Module 5 - Information Ecologies

How are the concepts ‘information’ and ‘communication’ understood within the framework of an ‘information ecology’?

Information is to be understood as the data that is contained on a website, page, document, graphic, or in any other form, that is online and accessible. In this term, information is treated as a standalone factor - it can be consumed, or ignored and not consumed.

The consumption of information could be termed to be communication - when an end user is reading, understanding, or using the information for a purpose, the information is thus communicated to the end user.

In this sense, information ecology can be understood to be the relationships that exist between the end user and information, but also the relation of information to other information elements. With an abundance of information on the internet at any given point in time, and this increasing on a daily basis, it is very important to recognise the inter-related nature of the individual information elements, and also that of the end user. This is evident with the explosion of web 2.0 technologies, such as blogging and user enabled metadata. This tools are seeking to give the end user more control over the ways that they interact with technology, thus making information more relevant to them by enabling end users to apply their own meanings and categorisations of their information.

As the internet moves towards a state of super-complexity and over-abundance of information, information ecologies will become more and more important in ensuring that users can navigate the plethora of information online, and can easily find and use information that is relevant to them.

Module 4 - Evaluating the Web. Part II

The annotated version of my body of information would be of more use than the original blurb that I used when evaluating the site.

The original blurb that I used was a high level explanation of what Yang School Tai Chi Chuan is, yet did not discuss issues such as author bias, extended reviews on content, or further readings. In this instance, the annotated version of my review would be of far more use for the average user when attempting to assess whether or not this site is suitable for them.

Module 4 - Evaluating the Web

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yang_style_tai_chi_chuan

This is an excellent website for basic information on the Yang school of Tai Chi. It covers the history of this particular style, and it also contains a family tree of the practitioners of this martial art, which is extremely valuable when evaluating a new teacher. Ensuring that you can trace your teacher's lineage is essential to ensure that you are being taught the "true" martial art of a particular school.

This site was written for people that would like a brief introduction to this school of Tai Chi. In addition there is numerous links and references at the bottom of the page that can be used for further exploration of information on this style.

Suffering the usual Wikipedia downfalls, we do not know who the author's of this document are. Thus, it is liable to be imbued with commercial self-interest, or perhaps even ideological, and certain persons can be very sensitive about martial arts and their history. Thus, this website is an excellent introduction and high level overview of Yang School Tai Chi Chuan, but caution should be taken before taking any information as the truth due to the lack of in line citations, as noted by Wikipedia.

Module 4 - Organising Search Information

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yang_style_Tai_Chi_Chuan

Author - Collaborative
Institution - Wikipedia
Blurb - "Yang family style (simplified Chinese: 楊氏; pinyin: yángshì) tai chi chuan in its many variations is the most popular and widely practised style in the world today and the second in terms of seniority among the primary five family styles of tai chi chuan." (No Author, n.d.)

http://www.yangfamilytaichi.com/about/faq/

Author - No author listed
Institution - International Yang Style Tai Chi Chuan Association Institution
Blurb - This website offers a comprehensive treatise on all aspects of Yang school Tai Chi Chuan, including history, as well as their own class times, information on the teachers and masters.

http://www.egreenway.com/taichichuan/short.htm

Author - Michael P. Garofalo
Institution - None
Blurb - This website offers comprehensive information on the first 24 form of Yang School Tai Chi Chuan. It also includes lessons to help the student advance, information on assessing your own style, quotes, descriptions and more.

To obtain this information the only application that I used was Internet Explorer, to access the websites. From this point I then read and evaluated the websites, and obtained the required information.

No Author, (n.d.)
Yang Style Tai Chi Chuan. Wikipedia.
Accessed 5/1/09 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yang_style_Tai_Chi_Chuan

Module 4 - Boolean Searching Task

To search for the bigest number of hits relating to the words "Yang Tai Chi Chuan" I would search for those four words with no quotes on either side. In this instance, I will get returned all pages with all of the words, as well as all pages with any combination, of one or more, of the words.

To search for information that is most relevant to what I am actually looking for, I would enclose the four words in quotes, so it looks for the exact same four words in the same string and order as I have requested.

For information that only comes from university sources, I would use a page like Google Scholar to search for the same text string.

Module 4 - Searching the Web

For this task, I did a search with the term "Yang Tai Chi Chuan"

From Google.com received "about 293,000 hits"

The top five results were:

1. http://www.yangfamilytaichi.com/
2. http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/Philosophy/Taichi/
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yang_style_Tai_Chi_Chuan
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chen_style_Tai_Chi_Chuan
5. http://www.egreenway.com/taichichuan/short.htm

I then searched for the same term in Copernic Desktop Search and received 45 hits

The top five results were:

1. Tai Chi For Every Body
2. Easy Tai Chi DVD/Videos
3. Classical Tai Chi
4. Yang style tai chi chuan - Wikipedia, th...
5. Yang Family Tai Chi Chuan - Tai Chi Vide...

An interesting difference that I noticed between the searches was that Copernic seemed to have a lot more advertising returned in the results than google did. For example, with Copernic the first three results were advertising responses, as opposed to just finding websites out on the web. I find this very annoying, as if I am searching for a commercial enterprise, then I will specifically be looking for this. If I just want information, I do not want information coming from commercial enterprises, whose main aim is, of course, to sell me something.

In addition to this, the much shorter list of hits from Copernic is of concern. Forty-five hits as compared to nearly three hundred thousand is really strange, and I am not sure how they found only such a small number of results. Perhaps the other 299,000 websites that were returned on Google refused to pay Copernic to have their results displayed!

Module 4 - Downloading Tools

For this task I downloaded and installed two new applications which I did not currently have. These applications are as follows:

VideoPlayer - VideoLan Media Player
Silverlight - Microsoft's rich web content player, their equivalent of Flash

Both of these applications were freeware, which means that they are free to download and install, and have no trial period or expiry date. This is important to me as I would prefer not to pay for software if possible, and do not like installing trial applications on my computer, as they have to be removed after the trial period and the excess registry entries clog up my operating system

The purpose for downloading VideoLan Media Player (VLC) was so that I could play some movie files that I had for which I did not have the codec. VLC media player is the most flexible media player available, as it plays almost all formats and can parse audio and video information from nearly all codecs. This flexibility and wide ranged compatibility is the key feature of this application.

In addition to this, it is very easy to use, with a minimum of features. I like this in an application because I really only want it to play movies, I do not need visualisation applications, advanced playlists and things like that - I just want to play the movie!

Microsoft Silverlight is their new rich content editing application and player that rivals Macromedia's Flash application for delivering fast, smooth animations, vector graphics and rich interaction. As this is just a plugin, there is no user interface at all - just install and you can then view all the rich content on websites developed using this technology. This is a great plugin to have on your computer so you can experience the latest in cutting edge web animation and interactivity.