you are using blogger for your own blog, on the blogger dashboard you can subscribe to any website that you want to follow.

Try out these functions by adding such gadgets to your blog and testing the out with a friend's blog. 

Blogging 101 - RSS Feeds

Dave Winer, father of RSS feeds says: 

"RSS feeds are automated web surfing ..."

Advances in technology are an attempt to make things easier and more efficient. With the development of the World Wide Web, access to news and interest sites has become very easy, but there is an ocean of information 'out there' on the web. How can we make 'surfing' the web easier, quicker, but still get us the information we need, when we need it?

One of the answers to this is RSS feeds. RSS feeds were created to make 'reading' various web sites easy and quick, by bringing the news from those sites right to your desktop,  blog page or web-site.

On this blog, look down towards the bottom right of the screen and find the RSS feed for "Science Daily". Click on one of the headlines that interest you and view the article.

Do some research to find out more about: 

• RSS feeds
• RSS Aggregator's

Blogging 101 - Customize your blog

Customize your blog in the following ways:

• Change the theme
• Take a picture of yourself. Upload the picture on a post introducing yourself
• Add an "E-mail following" GADGET to your site, so that others can follow your posts. 
• Follow one of the other students in the class once they have added the "E-mail following" GADGET 
• Find a site of interest which has an RSS feed, which you would like to read regularly. Add this feed as a GADGET to your blog
• Search the different GADGET's and find one that you would like to add to your blog. Some examples are polls, a list of favourites, a link to music you enjoy
• Find other ways you can customize your blog and make it personal