5th lesson

This week, we learnt how to create site feed for our blog.  Initially, I thought that it was quite tedious to do so, as this is my first blog and I did not really know much about creating links, but found that it was actually a breeze to do two of it for my blog.  I found that it was very useful to me, if I were to create another blog for personal use.  I have seen such "links" from my friends' blog previously, and was curious how to create one.  So, after this week's tutorial, I have learnt a new thing, which is to create site feeds, which enables me to view my friends' blog instantly with just a click. :) It is useful in the sense that if I have say, 100 friends and I like to view their blogs regulaarly, it would be tedious for me to memorise all of their blog URL.  Hence tthis feature allows me to "save" the blog links of my friends in my blog and as and when I feel like taking a look at a friend's blog, I can always search for their names in my blog and open a new tab for easy viewing of their blogs.
Also, from this week lesson, we were introduced to two different search engines, Metacrawler as well as Yahoo Directory.

I felt that Metacrawler is more of an effective tool when researching for my research topic, as Yahoo Directory tends to give me irrelevant search results.  Out of the 592 search results that Yahoo Directory shows, none of it is related to the development and usage of Twitter in education in a way or another.  Hence, Metacrawler is of better use to me.  However, there is also a disadvantage of Metacrawler, as users cannot type too many words in the search box.  As for the advantage of Metacrawler, or its feature, the teacher explained to us that Metacrawler is actually a website which brings us to the search results from other search engines such as Yahoo and Google search, Bing and Ask. 

Above shows the results that Yahoo directory gave me which are irrelevant.  It also depicts the fact that the related categories that it suggested to me is not really true ie. Twitter is not related to Peace Corps and American counseling association.  However, from the lecture nnotes, I understand that subject directories contain human-compiled categories, such as education.  Hence, they tend to be of the right category, since the tendency to categorise wrongly is limited.

For the practical activity for last week and this week, we are required to add in information that we have searched for previous practical activities and then present our findings in the EIR wiki page.  I find it very useful, as I am exposed to many other people's point of view and also anle to acquire more knowledge as others share their views in the wiki page.  In this manner, I am not only able to find out more information from other fellow course mates, I can also get to see the various photos or videos that others posted relating to my research topic, whic helps to broaden up my knowledge about it.  Of course, we must not forget to cite the author of the source for his or her work at the end of the sharing of ideas.