Learning to Find and Use Information Effectively

Journal: Activities 1-6

Activity 1 – Learning to Find and Use Information Effectively

Your thoughts on information literacy, information sources, finding information, and why

it is important to be information literate.

I believe that information literacy is very important to a person’s success. The ability to know when and why certain information is needed is critical. With so much information available to everybody, such as the internet and book, you need to know how to effectively use that information. One thing I found interesting about information literacy is what information literate people can do. Some examples I read was they can identify the problem, evaluate the effectiveness of the product, brainstorm possible sources, pick the best source, and find the necessary information in the sources. The different types of information sources include television, internet, library, and the radio. The library is where you can find databases and search engines that can be very useful for written papers and doing homework. In the library you can also find scholarly journals and magazines, physical books, and electronic books. Another critical step is being able to search and find the correct information. When searching for information you need to be able to know what fields you should be looking for. These fields include the title, author, subject, and date. If you know this information it will make you search easier, but if not then you would want to search using keywords. Keywords allow you to combine words that can be used to help you have a better search for the information. It is important to understand the various types of information that can be found in different ways because it allows you to find the most effective information towards your topic or research. Navigating through all the information is a skill that everybody needs to have. Having this skill allows you to get rid of the unnecessary information and find the reliable sources.  

Activity 2 – Task Definition

Your thoughts on choosing a scenario and the cell phone case.

My thoughts on choosing a scenario was that I examined each scenario very carefully. I read thru each of the four possible scenarios before I decided on one. It was hard to pick one because I thought it could be interesting to talk about all of them. The one I decided to pick was the one about your nieces and nephews watch a lot of violent television. The scenario also stated that I am interested in learning about does violent television affect a child’s behavior. One thing that I do know about this scenario is that I can relate to it on a personal level. Even though this person isn’t my nephew, I have a cousin who plays violent videos a lot. I noticed that after he plays his violent games, he becomes more aggressive and tries to do certain things he has been seeing on violent shows. This scenario is something that siblings struggle with on how to address the other ones behavior after they notice a dramatic change. I already know that this scenario is something that many people have become aware of and very uncertain about. One thing that I am uncertain about is that does this scenario really make kids more aggressive. Me personally when I was a kid, I loved to play violent video games. It was more exciting and fun than the other games. After playing the games I didn’t become more violent I was the same way after I finished playing them. Another thing I am uncertain about is how my nieces and nephews get the video games. Did one of their parents buy it for them and why if their behavior is changing why hasn’t there been a channel lock put on their televisions to prevent those watching violent shows. Some specific questions I have about this issue is what percent of kids exposed to violent material have a more aggressive behavior and does anybody else notice the change in the behavior. I would want to know the percentages and the average of how many children this violent material affects. In order for me to understand this issue better I would have to do more research about this topic. I would have to go find research that has been done by reliable sources (such as the news on television and magazines). I would also need to know what steps are being taking to help stop this issue. For example, are the parent of these kids not buying the violent video games anymore if they notice the behaviors? This issue about affecting a child’s behavior could be devastating to the well-being of that child and the people around them. I believe that the cell phone case is a perfect example of effectively using your resources to determine what resources are reliable. The first source he found showed him something that his cell phones could give him cancer in the brain. After looking through other sources, he realized that you can’t believe everything you see on the internet. Even though he hasn’t found an answer to the specific question he wants to know, he has found reliable sources that will lead him to answering that question such as CNN.

Activity 3 – Information Seeking

Your thoughts on looking for information and the cell phone case searches.

When searching for my information I went to Google and typed in does violent shows affect a child’s behavior. Multiple different sources came up and I examined each article before picking one. The source I decided to get my information about my topic from was huffingtonpost.com article. The article is written by Dr. Gail Gross who has her Ph.D. degree and is a nationally recognized family education/parenting expert. Dr. Gross has received the Good Heart Humanitarian Award, Trailblazer Award, and Woman Of Influence Award to name a few she has won. She is reporting about the issue that is related to the scenario I choose. She states in her article that violent television has “an adverse effect on children and the way they act and think”. Children want to act like the violent things they are viewing on the television.  In her article, she says that research shows that these kids are more likely to use aggressive strategies in problem solving rather than peaceful methods. I believe that she had an agenda when writing her article about this topic. Her agenda was to show the negative effects that television has on young kids. The majority of her article talks about the potential dangers to watching violent television and how they become more violent as they grow up into teenagers. The funding of the research was done by the author Dr. Gail Gross. She was asked by the Huffington Post to write this article about violence on TV for their website. She makes references to studies that show certain things to support her article, but doesn’t include what specific studies she was talking about. For example, she may say that studies show the direct relationship between violence and children but doesn’t give specific numbers or percentages. The issue that emerged as most important from my initial scan of the information of my topic was the sources that came up from my search. I saw some websites that I already knew was unreliable from previous experiences writing papers. Other sources seemed that they may be reliable when I started to read the articles. Using the information I learned in activity 1, I was able to find the best source with the most reliable and experience author writing the material. My research compares to the cell phone researcher because we both went through multiple sites to find the most effective information. The research compared articles from University of Washington and Pittsburgh Cancer center. Researcher also gained her information from Dr. Ronald Herberman and the National Cancer Institute. The information obtained talked about radio frequency and how it is changing with cell phones. This information and research founded was funded by the college institutions and the National Cancer Institute. The researcher did get most of her questions answered. She found that cell phones can have effect on the human body. She seemed to believe that it is time for her to do research into using Bluetooth as a possible alternate. The blog commenters did raise some new questions in my opinion. One of them wanted to know what would be considered heavy phone use. Another wanted to know more about the effect phones can have on people besides brain cancer. These are questions that should be answered to come up with an effective conclusion.