Putting up my own blog and reading that of others has been interesting. These experiences have lead me to the following observations.
In my last blog, I discussed my E-shopping, which I enjoyed a lot. Such shopping saves my time and does not tire me. E-shopping is good in this sense. We are also not bothered by sales promoter that we do not welcome. However, when doing the online shopping, the only way to judge the product is via the pictures provided. Obviously, two dimensional photos cannot give a full idea of a product. We cannot touch the products and exam them. Sometimes, we cannot have a clear idea of the size of the products. Besides that, we are sent the wrong products once in a while.
http://www.amazon.com/ Amazon classifies all the products by their function, which gives me a very clear idea of where to find the products I am looking for. Some promotional or recommended products are highlighted at the lower part of the website window. In this way, we do not need to spend extra time to find these recommended products. When we click on the product, all the details about the item are shown. Amazon also gives me the information on what customers who have bought the product think of it. All in all, amazon is quite a good site for customers to do online shopping.
I enjoyed my E-shopping activity as I mentioned previously. I did not like to do online shopping before this because I did not think E-shopping was convenient. But now I think differently. After the last E-shopping activity, I know a lot about online shopping and now I think E-shopping is not bad. Amazon gives me a chance to have a look at everything I want to buy. It allows me to browse at will without bothering sales stuff or incurring their displeasure if I am slow to make a decision. This is liberating as we are not pressured into buying anything. Now Christmas is approaching, many products are on offer. Amazon calculates the price after discount and tells me how much I can save. I have to say that the technology today is very advanced. Now, if I want to buy something, I may go to the online shopping website first and get a general idea of the products.
I think researchers need to know the different purposes of the websites. Now I have learnt that the purposes of internet resources are information, advocacy, business, news, personal, entertainment. You see so many purposes and if a researcher does not understand these purposes, he may be lost on the way to search for information on his topic. On the other hand, if he can handle this, he is able to figure out which benefits them and which are irrelevant. And in this way, he can do research effectively and then his report on the research will be very clear.
Before I study EIR, I used Google all the way to search information. But this time, for our research topic “Impact of smoking on youth”, I encountered other websites and I find them very useful. I went to “World Health Organization” (http://www.who.int/tobacco/research/youth/health_effects/en/) for our research topic. This organizational website gives me many facts or information on the effect on health.
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| Greenpeace |
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| Amazon |
Greenpeace (http://www.greenpeace.org) is an example of an advocacy website. I compared this advocacy website with Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/), I find three differences:
Website compared | Amazon | Greenpeace |
Purpose | Amazon is aimed at introducing products and promoting them to customers. So Amazon concentrates on describing the details of the products. | Greenpeace has no marketing purpose and its mission is to publicize the need to do something to protect our environment to build up a green environment. |
Manner of advocacy | Beautiful photos and attractive discount are shown for each item. Grades given on the products by customers are shown to give potential customers an idea of the efficiency of the products. (The grades range from one star to five stars, five stars being the best.) Another individual list of new products and discount items are also given to attract potential customers. | News, photos and videos tell us about pollution or climate change all over the world. Some photos have shock value. An instance is that orang-utans are homeless because of forest destruction. This educates people to protect our earth. There is also a board for recent activity and they invite you to join their cause by adding your signature. |
Description of each item | Amazon is a marketing website. People want to know the features of the products. So Amazon gives information on many aspects, including the physical features, aesthetic qualities and efficiency. | Greenpeace is to call people save the earth. So the essays are describing the destruction or a campaign to support Greenpeace. Mainly they are out to convince people to join them in their fighting. |
From practical 1&2, I was asked to identify the purpose of my resources websites. After this activity, I have learnt that, in total, all the purposes of websites are information, advocacy, business, news, personal, entertainment. And each of them has its own function. For example, our topic is “Impact of Smoking on Youth”, and the information from the websites is useful. Doing the practical work has educated me on the usefulness of the relevant websites to provide needed information as well as taught me how best to access relevant websites and choose among them for the ones that are most suitable for my project. I can do a very effective and accurate research in the future if I am asked to do a report. Armed with this skill, I also save time. I will share this with my teammates later for group work. :p:p
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