Author Archives: tarikclarke

Before this course I knew what google scholar was and what it was used for. I however did not know how to use it effectively. Limiting keywords, shortening phrases and even searching for topics related to the direct subject matter were a couple tools of trade I am able to take away with this course. Even though my research project is turning out to be a little more difficult than I originally planned it is a good challenging experience for me to now have to use these library catalog databases and expland my research methods. This is definitely something I will be using to write any extensive research papers I may have in the future in my other classes and I feel as though this experience was helpful.

-Tarik

I am still searching in different places but like I said previously theonly way to get accurate and fulfilling results in this proccess is to set aside an entire day or at least 8hours plus maybe not all togeteher but just for resarch. i am familiar with the catalog system from my old school at suny old wstbury, We often had to open up books during class to pertain to daily lessons. Using the catalog for research is a ittle different, there is a specific strategy to searhing in systems like this and you can only leran from practice. Im sure the longer we partcipate in this research process the better we will becom as researchers and the easier the research will become.

-Tarik

The more and more I get deeper into this project the more I realize exactly how much time and effort will needed to be put in to get the results I want. I have been using Google scholar, and getting information, but I am not finding the specific type of articles that I am looking for. I also would like to know how you found certain information in video form, because I believe that would also be helpful as well. I am going to use the video we had to watch about copyright as a source in my essay, because just watching that video prompted me to choose this topic. Otherwise I can see I will probably need a little more help than I originally expected but I guarantee my end result will be well rounded and deeply researched. I would not only like to explicate the knowledge i have found but also learn it for myself as Badke mentioned.

-Tarik Clarke

Honestly it was very difficult to come up with a research topic propoasal. There were many options but I didnt want to be the person who just picked a topic and ended up being completely uninterested and wanting to change it mid research.(this has happened to me numerous times before). And after reading Badke it is clear that the individual’s interest in the topic is a large structural proportion of the success of the actual assignment and final product. After all of the readings, and videos assigned I noticed the works that caught and kept my attention most were the informative pieces on copyright. I also am an artist looking forward to entering the music industry so it would only be right to brush up on my copyright information laws and loopholes. In turn, the topic I chose was copyright plagarism. Hopefully it isnt too broad and if it is, it’s easy to chisel down into a more narrow and direct idea.

-Tarik

This chapter went into detail about the actual learning element of writing a research paper that we as students often forget. The information that stood out to me a lot was the use of data as a tool instead of just attaining data for some goal. Badke explains that the information that we go out to find should not just be the first and most common source (google) that we often find ourselves using while slipping into a uniform system of search. He wants us to go out use real life, access a library and expand our normal ways of thinking about research. That way in the end we are not also completing an assignment, we are learning. Interesting document.

-Tarik C

I honestly did not like either of the readings this go around. The metadata, folkonomy reading was  specifically hard to digest. It was not only providing technical term after term after term, it was quite poorly written. I couldn’t understand when one idea ended and the next one began, and would be completely lost if it weren’t for the paragraph breakers. It explained how the functions of the robots used to find tags were unable to retrieve picture and video date and were only used for categorizing words, which allowed for media sharing websites such as flickr to prosper. The flickr article, although not as informatively force feeding, wasn’t that much more interesting. I learned some fun new facts about the website’s origin and what it’s original purpose was but overall it was pretty boring to me. Hopefully better reading next week 🙂

-Tarik

I read both articles and watched both videos. I would like to say the reading assignments coupled with the media was a very helpful way to keep me engaged. On another note, Larry Lessig was very insightful on his thoughts about how creativity is making a comeback with this our generation. Breaking down societies into RO (read only) RW(read write), was a brilliant explanation of how my generation has seemingly brought creativity back to our culture. The RO generation or the ones before us are more about financial compensation and capital, therefore it seems they are trying to protect the value of the media in the RW society before their own. This video had a great correlation to the Disney video which explained the values of copyright and exactly what it’s being used for with the help of the visual characters to make the assignment a little less monotone. The plagiarism article brought up very good points on how nothing is completely original and the process of learning is being able to reiterate what was taught to you, which is impossible to do during speech while citing all the sources of information you have come across in your lifetime to add to your knowledge. It definitely put a realistic connotation to the term. I went on to read some of the comments left on the Lessig video and something that I think will stay with me was “If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.” ~ Carl Sagan left my Dan Grahn. Very insightful. I even posted it to facebook.

-Tarik Clarke

The online privacy reading was very interesting it brought attention to me about a lot of Internet activity done that often gets put under the rug and not carefully explained. I personally disagree with all of these forms of “cookies” used to track the information we search in correlation with how information is marketed and advertised to consumers. Now when I go to websites and see “products of interest” to me in the corner I feel very uncomfortable and uneasy. These advertisements are not only directly attempting to market to you on other sites but are taking your information and making assumptions about what they THINK you are interested in. That information can easily be misconstrued by the user of the computer at a specific time and cause a lot of trouble I totally disagree with how privacy policies are going about the Internet and am interested in finding a small solution.

-Tarik

The politics of research reading was very long and wordy. The language was very scholarly which required me to put on a different type of hat of thought towards this subject.  The article was clearly written to inform and not to entertain and that bled out through its monotone uninteresting content. It did explain that in universities money is unevenly distributed in the fields of research, that is information that was new to me. It explained that engineering and technology received large amounts of support while subjects such as creative thinking and philosophy weren’t given that type of funding. This was perplexing to me because you can’t even have breakthroughs in these heavily scientific fields such as technology without people thinking creatively and outside of the box. Overall an average reading.

-Tarik Clarke

This was by far the most enjoyable reading assignment that we have had this semester. It was very informative and easy to understand. The Wikipedia article was information that I had already known but represented in formal expression. I feel as though it broke down how the website was able to grow as well as why it has become so popular. Wikipedia basically gave everyday aspiring writers and historians a chance to voice their opinion on the subject they were most interested in. Of course in the beginning it was very subjective, but the system created to avoid invaluable information gave it the ability to become a powerful web encyclopedia with facts on almost everything under the sun. I only wish the article could have been a bit shorter. The web videos were superb very informative and straight to the point in everyday language that was easy to comprehend. If only that guy could teach college math! Looking forward to next class.

-Tarik Clarke