A Big Fat Favour…?

July 22, 2009August 25, 2009 Kirsty Adams Work Google documents, Microsoft word

I’ve been asked to write a report comparing Google documents and Microsoft Word.
I haven’t yet starting writing the report, that will hopefully start tomorrow, I’ve been gathering information and writing notes today.
I’ve written part of a past assignment in both Google Docs and in Microsoft Word and I want to share this with you by posting the link on here. I would be a massive help if you could try and access the document and let me know if you could access it ok or not. It allows you to leave comments and add pictures aswell so if you have anything thoughts then please, go ahead and leave something and let me know what you personally think of Google Docs =)

Thankyou!!

http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AYhPvgY0B6vqZGdxZ3g4OHFfMjdmOWNoMm4yZA&hl=en

A student’s opinion

July 15, 2009August 25, 2009 Kirsty Adams Work e-mails, Google Mail, Outlook

I like the idea of using Google Mail for the student e-mail service – I think its a lot better than Outlook in terms of attaching files and photos. The size of the Mail Box is so much bigger than Outlook’s. As a student I don’t like the fact that I have to delete my e-mails to sometimes receive recent ones because it can’t fit them in.

MISSION: The Atrium

July 14, 2009August 25, 2009 Kirsty Adams Work Atrium, e-mail address, Free Public Wifi, internet, Internet Explorer, laptop, Lincoln Wifi, log in, password, staff log in name, student account, ul-guest, username

I was given a mission to see if I could access the internet in the Atrium, and it was hard! I’ve never done it before or tried to do it so I had no idea what I was doing.

To start with I couldn’t even log on to the laptop I was using because I didn’t know the password, so I was there for about 10 minutes trying everything I knew relating to the hint before I decided to give up and go and ask!

Once logged onto the laptop I tried connecting to an internet connection. There was a choice of 2 – ‘ul-guest’ and ‘Free Public Wifi’. I tried both, 1 at a time, and neither worked, all it said was ‘Identifying…’

Anyway…I opened Internet Explorer with the hope that that ugly page wouldn’t pop up (Page cannot be displayed) – I hate that page with a passion, one of THE worst things to see on the internet! Thankfully it didn’t. I got to the Lincoln Wifi page where I had to log in. Now, I had to figure out how to log in! It was an ABSOLUTE NIGHTMARE!! It asks for your username and password, I tried both my staff and student account and neither worked. It kept popping up ‘Invalid username or password’. I was getting more and more frustrated every time I clicked log in. So I decided to click the ‘Help’ button simply because these buttons normally HELP you, in my case I didn’t find it very helpful at the time. I even tried putting ‘network\’ before my student id number and staff log in name…it didn’t work.
By this time the little internet globe was torturing me. This globe normally means that you’re connected to the internet, but where was I?? Still stuck on the log in page.
On the off chance that it might work I tried my university staff e-mail address, and it worked. I did it…Yes I did it! I didn’t think that Help did help, but remembering what I read, it did say something about entering an e-mail address as a username, but it clearly didn’t click!

I then tried to get onto my student account and it said ‘Too busy, try again later’.
It was so unbelievably frustrating!
It was abit of a pain but as soon as you get onto it the internet connection is brilliant, really fast. Not sure how that works when there’s more than just a few computers on it though.

Maybe I was wrong?!

July 9, 2009August 25, 2009 Kirsty Adams Work application, e-mail, Google apps, Google documents, pdf documents, URL, website

Its my 3rd day looking at Google apps, namely, Google documents.
I’ll be honest…I didn’t like it when I first had a play earlier this week as I didn’t think it could do much. But after having a fiddle, I found that its a good application!

The thing I like best about it is that you can e-mail a document (as an attachment, for example) to your own personal account at any time, then when you go to access the document later on it will be in your list of documents for you to open.

There is a restriction though with the type of documents you can upload. You can upload them from your computer or from a website by entering the URL. I tried with a few documents and it wouldn’t accept them. But its fine with pdf documents.

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

July 7, 2009August 25, 2009 Kirsty Adams General, Work blackboard, Blogs, google, Google Books, Google documents, Lincoln e-mail, Microsoft word, telephone

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

July 1, 2009August 25, 2009 Kirsty Adams Work assignment, blackboard, e-books, e-journals, e-library, google, lecture slides, lexis nexis, library, portal, unit handbook, westlaw

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.

Me in ICT

A student with computers and the internet

Month: July 2009