Tag Archives: blogs

Assignment 14 – Research Paper

Last week, when I went through advanced internet searching, it helped me a lot in preparing bibliography for my research paper. I was looking all over the place, without being focused and I was unable to find relevant information for my research topic, which was pretty frustrating. Now, I am relieved and I have adequate information for my project. Searching CUNY library database is also very helpful and I have scholarly journals for my project also. I have learned how to search deeply, precisely, and without spending so much time wandering on the web. I shall definitely utilize the skills that I have learned in this class, especially, in my coming writing intensive courses where I have to write research papers.

Assignment 13 – Research Journal

Writing first draft is going to be fun. The last time, I wrote a research paper was spring 2007. I have not written a research paper since then and that’s why it’s going to be fun. The reading assignments given to us, about the evaluation of information from web, will help me a lot in putting the research paper together. The readings are very informative and definitely I shall use them in my research paper. The strategy is to use focused information and detailed analysis of the data from reliable sources. I have some questions related to the research paper and I shall be in need of some guidance. But, that’s for later; right now, I am just focusing on the outline of the research paper and some internet sources for my research paper. The hardest thing is to find detailed information and internet sources.

Assignment 12 – Research Journal

I tried CUNY+ catalog and it didn’t help me with the topic that I am working on. When I tried to use only keywords, then it gave me bunch of books which are not even at City Tech. After going through the indexes and contents of the books, I found out that these are not the ones I am looking for. A regular search engine at least gives me information which is related to my topic to some extent but CUNY+ is no where near my topic. So, I am going to stick to a regular search engine like Google for the information related to my research project. Most of the time, my searches are taking me to search engine optimization, which I don’t need at all. The search is still on.

Assignment 11 – Advanced Reasearch

I use Google for all my day to day searches but I am unable to find relevant information about my topic on it. So, I tried Yahoo search engine and found that the results are almost similar, whether you try Google search or Yahoo search. Then, I switched to the advanced searching mode and tried to search information. It was somewhat helpful. Google scholars worked a little better than normal search and so as Quintura. The information I found on them was too much scattered and I am going through the articles to decide which one will fulfill my purpose and which one won’t. So far, I am out of luck but the battle is still on. I haven’t tried searching our college’s library database yet. Also, I am trying to use specific keywords related to my topic to search for information, which is helpful to some extent.

Assignment 10 – Research topic proposal

Looking for a research topic is a challenging job and narrowing it down is more challenging than searching itself. I was fascinated by the topic on search engines and how they work just because I want to know more about them. My knowledge is very limited about this topic. It is a broad topic and I am trying to narrow it down but it is getting tougher for me. Finding information about it is very easy thing but it is hard for me to decide which information I need to keep and which one to discard. It is mixed feeling. Also, it’s hard to talk about the authenticity of the information. For this, I am trying my hands on different sites for the same information; not to mention that it is too much of reading and extra work. My main concern is, “How can I narrow it down..?” so that I can focus more precisely on it.

Assignment 9 – Search engines

I enjoyed all the three readings, especially from Badke. Everybody does searching every now and then and gets more than necessary information (both relevant and irrelevant). Sometimes, even I searched by typing long sentences and got too much of data. But, now after reading chapter 3, I can say that, I can search more efficiently and narrow down my search by just using “OR”, “AND” and “NOT”. The search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo, invest plenty of money to make their searching worthy. Websites also pay these search engines so that when people search for information, their site will show up in the top ten searches. This is one way, these search engines make money. Popularity of a site is also an important factor; like how many people are logging on or surfing the site as daily routine. Search engines really work hard to make searching easy.

Assignment 7 – Copyrights and Fair use

The reading were striking, especially the one on plagiarism by “Maurice Isserman.” It was very persuasive in a way that it’s difficult to distinguish between what is plagiarism and what is not because there is not too much gray space in between to draw a line. It’s hard to evade plagiarism as in one way or another; most of us are plagiarizing, even if it is unintentional most of the time. But, quoting somebody’s work too much in your work is plagiarism clearly because you didn’t convey your thoughts in your own words. I understood that point very clearly. The videos kept my attention to the last. The second video was clear and to the point but the first one was all over the place through out the 20th century and I couldn’t seize what exactly he was trying to say. The copyright laws are more flexible for us (students) and teachers because they are using it from learning and teaching aspects only, which is a fair use. From my point of view I can say that the creator showed some creativity and nothing wrong in copywriting his/her work and if you want to use it then ask for permission. Otherwise, use your own intellectuals and create something new.

Blogs and Wikis

Almost everyone today has come across a blog or even has one themselves. It is used as an outlet to talk about things that interest you or to keep people in the know about something. Anybody can have a blog and there is no limit to what a blog can be. It can be used to share your favorite recipes or your photography with other people. You can follow other blogs that interest you or subscribe to them to get email updates when they make a new post. And everybody knows about Wikipedia. We’ve all used it before. You can find just about anything from famous people to  plant species. The video on wikis was more informative for me than the video on blogs because even though I’ve visited wikis before I never quite did know exactly what they were and how they were different than any other kind of website. The video  helped me understand a little better on what exactly a wiki is and what it does. It allows pretty much anyone to be able to edit a web page with information unlike a website where only the person who runs it is able to make changes. People can add updated information or edit information that was already there.  Because of that it allows many users to add their own input instead of a sole person with a single view. This can be a good thing because if you see information that is not true it can easily be edited. On the other hand though since almost anyone can edit a wiki sometimes its validity has to be questioned on whether the information on there is true or false unless it is backed up with facts or a source. I know sometimes when reading something on a wiki page I read something that I know is definitely not true and sometimes people like to add things to be funny. In the example given in the video with the friends planning a camping trip you can see just how helpful a wiki can be.