Sunday, July 4, 2010

Week 2: What a Task?

For three days, I haven't stopped surfing the internet day and night, visiting this new website to check its utility, using the other to identify its disadvantages, reading my colleagues’ recommended links and my dear instructor Deborah’s tips for better web searching. It is not an easy task to do because you should use these search engines many times to identify their strength and weakness points.

I tried one of the noodletools websites recommended by Deborah. It connects us to the collections and services of more than 10,000 libraries worldwide. This web search engine,
http://www.worldcat.org/, provides everyone with all what he or she needs; books, music, CDs, DVDs, audiobooks, articles, … etc. Also, It is available in many languages. However, I didn’t recommend my colleagues to use it as we need to subscribe to take advantage of its resources. 

I also visited all my colleagues’ suggested search engines. If you use for example http://www.virtuallrc.com/, you will get unsatisfactory results for your queries. So, it is not beneficial as Arjana mentioned. Google Scholar, http://scholar.google.com.ua/, doesn’t differ from Google as I think it is a part of its world. Also, I visited http://intute.ac.uk/, but I didn’t find it beneficial for me. May be it needs to be tried more later, then I can judge. http://clusty.com/ is a good one as it is called a metasearch tool. This means that it involves more than one search engines. It includes Ask, Bing, and Yahoo. It presents search results in "clusters" by subject. Titles of the clusters are displayed to the left of search results allowing you to easily navigate from one cluster to another, but I think it doesn’t differ from Google and Yahoo.

One of the most beneficial websites that Saulat recommended is
http://www.biography.com/search/. Actually I need it badly especially when I teach my students how to write a biography. I can download some biographies from this website. Moreover, I found another website similar to it. It is http://www.who2.com/. I can use both websites with my students effectively.

Roxana recommended a website for downloading any type of music. I tried it many times, but it didn’t work well. Through checking noodletools, I’ve found two other websites for downloading music and clips. They are
http://www.findsounds.com/types.html & http://www.soundsnap.com/. I can use both websites to download songs for listening or clips to involve them in the PowerPoint presentations I design for my students.

To be honest, at first I didn’t want to change the search engines I accustomed to use. Soon I discovered that I have many keys to open many doors to get the world of the internet, but I restrict to one key. What a shame? So, I decided to try many keys to take advantage of all these opportunities. Actually, using Google doesn’t mean that I don’t use other websites. As a researcher I have many websites to visit daily. They are very valuable and easy to use. Here are some of them:
As a teacher I use other websites when I need articles, activities, exercises, worksheets, quizzes, songs, videos, … etc. Among these websites are: http://www.sitesforteachers.com, http://exchanges.state.gov/englishteaching/forum/archives.html, http://www.agendaweb.org/ , http://iteslj.org/, ... etc.
Of course they are not search engines, but they are specialist websites where I find all the resources I need in my EFL classrooms.

Although I spent more time and effort to accomplish this task, it was of great value. At least I tried web search engines besides my friend Google. One more thing is that I want to send a very
BIG THANK YOU to my dear instructor Deborah and colleagues for their fruitful discussion on the Nicenet board. Their posts, comments and discussions provide me a new mind to think with and a new way to search with.

8 comments:

  1. Dear Azhar,
    Thanks a lot for sharing with us the links you think may be of use to us. I have already bookmarked them for future check. The internet is a wilderness and it's only through an efficient search engine and good websearching skills that one can intellectuallys survive in the age of information technology. Surfing the net for three days and nights must have certainly tired you, but made of you a websearching Guru;-)

    Yours
    Arbi

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  2. Dear Arbi,

    Thanks you so much for reading my post. Yes, I'm very tired now, but I can't stop surfing the web for more beneficial search engines or even tricks for taking every advantage of this wonderful world.

    Happy searching!

    Yours,
    Azhar

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  3. Dear Azhar

    I must say that your reflection is a WOW!!! It's laden with links of interesting websites that I can't wait to check...as soon as I'm done with my cooking today:)

    Cheers!

    Saulat

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  4. Dear Azhar,
    What a great reflection!
    I totally agree with you, it takes a lot of time to be able to search all the websites and find out how useful they can be. I guess we can only truly find about it when we are preparing a lesson or a unit and we go for something specific...
    Thanks a lot for all your suggestions concerning websites. I'm pretty sure they'll come in handy.
    Keep on the good work!
    Elsa

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  5. Dear Azhar,
    thanks for explaining the features of different search engines so thoroughly.

    I agree with you that one try is often not enough to make a proper judgement about a website, in this case a search engine. I'm sure that Virtual LRC, "my search engine", has certain advantages that I didn't get to find. With so many available options to choose from, it's easy to get spoiled and pick another one without being aware of what we might be missing. That's why I think it's important that I give it another try one of these days. Or do you think that would be just a waste of time? Because by having such a rich assortment of search engine at our disposal how wrong could we be if we reject using one of the many?

    All the best
    Arjana

    PS: Can you please tell me how you put the list of recent comments in your sidebar? Thanks in advance:-)

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  6. Dear Arjana,

    Thanks so much for reading my post. For your question, I followed the same way you did when making a blog list. Please click design, then click add a gadget. On your left, you will find a list: Basics, featured, Most popular ... etc. Please click featured or most popular, on your right, you will find many options. Among these options are recent comments, recent posts, daily calendar and many things you can add.

    I hope my explanation would be beneficial.

    Yours,
    Azhar

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  7. Dear Azhar,
    thanks so much for your help. I managed to put the comments gadget on my blog. I never noticed there's a menu on the left-hand side of the pop up window. As the saying goes, you never stop learning :-)
    All the best
    Arjana

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  8. Dear Azhar, first if all thank you for viewing my blog and posting your comments. I started to observe how you work and accomplish your tasks and have to say joining to Arjana's opinion and many others, you have a wonderful reflection, a clear explanation of all the resources you have visited. It not only saves time, but show that all the information in processed and ready to be taken in. The links are good.

    As each week the tasks become more challenging, you are coping with them with greater creativity and thought.

    All the best

    Liliya

    ReplyDelete