Tutorial 3 and 4

Wow, we had a fun lesson today!

So how has twitter enhanced my EIR learning? Well, I think that it has given me a broader experience on how to use the web to communicate between my fellow classmates. In a way, I have found out that using twitter has been able to ask my EIR classmates and teachers about schoolwork. Granted, I had no idea how it worked, but I managed. Unlike Blogspot, twitter seems much faster. But both still require that people be online to reply. I think I would have to compare my EIR learning to a science experiment. There are many processes involved, and it can sometimes be maddeningly complex, but after all your hard work, you finally get something good in the end.

I think by using twitter and blogspot, I maight be able to confer with others and get to know more from them. I can ask for any good links to a website containing a lot of information or even go to other blogs that contain information as well.

My Dream Holiday

So we supposed to do a dream holiday thing today? Hmm, what to do ah? My dream holiday. Okay, well, I have an idea of my dream holiday, and that is to go to is the Northern territory of Rome!! I know it isn't that specific, but in this post, I shall explain why!

But I also have to answer some questions too, and they are:
a.Update your blog with magical pictures of your Dream Holiday destinations
b.Which evaluation criteria did you used to evaluate the multimedia websites for your dream holiday? Why?
c.Why did you choose to go to your Dream Holiday destination.


So why would I like to go to Rome? Of all countries, why this? Well...

First off, I have never been there, so no dount I would be quite interested in visiting. Also, some of my family members have gone there as well and told me all about it. I just want to go and see it for myself. This is why Rome is a dream vacation destination for me!

So what is there to do in Rome?? Well, the real thing that piques my interest is Rome's architecture.

The Coliseum:
Generally, when people mention Rome, the first thing that comes to mind is the Coliseum. It was supposedly where in the ancient times, gladiators fought to win the appeal of the Romans. Although the brutal battles have long been forgotten, the structure still remains. I'd really love to go and see what is inside!

The Coliseum

Vatican City:

I'm catholic, so I guess I'd like to go and catch a glimpse of this place. Especially St. Peter's cathedral! That is where the pope goes to celebrate the eucharist! I'd really love to see it!

St. Peter's cathedral

St. Peter's square

There are probably more things to see in Rome. For instance, I didn't know they had a fotress to protect the Pope!
















Vatican Fotress

Other things that caught my eye were fountains such as this one down here. What did they call it? The Trevi fountain I think.

Trevi fountain







Well, Rome does look like a cool holiday destination doesn't it? Maybe I'll ask my parents to plan a vacation there one day. And I heard they've got good food there too!


The website I had used for this is http://romeitaly.ca/ and what i used to evaluate this site was:

Purpose:
I found that the site fulfilled its purpose to a moderate extent as it was meant to help tourists understand what would await them if they were to travel to Rome. However, it might not do good for those who would like to know about culture and even food.


Coverage:
The website had a good coverage of the sights and attractions of the city. however, I find that the coverage is not that good as it does not show the full details about the italian city. Things like food and shopping places are not shown. However, I might admit that the information could be sufficient for the regular tourist who'd be content with the attractions. In my opinion, the website contains an average information level.


Accessibility:
The site is quite accessible as anyone can go in and check. I beleive it is a very accessible website for any tourist.


Presentation and Arrangement:
The site is well arranged and presented as the different pictures are placed under certain categories. This allowed me to be able to look for pictures of interesting attractions as I just had to find the category I was looking for and search for what I needed.


Usability:
The site is well usable as there were many links to subjects of interest. For example, there were links to view pictures and information for the Vatican city or the coliseum. All in all, it was easy to navigate this website.


Overall, I think this website ranks as average.

Practical 7

Well, I suppose I'll answer the practical 7 questions.

Question 1:
The best criteria I could use was Coverage. This is because in a website like STOMP, there will be many people commenting on all the different stories in the website and even adding their own sides such as pictures etc. Thus, the best way to evaluate it in my opinion was to base it on the content. In my view, the information in STOMP may not be completely reliable as the information is by many citizens in Singapore. Also, we are not sure about the whole picture of the story. Thus, some comments might even be exaggerated. Thus, in this practical, I have learned that sometimes we need to look at the context of the website and who are the ones participating in the citizen journalism so as to make a stand on its reliability.

Question 2:
Sharing my views in the wiki was a way I could get to let everyone know what sort of stand I took to citizen journalism. I feel that when it comes to citizen journalism, there should be a respect of privacy and for others and relevent information to be posted. i feel that I could open myslef better in the wiki.

Practical 4, 5 and 6

After using different search engines to find information, I realised that they provide a large window of opportunity to find information from. Some may not even give anything, and that is why we need to have a large range of search engines to search from.
I managed to get two site feeds up onto this blog, but somehow I had problem posting more. But I feel that using site feeds is better than going to OLE and clicking on the links. It so much faster and convenient!
As for the wiki, I didn't put that much in it yet, and others haven't edited the page either. Maybe its because they can't find it. I'll ask about this another day. But contributing to a wiki page is something new to me, so it shouldn't be strange.
One thing I do liked was being able to show others what I have found out through research. I find it quite easy to open up my mind about what I found out.
Of course, I haven't done much yet, so I can't write too much about this now. Hopefully, more people will post on the same space. I really can't imagine doing it all by myself.

Practical 6
Regretably, I have forgotten to post a reflection on practical 6, so here it is.

Whether it's more effective to use the deep web for research, I'd say no. This is because I feel that the deep web may not contain enough information for me as it is not registered on other sites. I also feel it is riskier to use the deep web as we don't know if it is safe. So I probably won't use it for research in my diploma either.
As for my wiki experience, I learnt that it is a good way to share information and correct for others mistakes. it is actually quite fun.

Forum discussion

Just yesterday I went and joined a forum and posted a reply. At first, I didn't think how people I didn't know would react to my posts. When i checked again, I saw that there was one person who thanked me for posting certain sites. I was really quite surprised that my post got a good review. It taught me that there are some people who need new knowledge on certain subjects and that had boosted my confidence in discussing

Practical 3

Just went and did searches on google and google scholar. Interesting facts and I was rather impressed with google's search features. It showed loads of different websites and relevant stuff! I'm so going to use google for future searches.
Google scholar didn't show much though. It was by commendable sources and the data was quite relevant, but I didn't really find what I wanted as it was too short a range. And even if I did, I couldn't view the whole thing as they were present in pdf's. So I'm all for google right now.
Still haven't posted on a forum or anything. Not even sure how to capture a screenshot of my discussions. Can anyone tell me a good forum to discuss on? Besides, I feel a little nervous talking to others I don't really know.
As for the citations and bibliography, I believe it is important as it shows where we acquire our information from. Also, it shows that the information we provide is not ours and it also redirects people to these sources.
Well, that's all for today. Perhaps I can get help with the forum thing. Hopefully, it won't be too late.

What I learned

I think one good thing I came out with was that I am now more confident in searching the net. Now I understand that researching on the net is a 'touch and see what happens sort of thing.'

I'm going to continue searching the way EIR has taught me how, and I'm gonna enjoy it!

Also, Ms Faridah has told us that we must persevere in our work, no matter how much rubbish and hurtful comments are thrown at us. I think that she is so toatally right! We can't let others stop us from doing what we like and what we want to do. Hey! It is our life after all!

I also learned that surfing the net requires patience. As I did the practical worksheet, I found that there were many difficulties in just getting the different url's for the sites we had to look for and that I just had to look and be patient. I suppose I was in denial when it came to that part and that's probably why I was bad at it. Another thing I developed during these first few lessons.

That's pretty much all I can think of for this week. We'll be doing some heavy duty stuff next week, so I suppose I can write more then.

Okay. I guess this'll do for today. See everyone next week!