Practical 8&9

Hello readers! The sem is coming to an end real soon, in 3weeks, and project submission are piling up, including EIR! For this week's work, (1) we are told to go on a "dream holiday", and evaluate the website of the country i've always wanted to go, (2) go on a dream holiday in Second Life and (3) compare both of the experiences.

Firstly, i have decided to go on a "dream holiday" to London, as i feel that London has many great attractions and i have always wanted to visit London every since i was young. I've always wanted to take a photo at London's Big Ben, which is one of the famous attraction in London.

There are four evaluation criteria that can be used to evaluate the website which i found about london, http://www.visitlondon.com/ . The website can be evaluate with Purpose and Coverage.

Purpose

The About Us button would lead the users to the purpose of their website. The purpose is well written, which meets the needs of the users that are planning to go on a holiday.
Coverage


In this website, they offer the 'Accommodation','Places to Go', etc, options for user to find out more information of London's attractions. This is really helpful for users as people who are intending to go to London, would be able to get lots of information about the places they are going to.

Practical 6!

Hey readers! So its already going to be week 12 soon, and so far EIR have been a fun and interesting subject! (:

Okay, now on to the practical questions. We were given three questions, which are:

a.Do you think it is more effective to search the invisible web (databases) than using search engines, meta-search or subject directories? Why?

b.Name ONE database which you will use for your research topic. Why?

c. Name ONE more database which you will use for your course. How will you use this database for your course?

(a) So firstly, i agree that the invisible web is much more effective than using search engines, meta-search or subject directories as some sources are only available in the invisible web. It can be quite useful to a handful of researchers as some of the sources stored in the databases cannot be found on the search engines, and the information in the sources can be hard to find too.

Search engines, meta-search and subject directories are also useful, but not to the extent of how an invisible web can help. If a researcher needs a thorough research on a specific topic or an in depth research, the invisible web would be useful, whereas the search engines and subject directories can only offer sufficient information for a beginner.


(b) One database that i would use is Ebscohost as we were taught to use this database during the lesson last week, and i find it useful after a couple of times trying to search on a particular topic. Ebscohost also covers many different subjects, like business, film, tourism, communication, etc. This database is helpful as it offers a list of different subjects in the database.

(c) Another database that i can use for my course is Factiva. I have also learned on how to use this database in one of my module in my course. It is useful for me as it is easy for me to search on news and business informations in newspapers, trade publications, etc. As my course needs me to do research on business and the markets, Factiva could be a helpful database for me with the information that i can find in it.

So that's it for this week's blog post! Goodbye! (: