The most important lesson lesson that i had learnt in EIR is the lesson that we learn about the different search facilities. At the beginning the only search facility I knew was a search engine but after this lesson I was exposed to many different and useful types of search facilities like meta search and directory. I was really grateful to learn these great search facilities as it has helped my in my course work in my diploma.
2:36 AM poottime;
I think it was an interesting experience to use Wiki and virtually collaborate and share my knowledge with the other EIR classmates. I felt that it was really fun to work towards a common goal with my class mates and to also help eachother corrent or refine the information put up.
It was really meaningful to do so as I had never participated in creating or participating in making a Wiki before but thorugh this experience I found that it was really interesting, so I may participate in more Wikis in the future.
Yes, wikis are a very good source of information as most of the time they cover a big amount of factors of the topic. But when I use wiki i must be careful not to include inaccurate information as some public wikis can be modified by anyone and the information it contains maybe inaccurate, most of the time i cross reference the informaton with other websites to decide whether the information can be used.
2:09 AM poottime;
Youtube has became a very big part of my internet life and activity since the day I discovered it, it was about 2 years ago that my friend introduced me to youtube at first I thought it was just another video streaming website but i was astounded by the amount and variety of videos on it, the streaming speed was also quite fast.. i was instantly hooked.
After some time, youtube became one of my main research facility, it was a basic tutorial tool for me like how to change guitar strings, how to edit music, how to make flash games, how to play songs and many more. Since then, youtube has provided entertaining, educational, interesting and inspiring videos for me and my friends. It has also became one of the most visited site, following it became so succesful that Google bought youtube over from it's original owners, it also made the ex-owners millionares.
Factors that was able to make youtube to such a successful video steaming website are that the videos are 100% free of charge, the user interface is very simple, idiot proof and user-friendly, its big big database of videos and of course being able to share videos with the community and share the knowledge virtually
12:38 AM poottime;
Destination 1: France
Why would i like to go there? It is because i have seen alot of pictures of Paris, France's capital which is really beautiful. I would also like to visit the eiffel tower because i had always wondered how it would feel like standing on it. Another attraction that i would really like to visit will be the Louvre Museum, i would like to witness in person world famous, legendary art pieces such as the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper.
Evaluated Website: http://www.france.com/
Evaluation Criteria: Coverage
I think that the coverage of the website is not bad, considering it has main information links such as, Hotel, Where to go, Tours and Transportation. It will be a very useful website if anyone is going to France as they will have good information to locate the hotels or read up about the transportation in France. I have choosed coverage because for being a tourist targetted webpage, you need to cover good amount of information and relavant ones to your visitors so that they will not need to find another webpage for different types of information on the same country.
Destination 2: Los Angeles
Why would I like to go there? I would want to go to America once in my life and Los Angeles will be the best place for me to go as it is considered the most interesting and beautiful place in America. I would like to eat all of America's unique fast food, hotdogs and western food. Mmm Mmm. I would also like to check out their shopping center with all of their unique clothes and apperals.Evaluated Website: http://discoverlosangeles.com/
Evaluation Criteria: Coverage
The website provides good coverage on the different useful information they possess like
Play: Where they feature all the fun stuffs that can be done around Los Angeles like activites & recreation, Arts, Music & Entertainment, dining, nightlife, shopping and events.
Stay: Where they feature hotels and hostels that you can approach to stay in, very good information for visitors.
Guides: Where they feature brief guides about how to live in Los Angeles, the neighboorhoods around it and how people behave.
Getting Around: Where they give information for getting around on air, land and sea and they also provide extensive maps of Los Angeles.
Planning Your Trip: This is the tab that i found most useful if I am a tourist, it gives information on how to get to various important places around Los Angeles like the Los Angeles International Airport and the different train stations around LA. They also provide travel resources which I found amazingly useful, where they feature tips, visitor information center and several information for tourists being in LA.
Business Services: Where people that is seeking business opportunity in Los Angeles may want to visit. The tab provides information on meeting planners, marketing kit, research reports these are few of the interesting information they provide for business seeking people.
Overall I've used coverage to evaluate the tourist websites because I think to me this is the most important criteria a tourism website should has. Like i mentioned above coverage is important as a tourism website should provide as much information and news about the destination for visitors so that they do not have to find another website for different information of the same destination. Also coverage is important because it may make or break one's decision to decide on whether they want to visit a specific place. Maybe if the coverage was bad, a potential visitor that is interested to go to Los Angeles finds a pretty run-down webpage about Los Angeles and the coverage is very bad, they may decide to change their travel destination.
11:34 AM poottime;
Posting my views on the OLE discussion forum was quite fun because I was able to give my own opinions while reading up on other people's views on the topic. I was able to understand better by reading different types of opinions and I was also gave feedback reply to some of my classmate's post.
I was able to express my views freely but I try to form my views with proper english and avoid profanities as this is a school forum. I guess that is the only restriction in a school forum that a public forum does not have.
The difference of participating in an online discussion like this to a traditional face-to-face in-class discussions are that when online, I believe many people are able to state their views better and more precisely, also we are able to make sure our posts make perfect sense before clicking the submit button unlike in class face-to-face discussions. But the pros about a traditional inclass face-to-face discussion is that it maybe more interesting then an online one because the presenter is talking and he can interact with the class to provide a more enjoyable discussion.
I find this e-learning activity very useful and meaning as I was able to share my views with the other people in EIR and also read about their views.
12:57 AM poottime;
Currency
The posts are very updated, they update the website regularly.
Though to me most of these posts are quite uninteresting because most of it are one-two liners. It is as though they just wanted to post random stuffs, but I didnt expect anything more from talkingcock.com because they were meant to entertain people with random and quirky stuffs.
Accuracy
Most of the posts and articles are inaccurate because most of them are meant to be a joke, but there are some accurate articles that talks about the current situation of Singapore's happening or news.
I used this 2 criteria to evaluate talkingcock.com because i think that they are relavant. If i were to choose coverage, i would not know what to say because this site as almost no specific coverage of information or sources. I think currency is a good criteria to evaluate as the blog is updated frequently and accuracy is another criteria because i find most of the posts not accurate and this criteria will be good to discuss about.
I think that the role play is a very effective in letting me see what and how do people of different background or personality thinks when they come into a same website. Different people will have different opinion and a type of information will give different types of people different view of the article.
10:47 AM poottime;
I think that invisible databases and search engines are very different and each has their on qualities, but on my personal opinions i think that information in invisible databases are more resricted and limited. This is why i think that the search engine is far for effective in returning information for research, one think that is good when searching in an invisible database is that when you found a database that is related to your research topic, usually there is a high chance you can find rare and professional information in the database. Comparing to subject directories i think they are quite similar as they return a limited amount of information but usually when relevant, it will be highly useful.
And yes I will surely try to use the invisible database for the research for the classes i take in my diploma as i believe when researching on the internet one should try out all available resource to churn out any important or relavant information.
12:13 AM poottime;