Tag Archives: response

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.Ā And everybody knows about Wikipedia. We’ve all used it before. You can find just about anything from famous people to Ā 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 Ā 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. Ā 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.

Response to The Information Fog

While reading the two chapters inĀ 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.”Ā 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’sĀ assessmentĀ 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.