Social Bookmarking 2

Well, one of my previous posts is about social bookmarking and how I totally don't understand it. Good news: I do understand it now because I've started using it too and it really does help! I used to use Noodletools to kind of bookmark my pages but then I would have to do the long citing process and in some cases it would be totally useless and I would end up deleting that citation... was such a waste of time basically. I used to think that I didn't need to use any social bookmarking site because I can always find the page that I visited earlier by using the same keywords. Well, in some cases that is not easy or simply impossible when you have used a chain of websites to get to the page that you want. The easier to do it all is to bookmark it online, using del.icio.us or any other social bookmarking site. I personally use del.icio.us because I think it is really good and I like the fact that it is popular because there is a larger network and sometimes I find interesting pages that other people tagged...
So yea, I recommend all students and teachers as well to use online social bookmarking!

Study shows that teens do protect their profiles online

While most people think that teenagers are not aware of the dangers of posting information on social networking sites, a study by The Pew Internet and American Life Project shows that teenagers do care about what they put on the internet. the study says that teenagers are particulary careful about putting extremely personal information on social networking sites such as their phone number, email address but they feel free to put pictures of themselves on their pages. This to me makes a lot of sense because having a profile on a social networking sites without a picture of yourself is totally useless because no one will be able to recognize you and you will not be able to connect with friends as easily as it would be if you had a picture of youself on there. Also, it is a lot of fun to put pictures of yourself on social networking sites and have people comment on them... it is really fun. Posting pictures of yourself on social networking sites is dangerous but not as much dangerous as putting your phone number or email address...
In my opinion, I think this study shows the long way teenagers have come and prove that they do care and understand what goes on on social networking sites and the internet in general.

Citation: CNN

Students Sue turnitin.com

Turnitin.com is website used by teachers to help them check the students papers for plagiarism. It works this way: students send their papers on the website where the teachers can access it, the software then assesses the paper and provides a percentage of plagiarism in the paper. Then it is up to the teacher to make the decision (whether the student should be punished or not, kkk).
Well, turnitin was recently sued by two students of McLean High School for violating the property rights of the students because the papers are published and can be read by others. The interesting fact is that these students and their lawyers were claiming $150,000 for each of six papers written by students!!!
For us students it could be a great news because some of us would be billionaires right away!

Citation: The Washington Post

I love Wikipedia!!!

I love Wikipedia and I am not afraid of telling it! That is because I am a kind of person who shows gratitude to people who help. Wikipedia has saved me numerous times when I was doing my research and I couldn't find anything anywhere else, Wikipedia was there to give me some hints to make a better research. There are a lot of articles in Wikipedia that you will never find on any other website (apart from Encarta which copies from Wikipedia). That's just because Wikipedia is a place where all kinds of information is gathered and made accessible for free to anyone on this planet with internet! I love Wikipedia because it has saved my time when I was meant to do research on a topic I had no idea what it meant and Wikipedia provided me with a sweet summary that I'm sure without Wiki, I would have spent at least 3 hours trying to get all that information. One of the things that make me love Wikipedia is the fact that it is written by anybody so in other words it portrays the view point of us -- not just one elite.
Sadly, Wikipedia has been misunderstood by many because of they believe that it contains inaccurate information. Well, how do you define what is accurate or not? When Galileo said that the world wasn't flat, he was executed for wanting to spread inaccurate information but wasn't he right? Also, where is the freedom of speech! I don't want to say that all information on Wikipedia is accurate but even if there is (inaccuracy), it just shows the weak points of our society and it brings the issues forth so that we can face them, instead of ignoring them by having just one educated person controlling the information and making us think that everybody is like that. I think Wikipedia is just an alarm to how badly education needs to be improved.
I would like to clarify an important point too: Do not use just Wikipedia as your source for essays and other professional/academic stuff. It is good to take a look at Wikipedia at the beginning of the research to have an idea of what you need to know and get some keywords from the articles but Wiki is not strong enough to be an independent source. You need to find other sources that provide information in more details and that are more reliable.
In a few words: I don't know how my life would be without Wikipedia! (aaawww)