Reflection. Week 2. 31st October 2008.

We had our first class test todaaay ! I got 11 out of 20. Didn't read the question properly for 2 questions. Must be careful the next time round !!

Ms Faridah showed us 3 videos from Youtube. It was really hilarious. I smiled till my mouth cramped, for I feared that I would laugh too loudly. XD Next, we were directed to TalkingCock.com. It was a very interesting website, not to mention that it contains humour in it which is in most of us. Many of the posts were referring to typical behaviour of Singaporeans. Not to mention also the lifestyle. It might not be a good education website but it's indeed interesting to be reading them in a very Singlish way. HAHAA... Singaporean's style ;) However, if the admin is not careful, he/she might accidentally mentioned something that is offensive to the readers. Thus, this website must be carefully maintained in case it causes any unnecessary conflicts.

Our class was allocate into 3 different roles. The Prime Minister, Singaporean and a foreigner working/studying in Singapore. For my group, we are given the role as Singaporean. It was fun to be talking from the point of view as each of the role about the website.

Reflection. Week 2. 28 October 2008.

Today we discovered the invisible web which is also known as databases. This is where all the deep information are kept. These web are charged for a small fee in order to have access to them. They are highly authoritative information kept in the form of data. Not only that, they are the information which are more reliable and up-to-date.

Some of the invisible web are the Academic Gateway and Complete Planet.

After attending this lesson, I realised that our school library do have this service too. It allows us to have access to the datas that are actually charged with a fee. Moreover, only staff and student from TP have access to them. They are not available in public search engine. 2 of these are Temask Polytechnic's E-books database ITPRO and the Digital Library Portal Research Gateway.

These invisible web might not be useful in the sense that we might not be able to find what we are looking for. Even though it's reliable and up-to-date. After this lesson, I know about it and will be using it in future for our research.

Reflection. Week 2. 27 Oct 2008

It's a public holiday ! Therefore, we do not need to attend class today. Instead, we were given an e-learning assignment to do. Post discussion on the forum board in OLE. (Online Learning Environment) The topic given was, "Briefly explain how Internet has enriched your academic and social life". We are to give one internet resource and one search facility that we have learnt during lesson.

Together for now, we have learnt about the three internet search facilities. They are:

Search Engines (examples: Google Search, Scholar Google.)
Meta search engines (examples: metacrawler, IxQuick)
Subject directory (examples: Yahoo! directory, Galaxy)

Happy Deepavali !

Reflection. Week 1. 24 Oct 2008.

Today's lecture was about using Metacrawler and Yahoo! Directory.

Okay, let's see what can we talk about these two search engines...
So, the difference between these two search engines are that Metacrawler is like a search engine "searching" for another search engine while Yahoo! Directory search is categorised accordingly to subjects. There are categories like Art & Humanities, Business Economy, Computer and Internet, Education and etc. These categories are more specific and allow us to search for information more efficiently. Metacrawler is more of a machine-compiled search engine whereas Yahoo! Directory is human-complied subject directory and are maintained by professionals. The disadvantage of human-compiled subject engine would mean that we have got lesser choices to select from.

Therefore, we can conclude that the machine-complied search engine would have a likely high number of searches in the database, can be over millions whereas for subject directory, due to the reason that it's human-complied, the number of searches in the database tend to be lesser and they are probably less than millions. The result for subject directory would be more accurate than search engine. As the results are being sorted out by human, they would be classified under subjects accordingly to which they think are more appropriate/suitable and that would certainly help us greatly in terms of saving time.

Before the lecturer ended, we were also taught to link our friend's site feed which means that the post would appear like word form.

Reflection. Week 1. 23 Oct 2008.

I have learnt to do research using the search facility internet today and was impressed with the features. The search engines given to us were Google (Advanced Search) and Scholar Google. Before even the lesson started today, I was not aware of the capabilities of the search engine like how they are able to play a part in our daily life.

It was proven that by using Scholar Google Search compared to the normal Google Search. The information given by the Scholar Google Search were more relevant and were being narrowed down. Instead of a hundred thousand searches, it was narrowed down to about six thousand searches in just about 0.26seconds! This is just how amazing internet is ! Not only that, to get more revelant searches closest to what you are finding, what we type in the search box is the crucial key.

In search engine, they are being programmed in such a way that when they are doing searches, they go for the keywords that are being typed in rather than searching every word in the sentence. Let's take the topic I'm doing on as an example.
Discuss the developments of AIDs/HIV research.
The keywords in this sentence are: developments, AIDs/HIV and research.
We can even use the synonyms of the keywords.
development - progress, growth, expansion, advance and increase.
research - study.
From there, we form into a sentence and put it into the search box.
Thus, typing keywords really do help a lot with our search for information.

We also make use of Boolean Operators in our search. By making use of
AND - Narrows down search by including both search phrases.
NOT - Broadens search by using either one of the search phrase.
OR - Narrows search by ignoring the keywords can searching the keywords in the brackets first.

Last and not least for the day, citing sources and doing bibliography is an essential part when comes to extracting part of the information, regardless whether it is from a book, website, an electronic journal or even a magazine ! Sure that we could extract information from the website but doing so would mean that we have to acknowledge the author by doing citation and bibliography. If we extract information without doing citation or bibliography, we could even be charged for plagarism.We will be using the APA style to do our citation.

We are also supposed to post our discussion in the public forum. As this is our first time posting on a public forum, we will need to be extremely cautious with our usage of words so that we will not offend or cause some conflicts on the discussion board. That means we have to re-read a nd edit the message we post everytime to ensure that it does not contain any offensive term.

I have posted one up in the following :
AIDs/HIV forum

Suggested Research Topic

I had chosen to do on the topic regarding developments of AIDs/HIV research.

Stay tuned this page for more news !

Reflection. Week 1. 21 Oct 2008.

Day 2 was on purpose of internet resources and e-shopping . The purposes of websites can be categorised as of the following:

Information
Advocacy
Business / Marketing
News
Personal
Entertainment

There were a few examples given for each category. I'm actually more interested in the News. From there, I get to know things that happens around us and those which affects our daily life. And political matters that happens to our neighbourhood countries. Take the latest incident in Thailand as an example. (Refer to link below.)

Source (about political matter in Thailand"): The Straits Times on 22 Oct 2008 - PM pelted with shoes

e-shopping

If I had $500, I would buy Samsung-F480 for its aesthetic and functions. This phone was on eBay for S$499. eBay is classified as part of the business/marketing.

A rather thin touch-screen phone with a camera of 5-megapixel + auto focus and resolution of 240 x 320. It has got wireless function in the form of GPRS and Bluetooth. Not forgetting if you are bored, there is Music Player, FM Radio, Video Streaming and Embedded JAVA™ Games in the phone to keep yourself entertained !


eBay-Samsung F480 Expires on 28 Oct.

Reflection. Week 1. Day 1.

Today is the start of new block. EIR, the first class I had in the morning. I was actually confused by the name and had zero idea on what I'm going to take. Only later did i realise, it was initially called,"Using Internet as Research Tool" and now it's called, "Effective Internet Research."

The objective of this module was to input us more information about getting more factual researches, able to get information more efficiently and some of the internet ethics.

The difference between organizational and personal sites. I have learnt that organisational website are usually managed by different managements whereas for personal site, the content will mostly be based on one's personal opinion and thoughts on the particular subject.

Be sure to look out for subsequent posts !

Self Introductory

I am Si Jin. The oldest child in the family.
Currently studying in Temasek Design School, Year 2 taking Product & Industrial Design (PID).
Likes crapping, (talking nonsense as well)making new friends, swimming, basketball, badminton, running, reading, watching tv, graffiti, chatting online AND .... blogging. (:
Got 1 younger brother studying in Holy Innocents' High School & currently taking 'O' levels. Favourite designer is Karim Rashid. (Furniture: Kut Table)

That's all !