Blog#3: 12/23/10

Blog #1: 12/20/10

Today we learned about citing online resources using the MLA citation format. When doing a research paper for a class you need to give credit to your sources by citing them in the correct format. Even if your research does not have to do with school, you should still cite your sources so you can go back and find it later. You should cite your sources in a well known citation format, for example, the MLA format and the ALA format. The MLA format and the ALA format are different kinds of style formats for all Internet information. For all academic work, you should always check with your instructor about the type of citation format they want.

Blog#2: 12/14/10

Today we learned about analyzing our search results in Google. First, when you search a keyword in the Google search engine, you should look for a website that you think will be very useful to you. The search egine usually offers clues that can help you find the useful website for your research. Search engines always have your keyword highlighted in the results it come up with in the little snippet or in the actualy URL. The number of times your keywords appear on each results NOT DONE!

12/13/10 : Blog #1

Ive learned that when you need to construct a search with more than one keywords, you need to put them in quotation marks in order to create a effective search. For example, if you put blueberry pancakes in a search engine, sometimes the results won"t come up as only blueberry pancakes. The results can come up with blueberry waffles or buttermilk pancakes. But if you put blueberry pancakes quotation marks ("blueberry pancakes") then the search engine will know that its looking for websites that include the words blueberry pancakes together. In result, you will receive a search that includes information on blueberry pancakes and that's it.

Blog #3: 12/09/10

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Blog #1: 12/07/10 How do we refine our searches with phrase searching?

When creating a search with one or more keywords, you might need to make it into a phrase because it might not give you the results you want. For example, if you type in the words "Japanese" and "Government" you would conduct a search with results containing only the words "Japanese" and "Government" in it. The results might show up with something about the Japanese language, or the American government, but you want search results about the Japanese Government. So, in order to create a search that will give you results about the Japanese Government is by typing the words "Japanese Government" in the search  box.



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made on Wondersay - Animate text with style


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Blog#2: 11/30/10

How is the information you learned applicable to your other class assignments? How is this class helping you with research in your other classes?


Today we learned about wonder wheels and how they are useful. Knowing about the wonder wheel helps make researching broad topics, like music, crime, etc. easier to research because the wonder wheel gives us sub topics about the broad topic so we can learn a little about what the topic is about. The wonder wheel is a wheel where a topic will be in the middle and there would be subcategories that relate to the main topic shooting out of the circle in the middle. This will make researching topics in other classes easier because if we have to research a topic that we know nothing about the wonder wheel will help us learn a little about the topic by giving us the main ideas that are related to the topic.

Blog #1, 11/29/10

On November 19th, we learned about the 4 ways to identify the right keywords. The first way was to study the topic you researched and pull out potential keywords. Another way to start it off is to summarize your topic in a sentence and pull out the keywords from there. If really necessary, define the keywords and find general background information on your topic if you do not understand what your researching. The last way to identify the right keywords is to find synonyms and related terms for the keywords, so you can expand your research results.

Wordle

Blog #1: 11/22/10

How is the information you learned applicable to your other class assignments? How is this class helping you with research in your other classes?

Today we learned about how search engines make the search you require them to do and notifies us how to use a search engine properly. Many search engines perform different kinds of searches based on the type of basic information you provide. Before you make a search in the search engine, you should always view the help page and learn how to use it so you know how to work the search engine properly and effectively. If you are typing in a effective and specific statement in one search engine, there's always a chance it would not work as good in another search engine. If you want to find a variety of different types of results related to your topic, consider changing the wording in your phrase or change the keywords. To make researching easier in the future, you might want to take notes on how good search engines give you information, so you can use that search engine consistently.

Blog #1: 11/17/10

How is the information you learned applicable to your other class assignments? How is this class helping you with research in your other classes?

 

 Today we learned about how to put in the correct type of keywords into a search tool to create a successful research. By identifying keywords, we are making our topic transform into smaller bits of information that will help the Internet search tool research information on your topic effectively. These words are the words that will appear on the results page when you type in into a Internet search tool. There are certain words, like a, an, and, the etc. that will be very not useful to your research. Those words are called stop words. Stop words are articles (a,an,the, etc.), Conjunctions/Prepositions (And, or, but, in of, from, than, etc.), and verbs/pronouns (this, that, these, those, is, be, see, do etc.). The computer cannot comprehend these words, so when you enter them into a Internet search tool, they will not show up on the results page.

Blog #3: 11/12/10 How is the information you learned applicable to your other class assignments? How is this class helping you with research in your other classes?

or




I dont know if any of them are working on your computer because its not working on the dell. :/

Blog #2: 11/12/10: How is the information you learned applicable to your other class assignments? How is this class helping you with research in your other classes?

Blog #1: 11/09/10 ; What did you learn? What material was new to you? What were the three most important things you've learned in today's lesson/independent practice?

Post #1: 11/1/10, 11/3/10, 11/4/10

What did you understand the most/least about today's lesson/independent practice?

11/1/10
Today we learned about the 3rd step in an Internet research strategy which is to choose a proper search tool. If you thinking that the worldwide web is a good place to research your topic, you need to be able to find a good, reliable sources. If you want to specifically find something, then you would use a meta- search engine or a regular search engine like dogpile.com or google.com. If you know very little information about your topic, then a subject guide would be very useful to start off with. If the regular search tools do not provide good information, you would have to use the specialty tools along with the regular one. By combining both types of search tools, you will have a thorough research on the topic.

11/3/10
On the day next day we learned about the 4th Internet research strategy: Translate your questions into an effective search query. The first step is to ask the question and then identify some keywords or phrases that best describe the topic. Then use those keywords to search in a search tool to find information about the keywords. The more keywords you use, the better and more accurate information you will receive to answer the question.

11/4/10
Today we learned about the 5th step in a Internet research strategy: Perform your search. All search engines provide advanced search forms that allow you to make your search more specific. You will fill out all the fields and click search to research specifically what you want. Some subject guides allow you to search keywords, but sometimes they let you search through several links to find something that benefits your research. Whichever one you use, the information you put in is going to give you accurate search results.

Post #1 & 2: 10/25/10, 10/26/10

What did you understand the most/least about today's lesson/independent practice?
10/25/10I understood most of today's lesson about why certain content is only available on the invisible web. One reason is that the search engine may not know about the page/website. The second reason is that the content is located deep in the web, so the search engine would not bother to look for it. The third reason is that the page changes so much, that the search engine doesn't bother to look for it all the time because its meaningless. The fourth reason is because the search engine is not able to search non-HTML content such as images or other file types like PDF. The fourth reason why certain content can only be search on the invisible web is because the search engine cannot access the pages to index them because the page requires a password or the site has a search box that is required to be filled out.

10/26/10
Today we learned 5 reason why search engines do not index deep web content. The first reason is because the search engine may not be able to access the page because it requires a password. If there's a site that we know about, we are able to search its content without a using a search engine. Another reason why search engines don't look for deep content is because the content is located in the last part of the last category that holds the most interest for searchers which are the sites that hold information in databases such as phone directories, literature databases and patent databases.

Week 5: Post #1

What did you learn? What material was new to you? What were the three most important things you've learned in today's lesson/independent practice?

Today we learned about one of the 4 search engine tools : Search engines. Comparing search engines to databases, search engines contains much, much more sites than a database has. In the database, the web pages that are connected to the keyword are selected virtually. Search engines are mostly used for searching, not browsing, so they provide more web pages to look at. Search engines provide more substantial searching capabilities than the directories.

Week 3: Post # 1,2 & 3

What did you learn? What material was new to you? What were the three most important things you've learned in today's lesson/independent practice?

1. We learned about what R.E.A.L. was this week. R.E.A.L. stands for reading the URL, examine the content, ask about the author/owner, and look at the links. This helps us learn how to make a successful research on a subject. Reading the URL helps us make sure that the name of the URL is related to the subject we are researching. When you get into the website, you examine the content to make sure the website it legit. Ask about the author to learn background information about them, like if the person works for a company the information might be legit. Look at the links (forward and backward) to determine if the website has legit information.
2. We also learned about the algorithm as in the computer code. When you search for something in a search engine, the search engine will have spiders trace out into the Internet and find anything that relates to the keyword you typed in the search engine. The spiders look for the keyword in the URL, the title of the website, meta-tags, the links that go in and out of the page and it also searches for the websites that have the keyword appear the most in the website. Knowing this type of information helps up improve our searching and teaches us how the Internet looks things up for us.
3. We learned how to create a virtual index that will help us narrow down our research. We use site:command to search the website. You can also add a phrase by putting a plus sign (+) between the command and the phrase, then putting the phrase in quotations to narrow down your search results even more. This lesson would help make researching better and easier.

Week 2: Post #3

What did you learn? What material was new to you? What were the three most important things you've learned in today's lesson/independent practice ?

Today I learned how to narrow down my research into ways where I can get legit information. Typing in the type of structure in the search box was something new that I learned today. The first most important thing I learned today was that websites like wikipedia.com, are not legit websites. Second most important thing i learned today was how to narrow down my research results in a way where I can get legit information on my research. This lesson will be very useful in the future because I now know how to "smart search".

Week 2: Post #2

What did you understand the most/least about today's lesson/independent practice?
Today we learned about what backward links were. I understood how to type in the URL into Google and see what backward links were linked to the website. What I didn't understand was the whole point of backward links. I don't get why its useful to my researching.

Week 2: Post #1

What did you already know of the material presented in class?
I already knew what forward links were and their purpose. The forward links usually lead to another website that relates to the topic on the website. The purpose of forward links is to find out more information about the word that is being linked to attain a greater meaning of the word. Forward links are very useful to most websites because it helps make understanding the context of the website better.

WOOO

What did you already know of the material presented in the lesson?
Nothing really seemed new to me in today's lesson because I was required to learn how to create a blog and use it for some of my classes in school. I alreadly knew how to post a blog, add new stuff to it and decorate it.
Did you have a need for information today? If so, how did you go about finding it?
I needed information on a certain college, so I did some research. I first went on Collegeboard.com to find out the tuition costs and the requirements. I went to the college's website after to learn about the history of the college and to see pictures of the campus. Then I went to the wikipedia page for the college and found out some cool facts about the college. My research helped me learn a lot about the college and now I'm more interested into going into going to the college.

Guiding Questions

• What did you already know of the material pesented in the lesson?
• What did you learn? What material was new to you? What were the three most important things you've learned in today's lesson/independent practice?
• What did you understand most/least about today's lesson/independent practice?
• What would you like to know more about the material?
• What questions do you still have?
• How is the information you learned applicable to your other class assignments? How is this  class helping you with research in your other classes?
• What did you learn from reading someone else's blog? Did it help you write your own blog entry?
• If there was a reading assignment, What did you learn from the reading assignment? What did you not understand? What prior knowledge did you bring to the reading material?
• Did you have a need for information today? If so, how did you go about finding it?