Online Communications

Well, the secret is out. I love information and I like having control over information. I want to be able to learn what I want when I want. I don’t think there is any merit in memorizing useless facts, so I rely on the internet and various sources of electronic information to always be there for easy access.

In order to access useful information online I have learned that the following are important:

Purpose: Have a focus in mind

Use appropriate search databases: Google is not always the answer.

Search skills: Know how to write search terms and change them based on results.

Analyze information: Know what information is useful and useless.

The following websites help me get the information that I want.

• How to evaluate a website
• Search multiple search engines at once
• Retrieve archived information from the internet. Including web pages that have been taken down but you still want to visit.

This semester I am experimenting with the edublogs site for our Online Communications blog. Please let me know what you think.
I know we have had a messy schedule over the last couple of weeks, but I hope to bring everything together when the schedule returns to full class periods.
At the moment I think we need to begin to consider what we enjoy as users of websites. When we think about what makes a usable and enjoyable website, we may then do our best to create a website for our project that will serve others to the fullest.
Over the next couple of weeks we will see how we can turn our blog into a useful space to add information and document what we learn in class.