Activity 4 - Blog Reflections

Briefly reflect on lessons learnt from this practical by answering questions below:

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a. Were you impressed by Google's search functions/features? Why?

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Today was the first lesson after a long weekend of new year holiday and no doubt, to answer the question, I am very impressed by Google's search functions and features. All along, I started using Yahoo! search engine at first as Yahoo! provided some daily trivia news on their website which was quite interesting to read, however after that I became a Google convert as the Google search results was more accurate and had a better variety and their interface was very simple and user-friendly. I am also very impressed by how you can filter your search results to just solely searching Blogs, images, news and articles etc. Furthermore, I have learned about the "formula" that we can input into the search engine. for example, the formula is something like this, (impact OR effect*) AND (tsunamis* OR tidal wave*) AND (society OR civilization). This formula is something like how Google searches for you. Before that, I only assumed Google search as typing what you want to search and clicking your mouse. I did not knew anything about this "formula". I think that its kind of cool. I have also come to know of another type of search engine by Google called Google Scholar. Before that, I only knew about the normal Google search engine. I feel that Google Scholar is more of searching a specific type of document rather that a whole long list of results that the normal Google search engine produces. However, I think that the normal Google search engine is better as Google Scholar is kind of new and complicated to me.

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b. How do you feel about participation in discussion forum? Is it helpful for your research? Do you feel anxious about talking to others you do not know?

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I feel that discussion forum is a quick and easy way to get answers to whatever you need to know. A discussion forum is a good way for participation as although you may not know, but people from different walks of life may be frequent members of these forums. The different answers from these different people provides many kind of approaches to your questions. The varied opinions from the forum members gives a wide range of knowledge. Forums is helpful to my research to a small extent, as most of the forum members reply in short and too generalised answers. I do not feel anxious about talking to others that I do not know as before this activity, I am already a frequent visitor of forums. Moreover, we are talking to people behind their computer screens instead of real life communication, so there is no need to be anxious.

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c. Why must you do citation and bibliography?

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We must do citation and bibliography so that the original author's hard work will not be taken for granted. Moreover, we may be accused for plagiarism. For whatever images, videos, materials, or even a length of text that we changed after reading a website, we have to do citation and bibliography.