Category Archives: Blog

The politics of research (Brian Martin)

Posted on September 26, 2011 by | Leave a comment

In The Politics of Research, Chapter 7 of Information Liberation, Brian Martin stated “The work of professional researchers is strongly influenced by funding, disciplines, hierarchy, and competition.” I think the message Martin is trying to convey is that in order to carry out a formal research you will need funding from government or corporate agendas (in most cases).  The fact that researches are supported by funding, the researchers are restricted to follow the guideline  set  by the providers of funding, unlike university researches which are less targeted to specific outcomes and more freedom to be creative.  I fully support martin when he said “The corruptions of power associated with the expert establishments should be recognized.” And his proposition on to solve this problem with popularization was brilliant!

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If your blog post is late…

Posted on September 21, 2011 by | 2 comments

A question came up today about credit for late blog posts. Blog posts are due by the beginning of the class for which they are assigned. If you submit a blog post within 48 hours of its due date and time, you can earn up to 1/2 a point of credit. Remember, blog posts are 20% of your grade, and there are 20 of them, so each post is worth 1 point. I hope that clears it up. Any other questions? Feel free to leave a comment below. ~Prof. L

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the falsification of wikipedia

Posted on September 21, 2011 by | 1 comment

Social networking has a lot of advantages but unfortunately it also has it’s cons which makes that a real big problem. As Broughton explains to us about wikipedia . pretty much 90% of the information on is in not reliable. the reason is because when it comes to the world wide web, users sometimes have the opportunity to alter the information . as much as we depend on the net now it is difficult for us to actually sometimes differentiate the fact from pure bogus. That becomes a sentential amount of deal because certain amount of users who utilize the web for productivity. A good example of that can be the video that we watched regarding the ice cream productivity. How others came up with their own creation but needed a way for customers to give there feedback’s. The web gave them that opportunity to do so.

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Notes from today, and readings/assignment for Wednesday, September 21

Posted on September 19, 2011 by | Leave a comment

I appreciated everyone’s comments and examples about the positives and negatives about the production and distribution of non-text media. I’m glad we identified credibility of non-text media as a major issue; it’s something we’ll explore throughout the semester. How do you know if information is credible, trustworthy, reliable, up-to-date, and complete, regardless of its medium? We barely had a chance to discuss cashmusic.org, the open source software development project to help musicians, so take a look if you get a chance. Do you know of other similar projects?

On Wednesday we’ll be discussing Web 2.0 and participatory media. Please read Nicholson Baker, The Charms of Wikipedia and watch two short videos from Common Craft: Social Media in Plain English and Social Networking in Plain English. Your blogging assignment is one reading response blog post.

Slides from today are available here.

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Response to The Information Fog

Posted on September 5, 2011 by | Leave a comment

While reading the two chapters in Research Strategies I couln’t help but relate to a lot of the points Badke made about how we use technology today to get information. I found myself saying “wow that’s so true” on more than one occasion, specifically relating to finding good reliable sources on the web. Like Badke said “not all information is equal.” Living in the information age it can seem overwhelming the amount of information we have at our disposal. All that is needed on our part is a simple Google search. Just google “egg” and you will get close to 300 million results as opposed to “omelette recipe” which yields just under 2 million results. Sometimes it’s hard to weed through the information to find a real credible source and even harder to find an unbiased one at that. I really liked how Badke described the primary and secondary sources of information. I know when I do research, whether for school papers or out of sheer curiosity to learn more about a subject, I never stopped to think if the information I was reading was the author’s own as opposed to someone’s assessment of the author’s information. I feel after reading these two chapters I have a better knowledge and understanding of how to effectively use different types of research sources, whether books or the web, to write better research papers or even just find a good omelette recipe. If anybody wants to get started on their search for information then Badke’s book will point you in the right direction.

 

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The information Fog

Posted on September 2, 2011 by | Leave a comment

When I began reading these two chapters it gotme really to the point where they mentioned that “information is supposed toinform. It means that is has to be reliable, relevant, current and so on.” Bymeans that the information you gather has to be very efficient to the pointthat it grabs your reader at the beginning and keeps them reading until theirdone. Having information that is true and we can prove means that we did a good
research and we found many strategies that will make sense. Also we have to know,if the websites and the sources we use are very reliable and if the informationthey have there is true or are just made-ups. Badke’s book will help manystudents including myself because it has a lot of information that is very useful and it will help us to do a good research paper or any kind of paper with the information the readers want to read and be informed.

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Assignment 1: The Information Fog

Posted on September 2, 2011 by | Leave a comment

It is interesting to see how the world has changed with new ways of gaining information.  To think, without what we have today such as the World Wide Web and books, information was usually gathered by talking to one another.  However, that became a problem because everyone is bias.  No matter what kind of information it is, a person can be bias on the information because of their own opinion.  One single person can have a whole different opinion about a certain information, while another has a different opinion.  This type of information gathering has changed slightly, but even if people do not interact with each other, they can always be bias.  I find this interesting because even I see this happening.  It happens on the internet and even during class discussions.  Everyone has an opinion about something and this can lead to false information that can ruin someone’s research.  I find it funny how information can ruin someone’s research because it has happened to me countless times.  I noticed that it is mostly because of the World Wide Web with websites such as Wikipedia and Facebook.  Writing a paper for a class has become a struggle for me because I don’t know if an information I look for is the truth or just someone’s basic opinion on the subject.  William Badke’s book, “Research Strategies” showed me what information based on opinion can do for a student like myself and this can help me when I am writing a paper for any class.

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Navigating to the Dashboard and creating a new blog post

Posted on September 1, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Once you have created your OpenLab account and are ready to start blogging, you’ll need to get to the Dashboard to create a new post. After you log in, go to to My Sites > LIB 1201 Fall 2011 > Dashboard, and then click on Posts> New Posts. You can also try this: go to My Sites > LIB 1201 Fall 2011 > New Post. Hope this is helpful! ~Prof. Leonard

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Notes for Wednesday, August 31

Posted on August 31, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Since we missed the first day of class on Monday, the reading response blog posts due today will be due Friday, September 2 instead. Read the Preface, Chapter 1 and Chapter 8 from the textbook Research Strategies by William Badke (available at the City Tech bookstore or as an eb00k). Your first reading response blog post should be at least 100 words. In a reading response blog post, you should identify a topic or theme from the reading, briefly summarize it, and analyze it in relation to other readings and themes in the course. For more help with blogging, refer to the Blogging Guidelines on the course website or distributed in class, or contact me

The blog is hosted on City Tech’s OpenLab, an online platform for teaching. You will need to use your City Tech email address to sign up for the OpenLab. Visit Live@CityTech if you need to look up your City Tech email username.  Visit https://mail.citytech.cuny.edu to log in to your City Tech email. Once you have created your OpenLab account, check your City Tech email for the link to confirm your account. Then you can sign in and request membership in LIB 1201. Once I approve your request, you’ll be able to post on the class blog.

Enjoy the holiday weekend!

~Prof. Leonard

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