Module 5

Started this module with the WebCt not responding and again had to shut down and start up again. Very time consuming!

My computer is going slower and slower!

Module 4 - Tasks

Introduction:

The first link which I tried to click on to read about the history of pdf did not work so I researched this myself.

Module 4 states that:
“To be an advanced Internet user in the field of searching for information requires three things:
greater skills in exploiting searching options and techniques
greater awareness of the kinds of sources of information that you might search for, and
greater knowledge of 'what's out there', so as to short-cut the time consuming searching process where appropriate.”
I have found that having an in depth knowledge of “what’s out there” is really important.. Knowing the potential of the internet encourages me to keep on going until I find what I am looking for. Knowing that the information is there and that it is a case of using different search tools to find it.

http://www.webliminal.com/search/search-web12.html
Evaluating information on the internet

Tasks:
Downloading tools / plug-ins Task

I chose Macromedia Authorware: Web Player to install. I thought I already had it on my computer but after running the test software I found it wasn’t there. I decided to choose this software because it enables me to view high quality media/graphics when looking at websites. I have high speed cable internet access and I like to utilise it fully.

The other program I chose to download was WebCopier
This software is free for personal use WebCopier. I thought this software would be useful for saving web pages for viewing on my laptop when I have no internet access.

search engine task

I downloaded Copernic and then my computer froze up and the Curtin Website stopped responding. I shut it down and still had everything going really slowly trying to get back into the WebCT site and eventually had to leave it. I will have to return to it later.
When I was able to log onto Curtin again I found that the first link to Ohio University / Web Search Tools didn’t work, however, it was easy to find.

I went through the tutorial on the Ohio State University website http://liblearn.osu.edu/tutor/les5/pg1.html

I discovered from this website that “search engines” index words or groups of words to capture large amounts of information on web. Web Directories are created by specialised staff who categorise websites by subject. This is more selective. Specialised Databases are usually limited to specific areas and give the researcher more in-depth site.

1. Choose your most commonly used internet search engine and do a search with words of your choosing.
I used Google to search for UN Commemorative Coins
This returned 50,800 results.

Then I used Copernic to search the same words and this returned 19 results.
On a quick glance Google appeared to return the best results and there were certainly a more results in google to choose from.

Organising search information task
I gathered the information for this and put it in the Assignment

Evaluating the Web
1. In terms of your future use, which ‘body’ of information (ie the original ‘snapshot’ or the site, or your own, annotated, analytical version) would be most useful to refer back to?

My own annotated, analytical version would be useful initially because it would give me an immediate insight as to what is contained on the website and serve as a reminder of what the website contained. Of course to access the full information then the website would need to be the point of reference.

2. In terms of external users (ie if you included this site as a hyperlink or resource on a website) which body of information would best help them judge if the site was useful or of interest to them?

The annotation would be most useful for a user to judge whether a site was going to useful or of interest them, because it would analyse what the website contained.

Module 3 - Tasks

Guide to html: http://www.cloudmedia.com.au/FTV244/html_intro.html

I opened Notepad and typed the text as requested completed the mypage exercise. I found this to be a very useful and simple task. I gained a good introduction to html in a short period of time.

Writing html tutorial: http://htmldog.com/guides/htmlbeginner/

I then completed the html tutorial.

The title element is really important because it appears on the title bar of the window and becomes the title of the document which shows up when the document is added to “favourites”.

The commands in html need to be very specific, eg

is for new paragraph, otherwise all the words will appear on the same line.

The first time I tried to put in a link, it didn’t work. I had to look through to find out what I had done wrong and found that I mistyped and left out “<” on one of the lines. I learned that I need to be very careful and specific with instructions. When I had finished I initially did not know how to upload the file to the “Student Presentations” page, but explored all the links and found that the “Edit files” was only enabled on one Group and therefore it must have been the group allocated to me, so I was able to upload the file to it. On completion of these tasks, I checked the Discussion Boards and found that many people had similar questions or problems about uploading. I was pleased to find that I had worked it out already!

Standards

When doing the HTML tutorial on the HTML Dog website http://htmldog.com/guides/htmlbeginner/

I noticed that they emphasized writing HTML the ‘right’ way , ie according to the standards of World Wide Web Consortium.

http://www.w3.org/

There were even some tags which did not ‘need’ to be closed for the html to work but according to the standards should be closed. This is good practice for new learners to learn correctly from the beginning and form good habits. It enables others to understand and expand on their code in the ever-changing future.

This helps to illustrate the paradox of the World Wide Web. The internet is constantly changing. Setting standards helps people to keep certain things (such as html code) in a format which can be understood by people around the world. Standards should not restrict changes but enhance them.

Writing on the world wide web is exciting and continually evolving. Whatever code or ideas that are written today, will most certainly be expanded and improved tomorrow. If we use standards then we enable others to understand our code/ideas and therefore share our ideas.

Jakob Nielsen http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/
writes about writing for the world wide web and introduces some very important points to consider when writing. For example:

User’s literacy levels
Target audiences, eg teenagers

According to Jakob Nielsen there has been extensive research on how a reader’s literacy level affects the way they ‘read’ or gather information from websites.

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~webteach/articles/text.html
Web Teaching site contained really useful information for writing for the www and I am sure I will refer back to this site on a regular basis.

http://jerz.setonhill.edu/writing/e-text/conventions.htm
On this site Dennis G Jerz lists the top conventions of web pages:

Quote:
Lead with your best stuff
Inform with Meaningful Links
Employ consistent navigation
Prefer simple designs
Write scannable text
Unquote


Copyright

Very important area of research and I realise that I need to be aware that virtually everything that is on the internet is subject to copyright.

I agree with some opinions on the WebCT DB that it was surprising that we were not directed to Australian Law websites as a reference for this topic. However, I decided to research my own. The following were useful:

Australian Copyright Council
http://www.copyright.org.au/

Questions:

Have you used images or words on your web page or website that contravene copyright laws?

I have tried to be extremely careful and aware of the copyright restrictions when maintaining my blog for this course. Where I have used screen shots I have referenced where they have come from and acknowledged the author and source. I believe that these would come under ‘fair use’.

Would you be in breach of copyright if you put the Curtin logo at the top of your web page for an assignment?

The answer to this question is definitely “yes”. Unless the Curtin logo already appeared on the cover sheet which I was submitting or on other paperwork which was required. However, to just place the Curtin logo at the top of a web page for an assignment is a breach of copyright.


http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Copyright/
I scanned this website and found the information to be extremely important and relevant. This has piqued an interest in this area and I would like to further research this and perhaps specialise in this field later on.

Module 3 - Contributing to the Infosphere: e-writing

I read thoroughly Module 3 and researched all the links

Definitions:
html: hypertext markup language (the language standard which ‘tells” web browsers how to display the information – Curtin University Module 3

SGML and XML: languages used for defining markup languages.
SGML: Standard Generalised Markup Language
XML: Extensible Markup Language

Linear Documents are documents with a beginning, a middle and an ending and the author expects that they will be read in that order. The author will assume that the reader has a certain knowledge up to a certain point in the document.

Non Linear Documents are documents which can be read out of sequence, eg a text book or reference book. A topic may be looked up and read and completely understood without the requirement of reading the previous chapter or topic. Most websites are non-linear.

Web pages use hypertext links to take the reader to different packages of information. The reader can choose to click on the hyper text link or to continue on the same piece of text.

Blog: short for weB LOG , similar to an online personal journal or diary.
http://www.dentedreality.com.au/features/blogs/intro/

I really found this site useful and I am sure that I’ll use it in the future. http://www.blogrolling.com/ This is a tool for managing a linklist in a blog. Very useful for recording multiple links and making it easier to find them later.

Blogs have a tendency to be linear.