Our library class is coming to an end with our last regular class meeting. Lately we have been talking a lot about copyright laws and how to distinguish whether an item is infringing the law or not. Today we talked about “fair use”. Fair use is like a doctrine or guidline on whether or not the use of some material is considered copyright infringement. The guidlines include four main points. One is the purpose of the use. Is using a book or painting going to make the user money. If someone grabs an author’s work, makes copies, then sells it; that is copyright infringement. Next is the nature of the original work. This means one cannot take someone else’s work change one thing, then claim it as there own. Another is the amount of original work used. For example, if a teacher makes copies for his students of a few pages of someones work, and is used for educational purposes; that is OK. The last is the effect of the use on the market. This means if someone is making a profit of someone elses work, they are infringing the copyright law. In class Mrs. Radom showed how we could all recognize single letters or characters from a copyrighted name. The “S” in Starburst was easy to distinguish. We also discussed the differences between “all right reserved” and “some rights reserved”. I hope we covered everything on the exam becuase I have no clue what we will be tested on.
It’s About That Time April 24, 2008
The end of this semester will come sooner expected for me. It is crunch time where all my teachers put all their due dates on the same day, and some within the same hour. In library class we have been working on our annotated bibliographies and mine is coming along just fine. But Have so much other stuff due. Tomorrow I have a 60 page notebook due. On Monday I have our annotated bibliography due along with a three page paper for an intro class, and a20 minute PowerPoint presentation about architectural trends in coastal NC. Along with all of this, I have my brother’s bachelor party to attend. We are going somewhere in South Carolina and will partying everynight. Hopefully I can manage my time to fulfill all this work that needs to be done. I can’t wait for summer. I am going to South Africa to surf with two of my best friends and we are leaving a week after exams. So its hard to think about all this work while thinking about how many big barrels I’m going to get surfing world class waves.
Bibliography April 10, 2008
Today is the day that our Annotated Bibliography is due. I chose the subject of copyright infringement concentrating on illegal music downloads. Thank God we don’t have to write a paper becuase I’m about papered out! Doing this instead is so much better. I could see in some high level class that an instructor would make the class wirte a 15 page paper with an annotated bibliography just to teach the students about how to do an annotated bibliography. That would make me pretty mad. Well this is just a 100 level class so I knew if we had to write a paper it would only need to be like 2-3 pages. So thank your Mrs. Radom for taking it easy on us. While researching for books to use in the assignment I came across, The Music Business. This book is like a handbook or a guide on how to be succesful in the Music Business. Things like stage presence, a good sound, and distribution are imortant in being a succesful musician. The part that pertains to my subject is the very last chapter. It is about the Internet and how to be aware of copyright infringement and illeagal distribution of ones digital music. This subject is important for me becuase I am a musician that plays in a band. My band went to Atlanta a month ago to record a single and we are awaiting the mastered, master copy. Now this will come to us as a Compact Disc but I know once our singer recieves it in the mail, he’s going to put it right on the internet. With a single I don’t care who has a digital copy of it; but if it was an entire album I would be worried about posting it on the Internet. Hopefully some day I can be a proffesional musician so I don’t ever have to work and hopefully Illegal downloads will stop right around the time we make it big; HUGE!!!
April Showers April 10, 2008
Its April and its all raining down; everything. Work is pilling up for all of my classes. We are beginning our season at work where we start getting busy. And I just got done surfing just north of Jonnie Mercer’s Pier and some A Hole new Cop decided to pick me out of a crowd of about 15 to give a ticket. Oh yeah it’s raining pretty hard. I got a ticket for surfing to close to the pier and the cop is a rookie and new to the beach becuase I have lived here for almost 22 years and I’ve never seen him before. He rolled up in his 2008 tahoe with lights flashing and he was yelling through his loudspeaker at us to move north. So I did. As this happened the waves started to get crappy so I headed in. As I was about to walk north to my truck, I looked over at the cop to see if he was trying to write me a ticket. He was getting back into his truck and was not even looking at me so I knew I was in the clear. Well I felt that I should be honest so I put my board in the sand and ran over to him to say ” the loudspeaker was very distorted and unclear, I couldn’t understand what you were saying; just wanted to let you know.” Then he asked me my name and I said “Eliot Garner”. He wrote it down. Then I asked if I was getting a ticket; he said yup. I was distraught and it was very hard to hold in my anger. (I just wanted to punch him in the face) This is rediculous. A 220$ ticket for being in the water with a surfboard near the pier. Where if I did not have a surfboard, I would have been totally legal. While I waited twenty minutes for him to write the ticket, call it in and my name; a backup officer came out. Oh man I am dangerous we need backup. Hopefully with all the people I know I can get this guy fired and out of my beautiful town.
I know this doesn’t pertain to class at all but I just wanted to let everyone, or whoever reads these blogs, to understand how much of an “A hole” the cops at Wrightsville Beach are. So lookout don’t do anything stupid, like go surfing.
Plagiarize This March 26, 2008
Plagairizing is bad…. Students all over the US plagairize every day. They do so to complete papers or homework and some times copy whole papers, put their name on it and turn it in. I recently read an article about a former White House- Correspondent plagairized a news reporter. His name, Jeff Gannon. He was found out by an online blogger who, of course had nothing better to do than to find something bad about someone. Anyway, the story was about how a home-schooled kid and his parents refused to take a standardized test. The name of the news reporter was Melissa Beecher. She was the only reporter at the scene that day; she recalled. Gannon had used quotes that were very similar to those of Beecher. Beecher was disgusted by this action especially becuase he was a White House Correspondent. I cant believe Correspondant Gannon would think he would get away with copying someone elses work; especially today in the information age. This guy is not that smart.
At Cape Fear Academy, where I went to High School, my principle used to be the Head of Technology. So when he started to ‘wear the pants’ he was pretty anal about plagairism. He subscribed the school to Turnitin.com, which is a website that allows students to turn their papers into them first to find out if there are any ‘sketchy’ parts of your paper. It took a day for the website to send it back with results. It was a pain in the rear that you had to turn your paper into the website a good 36 hours before the paper was due to your teacher, but I guess it was for the better.
Work, Work, Work March 26, 2008
The past week we have been discussing our assignments and I am begining to worry if I can do all the work for all my other classes as well as this one. Today, Wednesday, everyone presented their database information except for Carson and me. It was nice not to be first, but last; a week later, I’ll probably forget everything I prepared for the presentation, but thats alright. It might give me time for the information to sink into my deep brain. Carson and I are presenting the databease known as ScienceDirect, which is rad becuase we are familiar with the layout. Next assignment we have is to create an annotated bibliography. I have never done one before so it is good that all I have to do is just the bibliography and not the paper. Usually when I write a paper, I do it last minute, and my bibliography looks like chiken scratch. So doing the annotated bibliography and no paper, will be a piece of cake, or pie. Assignments rule my life…they control when I have fun. Of course anyone would love to be able to sleep in every day and have nothing to worry about, but we all have a job to do. Now’s the time time make the final grind to end the semester. No more breaks or days off. With that in mind everyone remembers what they have to for their classes and now know that it is time to start.
Test Time February 27, 2008
Today we took our mid-term exam for LIB 103. The night before, I did not study. The day of the exam, I did not study. But the past several weeks in class I have been closely paying attention to the lectures and in-class activities. There are some people who can never go to class but “cram” for a test and make an “A”. But for me it is more about going to class and paying attention. Some people in the class stay “hooked” to their computer screen the entire time while Rachael is lecturing. I find this to be a little rude to the teacher, but it is their choice to pay attention or not. I believe that in any class, the student should look the teacher in the eye and participate in all class lessons. I have not missed a single class and don’t intend to because it is important to hear everything that goes on during class. Throughout my college education here at UNCW, I have found the importance of attending class. My freshman year I had an 8 o’clock math class with a Chinese teacher that I could not understand. I barely woke up for class and only made efforts to attend days of exams. Well, I ended up with an “F” in the class and gained a new attitude for college education. For the test today, I didn’t prepare last night or the night before, but I have been preparing the entire semester. I felt like I did well on the exam and think the only question I got wrong was the last one on the search string. Yeah for me!!!!
Class Time February 27, 2008
On Monday, our class did a few exercises to prepare for our mid-term exam and we covered some new material discussing proper writing techniques. One of these new techniques was looking at words called peacocks and weasels. Peacock words are ones used to show off, or strut your stuff; like a peacock. This describes words that are of extential vocabulary that often don’t get the idea across. Weasel words are ones used to beat around the bush and send a confusing message. If a student writes an essay about a subject, and one topic they don’t understand they will use weasel words or techniques to get away from that topic and move on to the next section. Another technique we went over was how to correctly use the comma. Some examples are to enclose parenthetic expressions between commas. Depending on the flow of the sentence, commas may be omitted. Clauses introduced with where or when are usually punctuated. For example, In 1996, the
The Mini Library February 13, 2008
Today we went to the Curriculum Materials Center which is located in the Watson School of Education. The Curriculum Materials Center is a specialized collection of the Randall Library. It has lots of textbooks from many different subjects, but only for that of education. This little library has many books that are for learning and teaching. Although great textbooks for elementary, middle, and high school students but they are great tools for UNCW education majors who practice teaching and tutoring using these books. When we arrived, there were several objects on each table that were an example of teaching tools for elementary education. I had a building set that was similar to a Lincoln Logs set, but it was of Arabian architecture which makes my old Lincoln Logs set a little out dated. Other examples that were present on the tables were things like 3-D models of the solar system, mini percussion instruments, and an oversized model of the human mouth. These items of education and enrichment can really play an important role in education. I think it is important for schools like UNCW to have an education program that gives the student all the tools one needs to be a successful educator because they will be teaching children who are our nation’s future.
Still Searching!! February 13, 2008
Lately in class we have gone over proper search methods and emphasizing the different ways of searching for materials on databases and catalogs. We looked at keyword searching and using correct search strings. A search string can be one word to several words. It describes the topic you intend to search for and gives any other describing factors that may also be needed to convey a certain area of study. An example of a search string is: (Chinese or cook*) and agriculture. Using “AND” in a search string is a good idea if you know what exactly you are looking for. “AND” in a search string gives results on both words on each side of the word “AND”. For example, if you look up “surfing AND South Pacific” the results will only be of those titles which have surfing and south Pacific in the body of the material written. If you cannot find an interesting subject to research, you can use the word “OR” in your search string. Using “OR” will give results that have any of the words on each side of the word “OR”. For example, if you cannot find anything to write a paper about, use Surfing OR South Pacific. This will give results that have either Surfing or South Pacific in the body of the written material. This is a pretty simple search method to understand but takes a few tries to fully understand. I’m not gonna lie, I thought I knew everything about searching on the catalog or a database but this class has really opened my eyes to the seriousness of good searching methods.
