Activity 18 - Reseach online education

In this activity I have been asked to research online education, I will be looking at five different websites and evaluate each of them and rank them on how well people could learn from these. I will conclude the layout, structure and the colour scheme, navigation plus the information that is being told. The reason why I will evaluate all of this is because it all helps put the website together and helps the audience understand. The websites I will be looking at are:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/learning/

http://brs.leeds.ac.uk/~beiwww/beid.html

http://www.ukeducationonline.co.uk/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/

http://www.study-online.net/

Even though there are two websites of the 'BBC' they are completely different texts, one is for children and the other is for older people, people in year 11+

The first website I will look at is the BBC learning website.
Text: The text in this website is very easy to understand, it has all the different links on the website for the different subjects. (As shown to the left) This is good because it is showing the audience what is advertised.
Layout: The layout is very organised and very easy to read, the audience is able to look at the text of what is on the website very easily.
Structure: The stucture of the website is html, this allows the audience to understand the website as it is like any other website that they are used to.
Colour scheme: The colour scheme on this website is very boring, it uses only 3 colours for the background, even though this is alot they are grey, black and white. Even though it is easy to read it and it is clear, it doesn't really get the audience's attention to read it.
Navigation: The navigation on the pages are really easy to use and it is clear to where it goes, there is a search bar as well so if you couldn't find a certain page then you could just type it in.
Advantages: The advantages to having this website is that it is easy to use, the audience that use it will understand the navigation and if they get stuck on how to find something they can use the search button.
Disadvantages: However, there are disadvantages, the colour scheme is really bland and doesn't really get the audience's attention.

Activity 15 - dissection of a frog

In this activity I have been asked to look at frog dissection.

http://frog.edschool.virginia.edu/Frog2/

The purpose of the website is to tell people about dissection of frogs, it allows people to get an insight of how to dissect a frog. The website allows you to look at videos, pictures and text to allow you to learn how to do it. On the website it gives you step to step guide about what you are going to do. This helps the audience because it gives them an insight in a much more clearer picture of what to do.

It also has pratical exercises to see if you remember how to do a certain thing. One of the excercises i did was that you had to place the pins into the frogs legs so that you dont have to hold it etc.

The picture at the top shows someone about to dissect the frog, the reason why people dissect these animals is because scientists want to find out about nature more and it gives alot more education to people at school or college. Most people prefer to learn with pratical activities as to writing things down etc.

Activity 14

We have been asked to look at a website and get from 'stories timeline' to 'Personal Computers and Information Networks, we then followed this through to the stories on the PC, the internet, the dot com and the gold rush.

We looked at the following website:

http://www.makingthemodernworld.org.uk/stories/

The purpose of the website is to inform A level students and the vocational students on how the world became modern and how this took place. Throughout the stories it has pictures of the first computer. (Shown on the left) At the end of the 1980's the internet was a collection of networks of computers, it had an agreed set of rules about transferring information about them. This is called TCP/IP.

The picture on the right is of a man and a woman working at a Ferranti Pegasus computer. It takes up the majority of the space in the room and it has a 1950s and 1960s mainframe installation.

Online Banking

I am going to look at two different online banks, the banks I am going to look at are Lloyds TSB and Abbey. Both of these banks offer the same services just as any other online bank. They have different offers and appeal to different people.

Lloyds TSB and Abbey
The purpose of the online bank is to enable people to check their account money, transfer any money into another account. The target audience with these banks is everyone so they can appeal to all ages with different offers. Anyone can open an account, if your under 18 you need to get a parent to help you open an account so the bank know that you are that particular person. It acts in a way like a reference. It fulfils the purpose because it can appeal to anyone, this means they can get more customers. The major advantages to having online banking is so that you can look how much money you have in your account without having to phone up on the phone, or going to the cashpoint. This appeals to a lot of people as you dont have to leave your home and if you have a busy life with work or studying at school or college then you can log on at any time of the day and have a look. The only improvement they could make to this is to make it much more clearer to where to sign up to get online banking. The only disadvantage to having online banking would affect older people if they dont trust giving their details out on the computer. They might think that they are at risk of fraud but in fact it is a lot safer than people think.

Weather

I have been asked to look at the weather on a website, I am going to look at the BBC website.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/

Thursday 11th October 2007
Predicted:
Sun
Highest temperature: 15’c (daytime)
Highest temperature: 10’c (night)
Wind: 2
Visibility: Very poor
Actual:
Sunny but quite mild
Morning started with fog.
No wind

Friday 12th October 2007
Predicted:
Cloudy but sunny
Highest temperature: 18’c (daytime)
Highest temperature: 11’c (night)
Wind: 3
Visibility: poor
Actual:
Sunny
Bit mild

Saturday 13th October 2007
Predicted:
Cloudy
Highest temperature: 17’c (daytime)
Highest temperature: 13’c (night)
Wind: 7
Visibility: Moderate
Actual:
Rain
Mild

Sunday 14th October 2007
Predicted:
Cloudy
Highest temperature: 17’c (daytime)
Highest temperature: 14’c (night)
Wind: 9
Visibility: moderate
Actual:
Warm
Mild
Windy

Monday 15th October 2007
Predicted:
Light rain and clouds
Highest temperature: 16’c (daytime)
Highest temperature: 14’c (night)
Wind: 13
Visibility: moderate
Actual:
Warm
Windy
Mild later on in the day

Investigating eBay

Main Purposes
I am looking at EBay; the main purposes of EBay are to buy or to sell goods. The site allows you to search for anything that you want, all you have to do is type in the specific item or you can type in a key word. You can buy things through an auction which is a quick sell or you can sell it through the advanced sell. This allows you to sell it through an auction, where it might only get a couple of pound for it. If you sell it through the advanced sell then it might get a lot for it, although it does take a much longer time to actually sell.



Target audience
The target audience is everyone; there are different things for all ages to appeal to everyone. This is good because all ages can buy or sell things.

Auction Process
In the auction process you enter the amount you want to bid on the particular item that you have chosen, it gives you the information of the starting bid, how long you have left to bid, the postal costs, where the item’s location is and how many bids the item has had. You can also watch the bids on the item so you can keep yourself updated so you can see if anyone has out bid you.

How it fulfils the purpose
It fills the purpose of the audience because they can search for an item that they are looking for, it may not cost a lot either – depending on how much people have bid and the starting bid price.

Benefits and limitations
There are many benefits to eBay, these are:
The audience can search for any item that they are looking for.
Easy navigation around the pages.

There are also many limitations for eBay, these are:
The audience may bid for something that they want to buy but they can be out bid.
Might not be any item that they are looking for

Why it is successful
The website is successful because it sells almost everything that people are looking for; the website has a wide range of items that are on sale. It appeals to all ages as well; this is good because you will get a wider range of items to buy.

Real Time Information

In activity 10 we have been asked to create a route to get to Tottenham Court Road from Oakmead College of Technology. I will look at the time, costs, dates and sources used. We are looking at planning the journey by car and railway.

Travelling by car
Source I used: (http://theaa.com/travelwatch/inc/planner_places_redirect.jsp)
From: BH11 9JJ, Bournemouth.
To: Tottenham Court Road, London
I used the AA route planner, the miles that are covered in the journey is 105.5 (kilometres) and 169.8 (miles). The journey will take about 2 hours and 14 minutes, depending on how long it will take you at the service station etc. There are service stations and petrol services on the way to Tottenham Court Road so you will be able to have a break and refill on petrol. There are also speed cameras on the way to the destination.

Travelling by train
Source I used: (http://ojp1.nationalrail.co.uk/en/pj/tt)
From: Bournemouth
To: South Tottenham
I used the National Rail Company, the train departs at 12:59pm and arrives at the destination at 16:16pm. The journey will take about 3 hours and 17 minutes and you need to change trains 3 times. You then need to get a taxi to Tottenham Court Road and it will take about 28 minutes.
The source I used to get the information for the taxi http://www.london-taxi.co.uk/taxi/londontariff.htm. At the most it will cost you £20.

Haiku Poem

A haiku poem consist of a 5 line syllable, 7 line syllable and then 5 syllable line. Haiku is one of the most important form of traditional Japanese poetry.

My Poem is:-

It’s a dark cold night
But the sun is shining bright
I have made no sense

In sms form:-

It’s a drk cold nite
Bt da sun is shinin brite
I ave mde no sense

Spamming, Viruses, Trojans, Worms and Spoofing

What is it?

• Spamming is when someone sends the same message to a large number of people who didn't ask for it.
• A Virus can be sent through email and messenger.It contains code and it can infect the programs on the computer and cause alot of disruption to files and programs.
• Trojans are sent by hackers and they send a code to a program when the program is being used.
• Worms are exploiting vunerabilities in operating systems.
• Spoofing is when a website sends you an email saying that you have won something when infact you actually haven't.

http://www.washington.edu/computing/virus.html This website is good because it tells you information about what viruses are and how do you protect your pc from them.

Protecting your computer from viruses and hackers you need to have software that allows this, such software like anti-virus, norton, firewall and wind-patrol. There are many things you can do to protect your computer. Such as:

• Always check your software and files for viruses at least once a week.
• Always check emails for viruses.

Lesson 20/09/07

In AS ICT today we had to look at a website which explained about how email works. We had a choice out of 3 different websites that we wanted to look at - which gave us a range of different information. We then had to write about "What is Email?". We had to write about this subject on Microsoft Word and email it to other people in the class. I then looked at the documents that i received from the members in the class. We then had to write about what we found about blogs and write about what we had done in the lesson.

Learning about blogs and posting them on here will help us when we come to do our coursework for the Unit if we decide to look at blogs.

Blogs

Blogs are like an online journal, it is used so you can write anything on there but it tends to have a purpose to tell people about work or how you are feeling. There are many websites that you can post blogs on such as:

www.bebo.com
www.myspace.com

A blog is to keep people posted of what your thoughts are and how you are feeling. Blogs are sometimes used to keep people informed of work you are doing. On some websites there is a rule about what you write on your blog, you musn't write anything abusive or offensive about someone. You may get the account deleted, with blogs you are able to comment back to someone's blog and reply to what they have said.

You can edit or delete the blog that you have posted, if the blog post has comments on it then you can delete them and the person who commented you is able to edit or delete their comment that they wrote. If you delete a blog that you dont want then you will delete the comments that have been posted on that specific blog.

On websites you can have as many blogs as you wish to have, there is no limitation to how many blogs you are limited to. This is an advantage because if you have different things to say then you are able to write down what you want in different blogs. A disadvantage to having a blog is that if you have too many then people may not read all of them as there would be too many for them to read. Depending on the size of the blog entry.

Online Services

The internet allows us to do many things, we can look at information from the news or the weather and we can post blogs or send emails. Technology is a part of the whole world and it is used in everyday life. I will be writing about online services.There are many online services that people can use today. There are many different online services that we can use. These are:

• Communication (e-mail, instant messaging, newsgroups, news conferencing and blogs)
• Real Time Information (timetables, news services, traffic reports, weather)
• Commerce (shopping, banking, auctions)
• Government (online tax returns, e-voting, applications for services/grants)
• Education (online learning/training)
• Business (video conferencing, collaborative working and business networks)
• Entertainment (multi-user games, radio player)
• Download Services (music, film, upgrades and software)
• Archiving (x drives)

Communication - Email

Electronic mail has improved over the years and it used by alot of people all across the world, you can send someone a letter or attach either a picture, videoclip or music file. It is part of everyday life and some people find it easier as it is formal depending on who you are sending it too. An example of where email is used is at sixth form, it allows teachers to email each other and the students to let them know of changes of lesson rooms or tells them about coursework. Email is an advantage because it allows people to communicate easily and doesnt mean the teachers wont be trying to find the student to tell them. A disadvantage to using email at sixth form is that the message might not go through and the student or the teacher wont be infomed of changes/information.

Communication - Blogs

Blogs are like an online journal, you can write anything in a blog but it tends to have a purpose. You can let people know what you are doing, thoughts you may have or a comment about something. There are certain rules with using blogs - depending on the website where you write on the blog you may get kicked off the website and it will delete your account. Examples of websites where you can write blogs are:

www.bebo.com
www.myspace.com
www.blogger.com

When a blog has been written people can add comments to the blog that you have made. This allows you to see what people think about what you have written. Both you and the person have control if they want to keep their comment on the blog that you have posted. You can edit the blog and you can delete it if you dont want it anymore. This is an advantage because if you have written how you are feeling on the blog and then your mood changes you can edit what you have written or you can delete it. A disadvanatage is that if you delete the blog and people have commented on it you will loose the comments that people have posted.

Real Time Information - news reports

You can look at what is happening on the news through websites such as:

www.bbc.co.uk
www.itv.com

These allow you to see what is happening on the news if you have either missed the news on the television or you dont have time to watch tv. This allows people who are working to update themselves with what has happened on the news.