Requirements of LOR 101

As far as this course is concerned, I have enjoyed all of the assignments and in-class activities. Having us blog for our final project was a very creative idea, and I have learned a lot from this task. Before this class, I wasn’t familiar with “blogging”, and now I am a regular! The response papers are a great way to let us further explain our thoughts and feelings on a certain topic we have discussed in class. The reading material in class was usually pretty interesting until the last few pages of each packet where I lost concentration. Overall, LOR 101 has been a very helpful and successful course for me, and I am so glad that I chose to take this class in my first semester of college. I would recommend it to anyone! To check out another school offering the same class follow this link!http://hslibrary.ucdenver.edu/education/library-orientation-tutorials.php

Information Seeking Behavior

I have always been a strong believer in using Wikipedia for most of my papers up until high school. It was then that I realized that information you find on the internet is not always reliable. This is where my researching became very difficult. Not only did I not understand where I was supposed to look to find this valuable information, but I had no idea how to use it or cite it once it was found. Having this library class in the first semester of my college career has been a great opportunity to get familiar with the library and all of the resources available. We have learned how to tell a reliable source from a useless one, and how to use the information we obtain. As I move on in my college career, I will remember back to this class for all of my research needs, and I know college will be a lot easier now that I have had this course. To get a better idea of information seeking behavior, visit this website. http://www.librarysupportstaff.com/infoseek.html

Copyright Laws Class Discussion

Before the discussion in class, I had never realized how many copyright laws there were concerning books, movies, dances, songs, and ideas. Just a simple song like “Happy Birthday” has copyright laws! So yes, you may think that you don’t, but all of us have broken a copyright law sometime during our lifetime. Copyright is a very good thing to protect authors and artists, but it makes a student’s job a lot harder if they are writing a research paper. One way you can follow copyright laws, is to cite all of the sources you use in a paper as in text citations as well as on a bibliography page. This helps give credit to the main source of your research, and shows that it wasn’t your idea. There are many grey areas within copyright laws, which make it hard to determine when they are being broken. Government is the main source of regulation, but it is easier to be familiar with them yourself. Here is a website that will help you cite your sources where you do not break copyright.

http://library.duke.edu/research/citing/

Copyright Laws

Copyright laws are very controversial issues. It is hard for the government to regulate these laws without being too strict or too lenient. After reading the article in class, I began to think about how easy it would be to break a “copyright” law and not even realize it. A copyright will last your entire lifetime, as well as 70+ years after your gone. People value information differently. Some may think copyright laws should be tightened on books, but not as strict on music...or the other way around. But government has found that it is easier to draw a strict line than assign different types of information certain copyright laws.  I believe there is too much of a grey area to determine when someone is “stealing “someone’s idea. Copyright should be determined by morals and your own judgment for most cases, and others you may have to turn to the law. Visit this link to refresh your knowledge of copyright laws. http://copyright.gov/title17/

What causes bad breath?

Yes I know that if you eat a whole onion on your cheeseburger, or if you douse your cheesy bread with garlic, you are going to have bad breath and others will suffer. But what causes other types of bad breath…like morning breath? After researching this topic, I found that while you are sleeping your mouth becomes very dry which is called xerostomia. Your salivary glands are much less active while asleep and the bacteria flourish causing gross morning breath. Other causes of bad breath besides food of course, are bad oral hygiene, things such as tobacco and cigarettes, and also other health conditions. For information on foods that help fight bad breath visit this website. http://ezinearticles.com/?5-Important-Foods-To-Avoid-Bad-Breath&id=5270506

Why is the sky blue?

Why is the sky blue? I know this is a question everyone has asked sometime in their life. I just now decided to research to find the real answer.
When sunlight reaches the atmosphere, all of the light is spread apart by particles in the atmosphere. The blue light is scattered more because of the shorter wavelengths it possesses. On the other hand, when the sky is a reddish orange color during the sunset, the blue light is spreading apart further to allow the red and yellow wavelengths through.
Also, when you are watching a sunset from the beach, it is way more vibrant because the light from the sun reflects off of the water vapor in the air making it bigger. I guess my next question will be…Why is the grass green? Visit this website for more information on sunlight. http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/blue-sky/

Evaluating Internet Resources

How many times have you heard a teacher or professor say, "Wikipedia is NOT a source!!!!"? This is partially a true statement because anyone can get on the website and write anything they want whether it be true or false. This is why it is important to know how to evaluate your resources before using them. You need to make sure your resources are reliable, relevant, and have authority. For a resource to be reliable, it needs to have cited sources of where the information came from. Also, be sure and check to see if the resource has a bias. When looking for relevance, you need to check the date the article was published, and also when it was last revised. Lastly, when checking for authority, you need to know who wrote the article. Are they experts in that certain area? Are there ways to contact them that give their area of expertise? These are the three most important things to look for when researching, and they will all help you have a better paper over your certain topic. Here's another teacher's thoughts on reliable sources. http://imet.csus.edu/imet5/koreen/284/index.htm