Tag Archives: blogging

Organizing Your Resources

In this chapter of Badke’s Book, Badke introduced “register method” of resource organization. He suggested labeling our resources because it will be easier to retrieve and organize your sources later on. An example is when you have 50 pages of sources from different media; you would want to number the pages to prevent chaos. He also proposed that “you have to keep track of them, including enough bibliographical information” so you won’t need to go back and search again later. He introduced many helpful tips in how to organize your resources. The most helpful tip, in my opinion, is his answers to writing anxiety. I tend to have a lot of information, but I never knew how to start.

Notes from today, and reading & blogging homework for Wednesday, November 2

Today we discussed library catalogs, struggled to use CUNY+ and had a bit more success with WorldCat. I hear that the CUNY+ technical difficulties are well on their way to resolution, so try searching from home and report your success in the comments below.
On Wednesday, we’ll continue our discussion on searching (and finding) sources for the annotated bibliography and research paper, moving into a discussion on using library databases to find articles. For Wednesday, please read Badke Ch. 5 (pp. 76-95) and write one research journal blog post. Below is the prompt for the research journal blog post for Wednesday:

Do a search on your research topic in at least one internet search engine and one library resource, like the CUNY+ catalog.
What words or phrases did you use to search?
What are the similarities and differences between the results of your two searches?

Don’t forget that next week you have two written assignments due: the annotated bibliography on Monday 11/7 and the research paper outline on Wednesday 11/9.

Slides for today are available here.

~Prof. Leonard

Search Engines Behind the Scene

Everyone knows how to and what search engines are but not everyone do it effectively. At least that’s what Badke said. Badke also taught me tons of techniques and tricks to efficiently narrow down my search results (e.g. using NOT in search engines exclude unwanted results). The way a search engine work can be compare to a complex factory assembly line. There are many steps and procedures that needs to take place every time we press a search button as mention in “How a Search Engine Works“. I also learned that companies like Google invest heavily their search engine; Google has more people working on their search engine than any other of their projects. From personal experience, I learned that Google makes a lot of money by configuring the pagerank system and putting payer’s WebPages in beginning of search results.

Notes from today, and reading/blogging assignments for Wednesday, October 12

Thanks for a robust and animated discussion about information ethics today.
Copyright and fair use is in the news today: a copyright case involving a university’s right to stream videos on its website was recently thrown out of court in California; read more here. I encourage you all to finish watching the videos we started to view in class and explore Creative Commons and the Digital Copyright slider. Links to the videos are in the slides.

For Wednesday, October 12, please read the following chapter from Badke and two articles:

Badke, chapter 4 (there is still time to obtain your own copy; if you do not yet have a copy of the required textbook for this class and cannot find it in a convenient bookstore, you can download the e-book for less than $10 here, or use the library’s copy on reserve; the call number is Z710 .B23 2008.)

Dye, J. (2006). Folksonomy: A game of high-tech (and high-stakes) tag. EContent, 29(3), 38-43.

Harrod, H. (2009, March 28). It’s the playground of narcissistic teenagers and amateur photographers, but 3 billion images (and counting) on flickr could be the greatest social document of the century. The Sunday Telegraph, pp.22.

Your blogging assignment is one reading response blog post and one comment on a classmate’s blog post.

Enjoy the long weekend! ~Prof. Leonard

Copyrights Plagiarism and Fair Use

The assigned readings on fair use and plagiarism were long and boring or maybe it was because I read it after watching the videos. I find the videos very informative and yet entertaining.  The first video had me really thinking about how technology changed laws over the time in order to complement with technological advancements. In the video, Larry Lessig brought really good points on copyrights. He explained that copyright laws are restricting creativity and it can be prevented to benefit both sides. The second video was not only amusing but it was informative as well. While I was enjoying the video I learned many facts. I had no idea that copyrights last 70 years or 100 years if it is under a company.

Notes from today, and reading/viewing/blogging for Wednesday, October 5

I hope our privacy discussion got you thinking about your relationship to all of the information “out there” that is about you, and what rights you have to controlling that personal or private information. I found an interesting New York Times article about privacy on college campuses in the wake of the 2008 Virginia Tech shooting: “After Campus Shootings, U.S. to Ease Privacy Rules.”

On Wednesday, we’ll be discussing ethics in information and media, including copyright and fair use, open access, and plagiarism. For Wednesday, please read the following 2 articles:

Isserman, “Plagiarism: a lie of the mind.Chronicle of Higher Education, 49(34), B12.

Center for Social Media. 2008. The code of best practices in fair use for media literacy education. “Code” and “Principles” sections only.

and watch these videos:

Lawrence L. 2007. “The Law is Strangling Creativity

Faden, E. 2007. “A Fair(y) Use Tale.”

Your blogging homework is one reading response blog post; one comment on another’s post. Please make the blog post a substantial reflection on the readings and viewing; the comment should be shorter, but try to make it relevant and pithy. Not simply “I agree with your point!”

Slides from today are available here.

~Prof. Leonard

Online Privacy

The two readings were long informative articles that exposed really important matters regarding online privacy. The first reading  Facebook’s Privacy Trainwreck points out many flaws in Facebook’s privacy system. After reading the article I became more aware how exposed I really am to my friends and to the world. Anything shared on Facebook can affect not only someone’s life but their future career as well. In the second article Online Privacy: Do Americans need better Privacy?, Marshall implanted fear into my naïve little mind on how naked I really am when I surf the net. I feel that the government should strictly regulate online privacy though they fear that by doing so may hinder the economic growth. Regardless online privacy is a topic that is raising a lot of attentions.

Your reading & blogging assignment for Monday, October 3

Next Monday we’ll be discussing privacy, especially how the definition is changing. We’ll spend some time reading and discussing the challenges to privacy presented by use of digital media and online networks.

There are two readings for Monday: Marshall, P. (2009). Online privacy. CQ Researcher, 19, 933-956.
boyd, d. (2008). Facebook’s Privacy Trainwreck. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 14:1, 13-20.
Your blogging assignment is one reading response blog post.

Slides from today are available here.

Enjoy the short week – remember, the college and library are OPEN all week!

~Prof. Leonard

The politics of research (Brian Martin)

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!

The video from yesterday, properly embedded this time

Here it is:

To embed a Youtube video into a post, just click on Share under the video, then copy and paste the http://youtu.be link into your post. ~Prof. L