Journal - Week 7

1. This week really was a doozey. I used the readings to help me complete the discussion assignment. For the Web Search assignment I wrote, clearly, how I completed it. In summary, I used INFOMINE for the virtual library, Google for the search engine, Dogpile for the meta-search, and Excite for the commercial web portal. I usually just had to use “Propaganda AND Iraq War,” but for the virtual library I had to refine my search to broader terms, and even this did not yield the best results for my topic. I used the websites found in these searches and the MLA citation guide to help me cite the sources in the Web Site Citations assignment. Then, I evaluated and annotated these sources on the Evaluating Web Sites assignment. For that assignment I relied on the websites’ “about” pages and the AllWhoIs.com site. This assignment required a lot of digging and searching on the sites to find just the right information required. On the next assignment, Advanced Google Search, I used Google Advanced Scholar and Google U.S. Government to search for “Propaganda AND sell AND Iraq War.” In both cases I found many useful results, but the Advanced Scholar search produced scholarly articles while the U.S. Government search gave me websites.
2. I thought the discussion assignment would be fairly straight-forward, but I was surprised I didn’t even think of the money factor. I’m even more surprised because I have visited sites in which I need to specifically log-on through my class or I haven’t been a member and it’s caused difficulties for me to figure out how to get the info, yet not have to pay for it. When doing the Web Search assignment, I found no good results on the virtual library, which makes me think I might have done something wrong; I even read the link that describes how to produce an effective search on INFOMINE, so this frustrated me. It also concerns me that I found my best results from the commercial web portal. After reading about searching the web, I wasn’t expecting these results, which makes me further think I did something wrong =(. Then, when I wrote my MLA citations, I got confused on whether to follow the citation guide or the hints given on the assignment. When in doubt, I follow the directions, so I went with the assignment’s directions and I hope that doesn’t end-up hurting me in the end. When I evaluated the web sites further, I realized how much information wasn’t given for my sources, and just how un-reliable they may be. I know it’s a common mistake to trust sites that aren’t necessarily credible, but it’s disappointing to me that I didn’t know that until I strictly analyzed it. Lastly, the Advanced Google Search assignment was educational to me as well. I never knew Google could be a tool to search for scholarly articles, and I found this a very useful search tool to remember. However, when using the Google U.S. Government search tool, there was no information on this tool and the information it yielded didn’t stand out to me more different than an average Google Search, so it didn’t impress me as a search tool.

On another note, I was grateful I didn’t have to re-do the Week 6 assignments. However, I’m disappointed in myself that I didn’t save all the assignments I posted and lost. I’m thinking this could end-up hurting me in the end, when I need to put the final project together.

Reposting Week 6 Assignments

Unfortunately I don't have my Week 6 assignments saved (except for my revised research plan), so I have to do them all over again, on top of the week's current assignments. Fortunately I have my blog to trigger reminders of how/what I did.

So far - not a big fan of Angel.

Journal - Week 6

1. Completing my search strategy was a little more difficult that I first thought it would be. I didn’t have too hard of a time coming up with words for “sell,” but I had to change “Iraq War” to “war” so I could at least come up with specifics and synonyms for it. However, when I used these terms to search in the database, I found that some of the simplest terms yielded the worst results for me (i.e. “promote” and “demote”). When I completed this assignment I ran into a couple different search problems, which is explained in detail in the assignment, but just in case I have to write it hear as well, I will:
After completing my analysis of databases, I decided to use Academic OneFile to complete this assignment. When I first started searching I used “Propaganda AND sell AND warfare,” which yielded 1 result which was directly on my topic. Then I searched with “war” instead of “warfare” and I had 4 results, however they were all articles that were of specific world wars and were not of use to my topic. So I changed my search to “Media AND popular opinion AND Iraq” in which I got 2 results that weren’t really useful to me. It was at this point I realized I had other options I wasn’t noticing in the results under the “Magazines,” “Books,” “News,” and “Multimedia” tabs; I was only getting the results from the “Journals” tabs. After realizing this I ventured into the “Magazines” tab and read an article here, only to discover I couldn’t understand what the article was saying at all. Following this I searched for “Persuasion AND Iraq War AND promote OR demote,” “Propaganda AND Iraq War AND promote OR demote,” and “Propaganda AND popular opinion AND Iraq War.” These searches yielded many results under all the tabs but I had to dig through the results to get ones that specifically pertained to my topic.
I decided to use Academic OneFile to do my database search in based on my results from the periodical databases assignment. Even though I searched the every link possible about searching and the databases themselves, I sometimes had to use my best search results to conclude the answers. All in all, it helped me to determine which the better database to use was, and I utilized it to revise my research plan. Although as I’m writing this right now I could have added “Israel,” to my key terms – that sounds like a good one. I also included my changes to narrow my topic, so I hope it meets the requirements now.
2. When trying to determine search words, I ran into the difficulty of not knowing if my words really worked. I tried to add synonyms, truncations, broader terms and narrowed terms, but I still felt like words under “propaganda” and “sell” were somewhat interchangeable; I hope I did it right though. When completing the database analysis, I honestly searched a great deal to try and uncover the answers to the questions. The only one that seemed to be the most difficult to answer was the time coverage of each database. While I could provide a reasonable answer for ProQuest, I couldn’t even attempt to do so for Academic OneFile because it kept freezing whenever I attempted the same search. Plus, if I simply wanted to go to the end of the results of one search, to see the latest date provided, it would take me long periods of time trying to get to the end of 3000 results. In the end, I decided Academic OneFile would the best database search engine for my topic, because ProQuest was more geared towards businesses. This result was surprising to me because it is often referred to for searching purposes. Moving on, I felt my results from the key terms brainstorming activity helped tremendously in my actual search for journals on the database. I found that even when my search yielded smaller results, these results were usually better focused for my topic while many results were usually rarely about my topic. This wasn’t something I noticed before, but I can now know it’s a good thing if I take the time to read what’s provided. These results were beneficial when revising my research plan. I’m still not sure if I should include more terms and if I should include “phrases” (with AND and OR) or just the key terms. However, I know this is still a draft, so I can always add to it when I need to. This week’s results taught me a lot of about searching online, key terms, and databases.

Journal - Week 5

1. This week’s assignments were easier for me to accomplish than most assignments, because it seems like every class I have taken we have discussed how to properly cite sources. For the MLA Citation assignment, it was so simple when following the site guide given. Unfortunately I couldn’t find the Power Point mentioned so I wasn’t sure if I was doing the formatting correctly. On a different note, when it came to annotations, I was completely new to it. The readings on it and the guidelines seemed pretty simple, but I felt that 3-4 sentences didn’t allow me to fully explain what I was thinking. I was unsure of the formatting here as well, but I did it to the best of my understanding. Lastly, when I combined annotations and citations for the final assignment, I thought I understood it well. However, I was often wondering if I was doing the “describe the content of the source” correctly, or if I was just summarizing it.
2. My main difficulty this week was that I had hardly enough time to focus on this work. I was getting a constant 4-6 hours of sleep a night, trying to finish a project in one class and work. Fortunately I was familiar with the subject and it wasn’t too difficult, and now I have a long weekend so I am confident this week I will have less stress when it comes to prioritizing my time. When it came to the assignments, I felt the information given on citations and annotations was so helpful that I am counting on referring to them for future citation needs. I also felt it was helpful to focus on what my sources were about and how they could specifically help me with my topic.

Journal - Week 4

1. The “How I Know” assignment was pretty easy for me to accomplish. I followed the instructions and there were a lot of results to the “origin of Canuck.” However, I only looked at a few sites that provided some argumentative results and knew that not just one answer was correct. I even saw one site that argued how each argument given could or couldn’t fit – that one was most interesting to me. Then I wrote the essay about myself from an honest perspective. My research plan seemed like it would be fairly straight-forward, since I already had so much information, but I tended to feel like I was repeating myself in a lot of the answers. Lastly, when I completed “Selecting Information Sources,” I found the readings in the book and the video to fill in a lot of blanks for me.
2. The “How I Know” assignment was very insightful to me. Reading about what we do and don’t really know held some perspective that I never really thought of before. Furthermore, I would suggest a lot of other people come to terms with this information because I find it so sad how many people don’t want to admit they don’t actually know everything. When I did my research plan I thought I was doing it all properly, but I later thought I didn’t do a part of it correctly and wanted to go and change it, however I wasn’t sure if that was “legal” so I left it that way. Finally, in the “Selecting Information Sources” assignment, I thought I did very well. But today I got an email from Francine saying one of my statements was incorrectly stated. I understood what she meant, and I do think some periodicals produce good facts, I just think they also produce a lot of biased positions, even when they aren’t meant in that way. However, I do see them being used as a good primary source and see how some could be non-biased, so I will definitely remember that in my search.

Journal - Week 3

1. For the organizing assignment I felt confident with my organization because it’s one of my favorite things to do. However, I still came out with an organizational system that made more sense if an average person wanted to get something out of my closet. When I did the databases assignment, I felt the instructions were very clear and I followed them easily. Other than the readings and the obvious differences between the two databases it was somewhat difficult for me to understand the field differences. The catalog assignment allowed me to find some great sources from my library. I felt if I just searched for “Propaganda,” that I would find too many results, but when I looked at my college library I only found 37 and most of them were relevant to my topic. I also found some promising sources from my public library, but I had to narrow my search from “keyword” to “title” with the word search for “propaganda.” I was able to find the books I searched for in my college library when I visited it for the academic library visit. The visit was highly beneficial to me because I was able to find some great reference resources; especially since I never really knew how to search in this section to my benefit before. In this case I searched for the word “propaganda” as well and found that the best subjects for this were psychology and history encyclopedias. The librarian also helped me narrow my library book search to “propaganda AND war” and I got some great results from this as well.

2. Since the last couple weeks we’ve had our first assignment due on Saturday, I got lazy and waited till Saturday to see the assignments posted. When I found out my organizing assignment was going to be late, I decided it was time to change my current schedule so I could be more efficient in this class. I know most of the assignments were due Wednesday, but I made sure not to wait till the last minute to do them and I am much less stressed because of it. However, right before I was going to turn in my library visit assignment, the internet in our house stopped working and I that was stressful. I made sure to save everything on word though until it came back on and luckily I was still able to turn in my work on time. I also made sure to read the instructions CAREFULLY this week because I feel like I keep doing everything wrong! It can be hard though, because I need to do one thing in the directions, then another when I write down on the message board, and then I have to make sure I also covered the criteria. I think this can be a bit confusing and I wish the criteria and “what to post” were parallel and were mentioned in the instructions for the assignment. Otherwise, I didn’t run into many problems that couldn’t be figured out. I had a hard time finding ProQuest, but I finally did on my college website. Then I ran into the problem, with the librarian at the Library, that there weren’t enough reference sources for me to easily find my topic, but she made sure I got what I needed anyways. I also learned a lot about sources at my library. When I went to Washington State University, I never was taught how to use the resources at my library at it was always very overwhelming and I never used it properly. I feel much better knowing what I’m doing now.

Update

I'm not going to lie, I feel I have been slacking in this class. The whole "social life getting in the way of my work" has started to take its tole. I am also becoming more pessimistic because I feel like I'm reading all the directions for these assignments yet I am doing them all wrong!
Luckly, I have the day off today from work and school to take a breather and get caught-up. I feel it's time to do some re-organizing. If it's not working now, I'm not going to continue to do poorly, so I'm will try to make the extra effort to correct myself.
Thanks for all the input Francine, I need it!

Journal - Week 2

After reading the required reading material, I was somewhat confused on what exactly I had to come up with for my topic. Trying to get something global yet specific yet somewhat easy to find information on? I ended-up coming up with 3 topics but after reading other classmate responses I think my topics were too specific.
For the web research assignment, I thought I would look at one of the topics that interested me, so I searched for the word propaganda. Some of the sites weren't necessarily what I was looking for, but I also got some great results back. I used the 2nd and 3rd sites recommended.
In the end I decided to go with the topic on media. I think this one interested me the most and I knew some information but not too much. I'm excited to see where this goes and how much I learn!

Blog Test

I have never had a blog before, so this is a new experience for me.
So far it's been pretty basic and easy; it took me like 2 minutes to get setup.