Saturday, September 8, 2007

Week 5, Information Management

Lecture
Our lecture about Information Management was very helpful in showing us how to manage all the information we receive during our undergrad degree. Starting with folders on our flash drives for every unit is the best way to go. From that you can start branching off smaller folders on essays, PowerPoint's and images.

Atom-based information has a lot of pros and cons on why we should use them. With atom-based information such as books, I find the cons way out the pros for me. Especially way out the pros. On the other hand bit-based information is more easier to use. It's a very flexible way to keep information is real or fake. A lot of goods and services have changed from atom to bit form eg. banking, email and music. This can be very helpful for businesses to make a little money. The many steps to organise your bits can make it very easy to locate a piece of work.

Tutorial
In our tutorial we needed to learn how to save useful websites using bookmarks or favourites on the Internet. My three bookmarks were very quick and easy to put in because I already had an idea on how bookmarks work.




The DNA of Information
Most of society today use atoms and bits to collect and store information. Although both great ways of sourcing it, they are also not too reliable on both behalf's.

Although atoms come in a form of newspapers, books and magazines it is not always 100% reliable. You could easily lose a newspaper or magazine, by misplacing it or someone just taking it. With books they can go out of print. Not the best way to keep information. Even if Atoms are not the best option bits can easily have their own problems, you don't know who is writing your specific information or better yet you don't even know if what they are saying is true.

People today do rely on bits more so than atoms because its more flexible and its faster in our rapidly changing world. No one wants to sit around reading a book to find information they need
if you can simply type in some keyword on your computer.

We can also find pros on both atoms and bits. You will always know what you are reading in a book or newspaper is true to some extent, because you get all the background information on the writer so if they were by any chance just making something up it can be proven. Also with atoms no one can just go into your book and change it around like bits.

Bits is the source most easiest to use because its easy to edit so if you don't like what someone has written you can edit it into something more understandable. It's also easier to keep by storing it in folders on your computer instead of having books all over you workspace.

However,its completely up to you. You might like reading books for your information or you might want it given to you straight up. The case, you need to make sure its real and not something someone has messed around with.

Reading
Our reading Information Management & Electronic Environments was a good source on showing us how to keep ourselves organised in our studies. Reading about organisation in storing my information and work helped me reorganise my flash drive and home computer to a way which is more useful in saving my work. Only having twenty items in each folder made it easier to find stuff but harder to divide all my information up.

Using bookmarks or favourites on the Internet is a great way to save good websites because it is a bit of a pain when you need to write down the address of a website when it's really long.

Copying and pasting is a great way to cut down on paper use as a student. Just finding the information you need and copying it also saves you time when looking for information because you won't need to re-read the whole document again.

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