Monthly Archives: August 2012

Homework 1

While reading Research strategies by William Badke it has taught me about the many different uses of technology and how it has helped us through our daily lives. In chapter one badke talks about how technology has improved. Before there was print it was all in words you had to remeber what others said. the Chinese actually invented the first printing press before the europeans but Europe had revolutionized the press. Myself im wondering, why didnt the Chinese revolutionize this technology. Was it because they were scared or didnt have enough power to do so? Now during Ww1 U.S started using WWW, but it didnt get more advanced until Much later in time. Then comes more of the modern ages such as books and kindles, i never Though techonlogy went from nothing to something. This world has gone from tablets and scrolls to now e-paper.

hw1

While reading Research strategies by William Badke it has taught me about the foundation of information and the uses. In chapter one Badke discusses how throughout history information must be expressed and taught for future generation. He talked about how even a simple thing like what plants are edible could help future generation be more secure on what they could eat. Badke also disgust the transformation of the way information is processed, from simply preaching to the printing press to now the www. In chapter eight Badke explains of the pros and cons of the www and how to use it properly. He let’s us know what should be use in a research paper and how to obtain it while giving us ways to use it. Badke also explains the danger of plagiarism and how easy it is to do it and catch it with modern technology.

Notes from today, and reading and blogging assignment for Wednesday, September 5

Today we discussed the history of information technology (timeline) and watched a video on the information lifecycle:

http://youtu.be/w9rSkYw0CKA

We also discussed primary and secondary sources of information, publishing and gatekeeping, and strategies for effective reading for research.

For Wednesday, September 5 please read pp. 1-7 of Pavlik’s book Media in the Digital Age (distributed in class and available on reserve in the City Tech library), pp. 6-9 of Harrington and Meade’s read:write: Digital Possibilities for Literature and view two videos: Blogs in Plain English and Wikis in Plain English. Write one reading response blog post of at least 100 words; refer to the blogging guidelines or ask me if you have any questions.

If you did not submit your blog post by today’s deadline, you can still get credit if you post it by 5 pm on Thursday.

Enjoy the long weekend!

~Prof. Leonard

Summary of Chapters 1 and 8 of the Research Strategies by William Badke

In the chapters 1 and 8 of the book “Research Strategies”, William Badke discusses the advantages and inconvenient of the new manuals of information compare to the old one and also the techniques of information gathering. Indeed, in chapter one, the author says that printing is important since it enables us to avoid memorizing, but Badke believes we must verify information before printing. Still in the same chapter, the author explains how the printing press and internet have revolutionized the world. Next, he states that gatekeepers had control over the printing press which helped to preserve credibility of the information. However, he asserts that information from the web is less credible because internet is the area of liberty of talk. In chapter eight, Badke gives some tips for an efficient achievement of any kind of research such as books and articles selection, note taking, using of quotes, giving credit to author and so on, but she stress about gravity of plagiarism.

Homework 1

In chapter one William Badke have really help me to understand how powerful information and knowledge is. How knowledge and information can be a tradition to help keep the society and the generation alive. Information has generally spread throughout the world and becoming easier to access, people can go the internet and look up any information and that search engine will give you that specific type of information you want. Since the generation has change and the technology have become a big impact in people lives, we don’t need to ask people for information or looking up on books anymore we just go to the internet, and that’s the problem I have with that. It seems that the internet is our only solution, I mean we rely on the internet to much that  people believe what they see on the internet are true facts. While reading the first  chapter  has help me realize that information is changing throught out time, we need to dig deeper to our sources and find out if our information is reliable or not.

Homework One

While reading these chapters, I couldn’t help but, to think of my own personal experience with research papers. I believe I have written about eight to ten research papers. I can’t even remember one topic I wrote about. Who knows I probably wrote a paper on the California Gold Rush. I would pick any topic, not caring at all. Now thinking about it, I kind of feel sorry for my professors. They had to read my boring papers, which I obtain most of my information from a Google search. When  Badke mention how people would normally pick the top five links from a google search, I couldn’t stop laughing. I am one of those people, especially if I’m doing a research paper. I didn’t care about the source. Never thought if it was reliable or not. All I wanted was to obtain enough information to write paper which long enough to meet the minimum amount of pages allowed. Once I had the information I would skim through it to get the most important information. I had no problem being a ruthless reader, but I was a boring writer. I was a summarizer/paraphraser.

In addition, while reading the preface an Allstate insurance commercial  pop into my head. Badke mentions in his writing, how people would believe all the information they read online. Now we are the gatekeepers like Badke points out. Some of us don’t question the source ,where the information was obtained, and if the person is an expert on the topic. It’s sad to say but,  I’m a Wikipedia reader and I have never questioned the source.

Homework #1 Chapter 1 Blog Response

From the 1st page of the chapter to the last, Badke came out the gate swinging. Badke’s style of writing is very aggressive and he doesn’t waste anytime getting his point across. Badke approached his topic head on and spoke about how societies and their traditions have escalated throughout time. As Badke progresses in his teaching he briefly shows how information and culture was passed down from generation to generation. Although he agrees passing culture generation to generation is a good thing, he also takes one step ahead and talks about the disadvantages. Although they were passing the information down, it was verbally so it was becoming more inaccurate every generation. This inaccuracy all came to a halt with the invention of the printing press because it allowed for multiple copies of documents so no one had to pass it down because it was written all around. Then came the Internet, which was an advancement that was also a major setback because of people putting up information that was false.

LIB1201 8/29 Homework

Reading chapter 1 of Badke’s book my impressions of it is it puts up a solid effort in engaging you for some boring old school text book.  The author clearly has a sense of humor which finds its way into his writing.  I never thought I could laugh reading a book on effective ways of studying.  The information present in chapter 1 and the examples made to explain them were once again engaging.  Badke goes on about how a traditional society handles information, to the invention of the printing press and World Wide Web and what changes they brought to the game. Terms such as “gatekeeping” which was a consequence of the printing press was a fairly new term to me that easily describes something I already knew.  He also goes into ebooks and how they shook up the industry of print and how they changed the way we get our information and who publishes this information. Chapter 1 over all was a great way to introduce the book.

Initially I thought our professor made a typo; why in the world would she ask us to read chapter 1 then jump ALL THE WAY to chapter 8? Surely there must a method to her madness.  I was right. Each so called chapter pretty much stands on its own. I figure I can use this book to suit a very specific need in studying different kinds of materials.  This chapter goes on about connoisseur and glutton reading, interesting terms to describe two kinds of readers.  A reader who is a “mindless sponge” reading for entertainment is classified as the glutton reader and the reader who is ruthless in only using the information who needs is the connoisseur. He also explains in this chapter why plagiarism is a serious offense and 5 steps to zero in on the content you need from a book. I never actually considered using a books index to help me research and a feel like a fool for not doing so before.  Promptly taking his advice a simply read all the study questions at the end of the chapter to do this homework assignment as they basically clued me on to what to look out for and what to retain.

Chapter 1 (homework 1)

After reading chapter one I’ve come to find we as a nation need to learn how to communicate better. Yeah we spend all of our time chatting on Facebook, acting all cool on Twitter, and even texting our friends but what happened to the simple way of just getting out of the house and experiencing our stories verbally and in person. In the chapter he mentioned that back in the day only source of communication was through talking to one another and passing each story down.

I do have to agree about how we pass information which is completely better then how it used to be. A person that can easily access a computer can get any piece of information just by typing it in on Google. As soon as something cool, interesting, informative, or something completely stupid is quickly uploaded to a computer and spread around quickly.

I believe that our communication should be handled differently, but our way to spread information has improved since the Printing Press and should continue to improve so that our information is accessed even easier then it is today

Homework 1 Emira Marra

After reading chapters one and eight of William Badkes book, research strategies: Finding your way through the information fog, I began to wonder, how efficient is the information that we can easily reach nowadays? is it usable and can it be counted as accurate information. From reading the chapters it seems that it is necissary to investigate information and make sure it is comming from a viable source before we can use it as evidence to our questions or thesis. Badke explores the different ways of understanding if information is precise. In order to use information it must be relevant and reliable. In chapter 8, Badke demonstates key steps in taking a multitude of information and constructing it into smaller, useful portions such as PDF files and so on. I found this part of the text to be useful and interesting because it helps you organize your thoughts so they dont become scattered.