Blog Reflections (Practical 3)

Today i learnt about google's various search functions.

Although i am not a new user to google search, i had never used any of the advance search functions before. Yes my homepage of firefox at my home desktop is set to google but shame on me how can i miss such a good feature of google? That is what EIR is for; enables me to learn more about searching technique and various features/functions that i would never have used.

After trying out the "advance search" feature of google, i must say i'm very impressed.
I can search for exact word/phrase, exclude any word, by file type and even search by domain. Of course there are more to advance search like search by date, usage rights, region but in this blog post i will only touch on the more basic and usefull , search by word and by file type.

Search by exact word/phrase :

This is simple, you can search by word, phrase and make sure that your phrase appears exactly as it is in the search result. This is give you a more concise search result.

Tips: You do not have to go to advance search to use this feature. You can just simply use
+"My search phrase" (exclude the double quotations). The plus sign is equals to search by exact words of phrase.

Search by file type :

I've have not seen this feature before and this is the holy grail (for students) of search amongst the many search features that google has. With this i can search for a particular assignment and just copy the whole chunck off the .doc or .pdf file and hand in. Ok don't take me for real, i don't copy and i have my own writing styles and principles. Even if i really do, i will improve on it and make it better.

Google Scholar

Besides google's advance search, i also learn about google scholar. Google scholar is for search of more acadamic/technical related articles/patent/e journals. In my honest opinion, this could be a good search feature for people(me) who wanted to look for "Latest development in cancer research" however upon further searching and testing of this Google Scholar, i came to another conclusion;

It is not for users who do not like to look at boring walls of text in extremely scientific language. In the case of my research topic "Latest development in cancer research", the search results give me the impression of "What am i looking at???"

Here is a real quote from the search result

His research focuses on the molecular and environmental causes of cancer. ... in hormonal
carcinogenesis and the mechanisms of cell transformation by oestrogens, and studies the role
of insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF1) in mediating dietary effects on cancer development. ...

Definitely not something that i can understand unless i get a degree in medical science.

Another major problem with google scholar, for some search results you click on it expecting to find what you wanted since the search results give you a preview of the article...for some results, when i clicked on it, it brings me to a page and says

Access

To read this article in full you may need to log in, make a payment or gain access through a site license (see right).

Now this is a waste of time and a put of for users. I don't know about others but i will definitely not use this feature.

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Participation in discussion forum.

I feel that by participating in a discussion forum, i can learn more things as there will be real human correcting any errors i made E.G. Wrong information. I do not feel anxious talking to people expecially when discussing online. Why would i be? Nobody can do anything to me just by talking online in a discussion forum.

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Why must i do citation and biblography.

I certainly understand the importance of citation and biblography. When i'm doing a research, i want my research to be more correct in terms of my sources and i need to convince the users that i had indeed done my due research on that particular topic before i present it. A well written biblography will let readers know at a glance where i obtain my source, from which website or article , the date and the author. This can also allows the reader to obtain my information if they decided to know more.

For citation, the reason it is important is because we need to give the original author his due credits for any quotes we make or paragraphy that i quote and present it in my research. This is defintely a right thing to do since i do not want others to take any original materials from me and take it as their own.


Ok that will be the end of my blog reflections. Thank you for reading. Do give some comments if you agree or disagree with me.