Over the course of semester one, i have learned many things that are both useful and interesting. In Internet Class we have learned to use sites like Diigo and advanced searches. Diigo is a site where you can bookmark all of your favorite sites. Say, you were writing a research paper, instead of printing everypage you use off, you can bookmark them all on Diigo like a favorite, and you may then access them from any computer. I know that I have to write a Reasearch Paper later this year in English, and I am planning on using Diigo to bookmark my pages to later site them. By doing this I will be able to get them on any computer at the school, my home computer, or my laptop. Having them all on a computer is much easier than printing them all off and trying to keep track of them that way. We also learned about advanced searches. These will also be helpful for reasearch papers. Two of the advanced searches we used were Gale Student Resources and CIRS, another reasearch database. These two research databases find information based on the keywords you type in etc. However, they are much more thourough and usefull than a site like google or yahoo. They find articles from newspapers, videos, other articles, magazine articles, and group them into like categories. It is much more organized and has more information than other search cites. Before internet class i had never heard of Diigo nor was i aware that there were research databases through the library. Both of these i plan on using in the future.
We also created and igoogle page, and did google presentations. I really like the igoogle page as a homepage, i learned that you can put "widgets" on your page such as games, countdowns, news sections, and other things like that. It is a way to customize your homepage so it has everything that you want on it. I also learned how to do a google presentation. Google Presentations are much like powerpoint, but they are easier to send and every computer has them. I do have powerpoint on my computers at home, but if i did not then google presentations would be an excellent free alternative to powerpoint. They are set up very similair. I probably will not use it since i do have Powerpoint, but you never know. I will however use and igoogle page, i have the same igoogle page at the school as i do at home, and i customized it to fit me. It is perfect to stay organized exactly how i want it to be.
