An Apology

I really should make an apology to David Raines, Creator of the Portal, for a previous post I wrote. He found my post and I don’t think he was too happy! So to prove that the Portal isn’t as useless as people may think, he helped me find useful documents =) And I have to say, they are a big help! I specifically wanted documents on the University Regulations with regard to Assignments etc and information on Plagiarism, and Dave found them for me.
(Please note, it was Dave who found them, so I feel there is still a problem with finding things. I find it to be very ‘busy’.)

Also, after looking around Blackboard Dave found some Communities that I could enrol to that give information on Plagiarism and Exam techniques. Absolutely brilliant!
The thing is…I never knew these existed. So for the past 2 years I have been completely oblivious to these guidelines because the academics didn’t tell us about them! Why they wouldn’t tell us about something like this is unbeknown to me.

Better late than never I suppose.

Online Word Processors

Since re-attempting my report of Google Documents, I have come across quite a few ‘Online Word Processors’. I never knew these existed until I met Google Documents and since researching Google Docs I have found more! I think they’re fab! For most of them you need to have an account, but still…they’re handy.

There is also speculation that I am not the typical student, due to the fact I check my student e-mails (all the time), I think the automatic updates sent to the student e-mail (and staff e-mail) are very useful and as Tim witnessed today, I get excited when my new sites for 09/10 are posted on Blackboard!!
Hmmm…actually…I suppose I know where Tim is coming from!

The good, the bad, and the down right ugly!

The Good…
Is the fact I now have a telephone on my desk that I can use. Now, whether I actually use it or not is a completely different matter!
The good is also that I have learnt how to use Google Documents.

The Bad…
Is Google Documents!
Its not really that great, well not yet anyway. Ok, its only my first day properly looking at it and using it, but I’m not too keen.
All I’ve done so far is upload a document that I have created onto the program and ‘share it’ with a couple of e-mail addresses.
What I’ve grasped from it is that its just a less advanced version of Microsoft Word. I know that it has the option to share the documents in your account with the internet or with friends, but isn’t that just the same as e-mailing a document to a friend??
I’m sure Blackboard already has a system whereby students can post assignments to a certain page and it will be picked up by their tutors? (I haven’t actually had the option to do that). I know one of my friends had to do it, the only problem is that when it is posted little symbols appear throughout the whole document. At least with google documents, you get the document and that’s it, no gobbledy gook in your work, which is an advantage.
At the minute I much prefer Word and handing work in in person, at least then you know its got there ok. With handing work in over the internet, there is always a little risk of it not getting there and just getting lost along the way.
I have had a problem with google documents and I don’t really know why…I have sent my document in an e-mail to a few addresses and it has been able to be opened easily (I sent it to a yahoo e-mail account and a hotmail one), yet when I sent it to the Lincoln e-mail addresses, it won’t allow it to be opened, its asking you to log-in – slightly confusing. But this isn’t really going to be a big help if it is wanting to be used to hand-in work to tutors.

The Ugly…
My exam results =(
Not what I was expecting unfortunately…at least I still have one more year though. Fingers crossed I’ll get the results I want and need!

One more little complaint…about Google! I deteste the ‘Google Books’ application, its rubbish! I tried to search for books and it doesn’t seem to have many recent books on the net, plenty from 1968, hardly anything from 2007 or 2008!
I had a play with the Blogs application aswell, you know, just to have a look, and pretty much all of the results were from America. If I’m looking for something specifically IN England, America isn’t going to be much help is it really?!?!

Re-Re-Done

I’ve re-re-done a past assignment today, a little bit more in-depth than when I did it the other day, I’ve literally used everything I can possibly think of that would help me to write a uni assignment.

I started with the unit handbook, which includes little questions that tend to give a brief background to the topic the assignment is on. I then moved onto Blackboard, where lecture slides are posted so you can access them whenever. Then I used the portal…what an absolute godsend!! Its brilliant for the E-Library links, e.g. Westlaw and Lexis Nexis, and for accessing the Library website too. The portal allows me to access E-Books and E-Journals and scan through books and journals on the internet, instead of having to check them out of the library.

I had a go at using google, but believe it or not they’re not specific…they have so many books and links none of them are as relevant as I need them to be.