Journal 4

In this module I learned about Blogs, Microblogs, Wiki's, Social network's, Virtual worlds, Virtual meetings and Content sharing. For our group project we researched Blogs and Microblog's. The two major one's I uses were Facebook and Blogger. These can be used for personal use such as keeping in touch with friends, educational use for class projects, or for business use to share documents or photo's. These are two very common blogs/ microblog's, there are many more like Twitter, Tumblr, and Live journal. I also learned that Wiki's are similar to blogs in the sense that they can be shared and edited by anyone. Social network's like Facebook are used everyday by millions of people from all over the world and are uses to talk to friends and co-workers or post what you are doing at any given time. Virtual worlds are life simulators that put you in this created world where you can use an avatar to communicate with different people similar to real life. A commonly used virtual world is called Second life. Virtual meetings are when you and other people can communicate live for any purpose but they are mainly used for business, this is available on sites like Fuze, and Webex. Content sharing sum's up all of these site's. By using these site's you are sharing content with other people. Lastly I understood this information because I use most of it everyday for personal and educational use. Most of these topics were easy because they were pretty self-explanatory as to what they are used for.
4 New Words

1. Asynchronous communication- does not require users to be online at the same time. (email)
2. Synchronous communication- two or more users online at the same time. (skype)
3. Wiki- web page where anyone can edit it at anytime.
4. Content Sharing- allows users to recommend their favorite story or content to friends.

Journal 3

Chapter 3 covered a lot of information on the search process. It talked about which search engines to use for different kinds of searches. Google is a commonly used search engine used everyday by millions of people from all around the world, along with search engines like Ask, Bing, Yahoo, and Dogpile. I like using google because it is fast and easy for simple searches like sports news and scores or navigating to store web sites. I was also introduced to Delicious which is a social bookmarking site. I found this to be very helpful because you can bookmark your favorite sites and share them with other people. By doing this you can also see sites that other people have bookmarked that may be to your interest. However basic search engines such as Google may be good for shopping and news but not the best if you want educated research information. With the everyday Internet anyone can post anything, which is a problem if you need specific factual information. For that you would turn to The Deep Web. The everyday Internet only covers a fraction of the information the Deep Web contains. When using the deep Web there are special search engines, one that I found helpful was Academic One. When conducting a search it is also important to use the Boolean logic. This is the method of using "and", "or", "not" to limit your search results. Lastly I learned about Information Fluency, or IF. IF is the ability to gather information and use it in legal ways. This includes information literacy, technology literacy, and critical thinking. These skills are known as 21st century skills. Lastly these skills include, adapt to change, think creatively, access and evaluate information, and core subjects like math science history etc.

I also feel I have done better in this module compaired to the other ones. My quiz grade was much better and I felt the over all module was much easier to comprehend.

4 New Words

1. Information Fluency: The ability to gather information and use it in legal ways.

2. Web Crawler: Software used by the search engine to browse the Internet for the desired information.

3. Meta-search Engine: Search engines like Dogpile, KartOO, Mamma, and Ixquick.

4. Boolean Logic: Using "and", "or", "not" to limit search results.