I happen to enjoy hearing about what my clients are learning online.  I sometimes come away with valuable new information, and I’m invariably amused by some of the extraordinary things they tell me- who knew that hip dysplasia is caused by global warming!  Surf to your heart’s content, but be forewarned, not all veterinarians feel as I do.  Some have a hard time not “rolling their eyes” or quickly interrupting the moment the conversation turns to Internet research.  Who can blame them- they’ve grown weary of spending valuable office visit or telephone time talking their clients out of crazy cyberspace notions and reining them in from online wild goose chases.  How unfortunate this is.  Nowadays, people rapidly and reflexively reach for their keyboards to learn more about their pet’s symptoms or disease diagnosis online.  It’s only natural (and in their pet’s best interest) that they will want to discuss what they’ve learned with their veterinarian.

Is there an effective way to communicate with your vet about your online research that is neither irritating to her nor intimidating for you?  I truly believe it is possible, but it involves some work and planning on your part!  Listed below are some secrets for success- things you can do to converse about your Internet research in a manner that is comfortable for you and your vet and, most importantly, beneficial for your pet’s health.

-I may be preaching to the choir, but I cannot overemphasize the importance of working with a vet who is happy and willing to participate in two-way, collaborative dialogue with you. Your opinions, feelings, and questions are held in high regard and enough time is allowed during the office visit to hear them. A veterinarian who practices this “relationship centered” style of communication is far more likely to want to hear about your online research than the veterinarian who practices “paternalistic care” (far more interested in telling you what to do than hearing about your thoughts, questions, or concerns).  Remember, when it comes to veterinarian/client communication styles, you have a choice. It’s up to you to make the right choice!

-Let your vet know that you appreciate her willingness and patience in helping you understand how best to utilize what you’ve learned online.

-Ask your veterinarian for her Web site recommendations- those that have already been “vetted”.  This is a collaborative approach that lets her know you intend to spend some time learning more, plus a respectful recognition of the fact that she is the one who has spent her career learning about your dog’s health issues. 

-Wait for the appropriate time during the office visit to discuss what you’ve learned on line.  Allow your veterinarian to ask questions of you and examine your precious poopsie rather than “tackling” her with questions and discussion about your Internet research questions the moment she sets foot in the exam room.

-Be brief and “to the point” with your questions.  Remember, most office visits are scheduled for 15 to 20 minutes, max. 

-Let your veterinarian know that you’ve learned how to be a discriminating surfer!  You know how to differentiate between valuable online resources and “cyber-fluff”. You ignore anecdotal vignettes and Web sites trying to sell their products in favor of credible information provided by veterinary college Web sites and forums that are hosted by well-educated moderators who provide cited research references that support their recommendations.  If you need a little refresher course on how to be a “selective surfer,” I encourage you to read Part One of this article (http://speakingforspot.com/blog/?p=654).

-When you begin conversation about your Internet research, I encourage you to choose your wording wisely.  Communicate in a respectful fashion that invites conversation as opposed to  “telling” your vet what you want to do. Most veterinarians don’t like being told what to do by their clients, and who can blame them?  After all, we expect veterinarians to provide a collaborative approach- it’s only fair that they expect the same from their clients.  Consider the following conversation starters about Internet research:

Approach one:  “I’m wondering what you think about mixing some canned pumpkin in with Sophie’s food.  I’ve been doing some Internet research about diarrhea and this suggestion seems to comes up frequently.”

Approach two:  “I’ve been doing some online research and learned about the benefits of canned pumpkin.  I want to begin mixing this in with Sophie’s food.”

Approach three:  “I’d like to give Sophie some canned pumpkin for her diarrhea.  A moderator from an online forum suggested I do this.”

Approach four:  “I’ve been following an online forum about canine diarrhea. One of the moderators suggested I consider adding canned pumpkin to Sophie’s diet.  How do you feel about this?”

Which of these approaches sound like invitations for discussion? Which are more likely to be a “turnoff” for your veterinarian? If you’ve selected approaches one and four as successful ways for broaching the topic of Internet research with your vet, well done!  Give your dog a hug and yourself a pat on the back!

In the Internet, we have an extraordinary tool at our fingertips. I encourage you to be critical when choosing which Web sites you intend to take seriously and which ones you wish to visit for a good chuckle.  Approach conversations with your vet about your Internet research thoughtfully and tactfully. These strategies are bound to create a win-win-win situation- for you, your veterinarian and your beloved best buddy! 

Wishing you and your four-legged family members abundant good health,

Dr. Nancy Kay
Specialist, American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine 

Please visit http://www.speakingforspot.com to read excerpts from Speaking for Spot. There you will also find “Advocacy Aids”- helpful health forms you can download and use for your own dog, and a collection of published articles on advocating for your pet’s health. Speaking for Spot is available at Amazon.com, local bookstores, or your favorite online book seller. 

Order  a copy of Speaking for Spot personally signed by Dr. Kay – http://www.speakingforspot.com/purchase.html

Join our email list – http://speakingforspot.com/joinemaillist.html

Look for us on Twitter – http://twitter.com/speakingforspot

Become a Fan of Speaking for Spot on Facebook

Listen to Dr. Kay’s interview – A Veterinarian Advises “How to Speak for Spot” on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross

Here’s a list of projects where a Virtual Assistant (VA) could help you get your work done faster.  The broad range of skills that Global Virtual Support VA’s have will free up time for you, allowing you to focus on what you do best.

• Research

Sales lead generation – With your time spent on meeting prospective clients and servicing existing ones, hardly any time is left to find fresh new leads.  A VA can help you find and research new leads, creating a hit list of potential clients to focus on, email addresses, phone numbers together with some background info of the client.

Shopping research/ Comparison shopping – Your VA can do the ground work to research different models and specifications of a particular product you have in mind.  A VA will take into account your budget and preferences, go through forums to read reviews and recommendations, and shortlist the options for your purchase.

Travel research – Planning a yearly family holiday but not sure what to do or how much it will cost?  A VA can provide detailed research and a breakdown of potential costs including flights, accommodations, local transportation, and daily expenses (like food and entertainment, etc).  If you intend to visit multiple destinations or have multiple departure dates, a VA can also plan a route or itinerary that is most convenient and economical.

New business – Planning to expand your business, introduce a new product line or venture into a new business opportunity?  Get your VA to research the current market environment before you make your decision.

• General Administration

Data Entry – A VA can organise all your contacts into your Outlook address book or Excel database, helping you stay organised and up-to-date.  Fax/scan business cards, text files of names and addresses and your VA will sort and organise them in an easy to understand Excel format or Outlook address book.

Email Management – Even if you receive hundreds of emails each day, chances are a number of them are routine – and if they’re routine, that means a VA can respond to those emails using guidance you provide. Then all you’ll need to do is respond to unusual or out of the ordinary emails. You can take it a step further and have your VA forward emails only you can handle to a separate account; that way you’ll never see or need to deal with the hundreds of emails your VA can handle for you. If you feel like you type the same response – to different people – more than once, a VA can handle the task.

Invitations – Planning a party?  Give your VA a list of attendees you’d like to invite and he/she can send out personalised invites, manage the RSVPs and any special requirements your guests may have freeing up time for you to focus on enjoying the event itself.

Thank You’s or Follow Up’s - After a meeting or post purchase with a client or customer, a VA can send thank you notes or make post-purchase calls to thank your clients or customers, keeping your business fresh in their minds.

• Social Networking

Blog Posting – A VA can help draft articles, research on a particular topic or collect news to help you keep abreast with what’s happening.  You will save time not having to write an article entirely from scratch and save time on not having to search the internet for topics or news.  A VA can also respond to comments left on your blog to keep the conversation among your readers going.

Commenting and Linking – Leaving comments on blogs and social media sites is a great way to make new connections and leave backlinks to your own sites and blogs. A VA can take care of the process for you. Create a list of sites (or have the VA create it), give guidelines on comments you’d like to leave, and off you go! You can also have the VA send you links to new articles or sites that you should check out personally.

• Print/ Multimedia Design/ Web

Newsletters – To keep your customers informed about your business, you can send out newsletters promoting your products / services.  Let a VA design a newsletter for you, all you have to do is provide the content and suggestions on the look and feel you want.

Website - Most businesses have a website today to reach out to potential customers and to share information about what they do.  Not sure where to begin?  Give a VA your requirements, content you want published and a VA with website designing skills will be able to design a website for you.

The list mentioned is not a comprehensive list but just to illustrate how you can use a VA. You should speak with your VA to understand what his / her capabilities are.  You may never know, your VA may just surprise you with the skills and experience they have under their belt!

This post contains preliminary and very general research into recent developments in nonclassical (i.e. modal) logics and information technology and other relevant areas of study (namely, knowledge representation, computer programming, decision theory, artificial intelligence, verificationism)

A modal logic framework for multi-agent belief fusion

Liau, C. 2005. A modal logic framework for multi-agent belief fusion. ACM Trans. Comput. Logic 6, 1 (Jan. 2005), 124-174. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1042038.1042043

Keywords:
Epistemic logic, belief fusion, belief revision, database merging, multi-agent systems, multi-sources reasoning

ABSTRACT

This article provides a modal logic framework for reasoning about multi-agent belief and its fusion. We propose logics for reasoning about cautiously merged agent beliefs that have different degrees of reliability. These logics are obtained by combining the multi-agent epistemic logic and multi-source reasoning systems. The fusion is cautious in the sense that if an agent’s belief is in conflict with those of higher priorities, then his belief is completely discarded from the merged result. We consider two strategies for the cautious merging of beliefs. In the first, called level cutting fusion, if inconsistency occurs at some level, then all beliefs at the lower levels are discarded simultaneously. In the second, called level skipping fusion, only the level at which the inconsistency occurs is skipped. We present the formal semantics and axiomatic systems for these two strategies and discuss some applications of the proposed logical systems. We also develop a tableau proof system for the logics and prove the complexity result for the satisfiability and validity problems of these logics.

An internal semantics for modal logic

Fagin, R. and Vardi, M. Y. 1985. An internal semantics for modal logic. In Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual ACM Symposium on theory of Computing (Providence, Rhode Island, United States, May 06 – 08, 1985). STOC ‘85. ACM, New York, NY, 305-315. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/22145.22179

ABSTRACT

In Kripke semantics for modal logic, “possible worlds” and the possibility relation are both primitive notions. This has both technical and conceptual shortcomings. From a technical point of view, the mathematics associated with Kripke semantics is often quite complicated. From a conceptual point of view, it is not clear how to use Kripke structures to model knowledge and belief, where one wants a clearer understanding of the notions that are primitive in Kripke semantics. We introduce modal structures as models for modal logic. We use the idea of possible worlds, but by directly describing the “internal semantics” of each possible world. It is much easier to study the standard logical questions, such as completeness, decidability, and compactness, using modal structures. Furthermore, modal structures offer a much more intuitive approach to modelling knowledge and belief.

First-order classical modal logic: applications in logics of knowledge and probability

Arló-Costa, H. and Pacuit, E. 2005. First-order classical modal logic: applications in logics of knowledge and probability. In Proceedings of the 10th Conference on theoretical Aspects of Rationality and Knowledge (Singapore, June 10 – 12, 2005). R. van der Meyden, Ed. Theoretical Aspects Of Rationality And Knowledge. National University of Singapore, Singapore, 262-278.

The paper focuses on extending to the first order case the semantical program for modalities first introduced by Dana Scott and Richard Montague. We focus on the study of neighborhood frames with constant domains and we offer a series of new completeness results for salient classical systems of first order modal logic. Among other results we show that it is possible to prove strong completeness results for normal systems without the Barcan Formula (like FOL + K) in terms of neighborhood frames with constant domains. The first order models we present permit the study of many epistemic modalities recently proposed in computer science as well as the development of adequate models for monadic operators of high probability. We conclude by offering a general completeness result for the entire family of first order classical modal logics (encompassing both normal and non-normal systems).

I’m currently drafting up my bachelor project diploma and I’ve decided to focus my knowledge and expertise on archives. Incredibly, I always thought that libraries 2.0 would be my avenue to finish my studies but I realized that, in the last 2 years, there has been plenty on studies, presentations and case studies on the new technologies that libraries can implement to increase their visibility on the web.

There is an french expression that goes as following : ” On ne peut reinventer la roue “. Literally it means that we cannot reinvent the wheel, namely reinvent the library 2.0 trend (or more accurately for some Library 101). So why not focus my energy and my wits on a less traveled road : archives 2.0 ?

My usage of the internet, apart from daily digressions on Facebook and Twitter was mainly through genealogy and family history purposes and I’ve realized how much internet users want/need/demand to be spared the long archival descriptions of collections to go right down at the heart of the subject : the information they are looking for.

As a professional, I understand the need to describe as precisely as possible collections, sub-level items, child and parent objects, we need those practices to be able to organize and categorize the information and deliver it more efficiently to our patrons. But, instead of linking us to an archive repository where the user will see long lines of records description, part of a collection or links to indexes, censuses (etc.), how can we re-hash or re-mash these infos and present subject guides as a new research avenue.

Imagine, you are a student in first-year postgraduate in architecture/urbanism studies and your proposed thesis deals with the establishment of populations in a specific region due to various industries being built on site. You would be, possibly, interested in old charter plans, censuses and valuation rolls. So instead of pointing directly to those resources, we could offer (as a gateway) the same resources but categorized under subject headings familiar to the user. Our added value is the work already done behind the scenes, we present our content, our collections in a different way, we make archives less “dusty” and more user-friendly while keeping our good practices and our skills invaluable.

ASK Online is an India-based Online Research company formed by a group of Market Research Experts who have vast experience in Market Research Sector – Qualitative and Quantitative.

India is seeing a Broadband BOOM in recent years and is expected to generate Huge Section of Indians who will own or at least access Internet in the near future. With this scenario, CAPI, CAWI and CATI are largely restricted only to niche segments like Health care and B2B Decision Makers

Google Scholar has added a free database to its site allowing one to search case law.  Be Spacific has more information.

Looking for a name for a fictional sports team that has a role in your story? Seeking the name of a real high school team or school nickname?

You’ll want to visit the website High School Nicknames.

On this site, you can find:

• Many, many high school team names, organized alphabetically (did you know that there are two US high school teams called the Aardvarks? How about a team called the Zebras? Would you believe, the Lawyers? The Sea Turtles? The Grape Pickers? The Pied Pipers? The Koalas?

• Top team names by state.

• Top team names across the country. Quick, what’s your guess for most popular high school sports team name?

After you learn that Eagles is the most popular high school sports team name, you might want to check out the teams at Junior Colleges,  Four Year Colleges, and Professional Sports Teams.

I ran across some useful sources for character names today that I’d like to share.

• Native American names at Writing Adolescent Fiction/Character Names/Native American but be sure to carefully distinguish tribe-appropriate names.

• Wikipedia Category: Surnames a listing of a large number of surnames that can be searched by the first two letters

• White Pages.com, a place where you can see the distribution of a surname across the United States and also find out how popular it is

• Baby Name Data from the Social Security Administration, in case you have a question like: what boys names were popular  in the U.S. in the 1890s? Data is available by decade and state, and you can also find popular names for twins.

• Baby Names World, a particularly useful name site because besides searching by name, you can search by a set of letters that appear at the start, end, or anywhere in the name.

You can now access library databases from home.  Simply use your Outlook Web Access username and password to loggin into any database.  For technical assistance, please contact ITS with your questions.  For research help, our librarians are here assist you.

As marketing research is usually parted in two, qualitative research on one hand, and quantitative research on the other hand, QualiQuanti has developed an intermediate approach, combining both research techniques: the quali-quanti® study.

Qualitative research objectives usually respond to deeply understanding a small sample of respondents whereas quantitative research objectives respond to giving some statistics about specific topics tested among large samples,

QualiQuanti has elaborated a research technique combining both approaches to get rich, in-depth qualitative data on a large sample of respondents, or more elaborate quantitative data, beyond the basic metrics.

The objective of such a study is to get a flexible, penetrative approach that overlays standard metrics with a qualitative dimension. It can be used as a stand-alone study or integrated in a multi-phase survey to supplement a quantitative or a qualitative phase.

Methodology:
quali-quanti® studies are one-on-one interviews based on questionnaires alternating closed- and open-end questions:
• In compliance with all data collection techniques: face-to-face, telephone, web-based, self-administered, etc.

• Our questionnaires purposely go from open and projective questions to more close-ended and enforced ones.

• The questionnaire is open enough to let respondents express their views without being overly influenced.

• The system is however closed enough to enable a quantitative data processing.

Results & Report:
The report can be either oral or written (or both) and combines statistical data analysis (tables & figures), and verbatim classification:
• The quantitative results are balanced by and supplemented with the qualitative data analysis to facilitate the decision-making process.

• The respondents’ verbatim analysis is not limited to codification, but is also reviewed by qualitative experts to provide a deeper, richer understanding of the consumer’s mind.

• A large part of the verbatim is included in the report to give marketers access to that “gem” insight that helps them turn good ideas into stellar ones.

Speedback: A quick web-based quali-quanti® study offering a complete feedback within 3 days, thanks to a unique simple process.

Report via Digital Media

Research by Eyeblaster:

Interesting extract: Whilst ad blindness has led to a push towards larger ad units, floating ads, commercial breaks and push down banners the MREC (300×250) and Leaderboard (728×90) still reign supreme, accounting for 38% and 22% of Australian and NZ ad impressions respectively. This accounts to more than half of all ads served through Eyeblaster.

Read the full article on Digital Media here.

See the click stats from Australia/NZ PDF here

See the research PDF here

Do you have a book idea? Would you like to know what’s already published on your subject? You pretty much have to know this before you can write a book proposal. My book idea has been hanging around in the far reaches of my mind for a couple of years now. I’ve finally started researching what’s out there so that I can know if it’s worthwhile to pursue my idea. Here’s what I’ve done so far (and my results).

Search Amazon.com

First, I searched my prospective title, Write What You Know: Finding Stories in Everyday Life. Didn’t get much. Next, I shortened the title to Write What You Know. I got a long list of items with similar titles, but only one book with a similar title. See results here. Finally, I put my title in quotes “Write What You Know.” Using the quotation marks limits my results to phrases with those exact words. I got a list of several titles, but only one book could be considered current (and stock is low). See search results here.

Search Publisher’s Site

The one title I found is a Writer’s Digest book, so I went to their site. I searched my title and the ISBN number of the book on Amazon with no results at all. I have to assume that the book is out of print.

Google It

Next, I went to Google and search my original title, Write What You Know: Finding Stories in Everyday Life, with this result. I took a few minutes to browse the first few links, bookmarking the ones with content similar to what I have planned for my book. I searched again using “Write What You Know.” Results were a bit different this time. Again, I browsed the results and bookmarked new sites of interest.

What Next?

Now that I have determined that there are few books with the title I’ve planned, I will take some time to study my search results. It appears that the books that have been published on this topic apply to writing personal experience articles or adapting your experiences to fiction. My book will be a how-to for beginning article writers. It might even be a workbook before I’m done.

I’ll need to do more research by talking with publishing industry professionals and with people who teach writing. No doubt, there’s a lot of work left to do, but I’m off to a great start with what I’ve found online.

I invite comments on this blog. If you use other research methods, please share them by commenting. If you would like to write a guest post, please e-mail me at akinemily@gmail.com.

“The act of finding and reading published research has changed so much in the last 10-20 years. Ask any old-timer – anyone over 30 – and they’ll tell you how literature searches used to involve looking up abstracts in hardback paper indexes and CD-ROMs; trying to find missing print journal issues from library shelves and waiting weeks for interlibrary loans from the British Library. Now you can do everything from your desktop in your office or at home …” (more)

[Jack Hyland, Read Around Research, 9 October]

eResearch, o tanara companie cu ambitii de ocupare a nisei de research online, realizeaza zilele acestea un proiect de cercetare a clientilor .ro de research. Sunt curios sa aflu despre rezultate, pana una alta le-am completat chestionarul.

Despre aplicatia de livrare a chestionarelor, mi-a placut ca sunt customizate in romana mesajele de eroare (de bun simt de altfel, insa am intalnit multe chestionare online cu erorile lasate in eng):

Nu mi-a placut deloc insa ca in tabelele cu raspunsuri exclusive se permite completarea total aiurea:

According to the Washington Post, the Federal Register will now be available in XML from Data.gov.  It will now be easier  “to transport [Federal Register]data from a Web site and store it, reorganize it or customize it elsewhere.”

The number of people who click banner (‘display’) ads has dropped 50% in less than two years, and only 8% of internet users account for 85% of all clicks, according to the most recent “Natural Born Clickers” study from ComScore and media agency Starcom.

The study indicates that only 16% of U.S. internet users ever click on banner ads down from 32% who clicked on display advertising in July 2007.

Reading these study metrics alone might initially suggest that banner or display advertising might be a poor use of your marketing funds; especially in challenging times. However the study actually encourages banner / display advertising despite the declining click metrics; but it does suggest sto top measuring banner effectiveness on click-thru metrics alone.

If we put it in perspective; clicks are a direct-response measurement. For display campaigns, we need to look at brand-awareness studies, purchase-intent lifts and engagement rates. Comscore client surveys quoted in the study have shown display ads produce measurable lift in brand site visitation, trademark search, and both on- and offline sales, regardless of whether users clicked on the display ads themselves.

If you believe in “buy cycle marketing” (see my other posts on the topic); you understand (and accept) that users might work with an ad, but not click on it. That doesn’t mean the banner didn’t impact results elsewhere in your marketing mix.

Here’s the Clickz article on the study:
http://www.clickz.com/3635167

Niche markets typically require a custom panel solution, in large part because these markets are low incidence and often difficult to find and to engage in research on-going.  Some examples include expecting mothers or mothers with babies and young children, high net worth individuals, specialist or high level professionals such as IT decision makers and C-Level executives, and ethnic minorities who have specific dietary requirements.  How does one begin to build these type panels?  There are several key elements that need to be considered when pursuing this goal:

• Source For Recruitment – when building a panel for a niche market, there needs to be a source for recruitment.  This is typically a website that is frequented by that particular market, or a database that has been built by a company who provides products or services to that market.  Without the source, the costs for finding and acquiring these people will likely make the panel build cost prohibitive.  The panel should also be built and owned by the owner of the source for recruitment, thereby reinforcing the relationship and contributing to better response rates and lower attrition.
• Customized Panel Look, Feel and Language – by definition, these panelists will be unique from the general population and have a lot in common with one another.  A generic approach to the look and feel and language will not work well, these panelists will want to feel a part of something that is relevant to who they are, their core needs, and their expected mode and style of communication.  The colors and images used throughout the process of inviting, profiling and interacting with them should be familiar and consistent with how they live their lives.
• Relevant Engagement and Research Opportunities – It is critical that the types of research these panelists are expected to complete are primarily focused on the reason why they joined the panel in the first place.  For example, if the panel is comprised of expecting or new mothers, sending them lots of surveys on travel for single adults or sports cars is not likely to be of interest, consistent with their reason for joining or relevant to them at this time in their lives.  In this example, the primary focus for research directed at these panelists should be associated with the products and brands needed for raising their children or managing a household with children.  Even cars and financial services products that are closely aligned with this particular niche market would be very appropriate as research topics.

Building panels in niche markets is not necessarily an expensive endeavor.  If you own a list or have a database of customers or consumers who meet this profile, then this is an excellent starting point for building the panel.  With some such as with an Exchange where the panel is made available to other researchers to use, there is also the opportunity to monetise these panelists thereby providing a revenue source for you as the panel owner to help compensate for the cost of building and maintaining the panel.  With niche markets, these panels typically command a very high CPI (cost per interview), so there is likely a money making opportunity for panel owners.

According to a new survey out from Nielson, we are spending on average 17 percent of our online time socializing, nearly triple the percentage of time spent on social media a year ago.

According to Jon Gibbs, the VP of Media & Agency Insights @ Nielsen’s online division: “While video and text content remain central to the Web experience – the desire of online consumers to connect, communicate and share is increasingly driving the medium’s growth.”

It appears this increase in usage is driving increased ad revenues as a result – year-over-year, estimated online advertising spend on the top social network and blogging sites increased 119 percent, from approximately $49 million in August 2008 to approximately $108 million in August 2009.

It should be no surprise that the Entertainment Industry led in growing its online ad dollars, increasing ad spending on the top social network sites by 812% in August -but what about B2B?

Surprise surprise surprise…of the 13 industries tracked by Nielsen in this survey; B2B ranked 3rd in overall Year-Over-Year growth with 184% growth; only trailing Entertainment (812%) and Travel (364%).  Also surprisingly facebook was the leading platform for ad impressions for the b2b space.

You can see all 13 industries in the link below to the full survey.

The detail on spending and ad impressions for the 13 industries was fascinating; but I would have liked to see the breakdown of usage by these industries too – perhaps the 17% of time online is the average; but I have to suspect it’s lower for b2b folks (could be wrong); but overall some compelling trends to continue to monitor and watch.

http://en-us.nielsen.com/main/news/news_releases/2009/september/nielsen_reports_17

Dr. Ransom was talking about something in class this week that I was going to comment on but I decided I’d blog about it instead.  We were talking about how students have access to the internet now to research projects and papers yet it doesn’t mean we should ignore books in the library, especially because we know library books are copywrighted whereas many websites are not and can be very misleading.  It got me thinking about how I as a teacher strongly encourage students to use both online resources (carefully of course) and books and encyclopedias in the library.  But as a student when I have to write a research paper, it’s so much easier to simply go online from the comfort of my own living room. This is awful and lazy of me to say but since I don’t live on campus, I have a full-time job and a husband, it takes extra effort to go to the library and spend time there looking up articles and books I need for a project or paper.  But that’s how it used to be when I was in school.  We’re spoiled now with the internet. 

I was enlightened in class with all the red flags to watch out for when using the internet for research.  Websites can be very deceiving and young students can easily be tricked into thinking the information out there is fact. Young impressionable minds take things at face value. That can often get them into trouble.   I didn’t realize how important it is for teachers to make their students aware of what to watch out for when using online resources.  I guess I was naive thinking that if the student doesn’t see that a website may be inaccurate or totally phony, their parents or someone helping them with an assignment would see the red flag.  But that’s not always the case and that’s why teachers need to teach students how to make sure a website is trustworthy.