Josephine’s Online Technology Journal

Here’s the link to go to our wikiality project!
It’s Tsagaan Sar under the Wikipedia, or the URL is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsagaan_Sar

This is how we will edit the Tsagaan Sar Wikipedia Page: 

The White Moon holiday is celebrated two months after the first new moon following the winter solstice. In 2008, White Moon falls on Feb. 8th. After Naadam, Tsagaan Sar is the second-most important Mongolian holiday.

Around the New Year people greet each other by saying “Amar mend uu”, a very formal greeting which one says to one’s elders. Mongolians also visit friends and family on this day and exchange gifts. A typical Mongolian family will meet in the home dwelling of the eldest male in the family. _______ When greeting their elders during the White Moon festival, Mongolians grasp them by their elbows to show support for them. The eldest male receives greetings from each member of the family except for his wife. During the greeting ceremony, family members hold long pieces of colored cloth called khadag. After the ceremony, the family eats buuz and drinks airag (fermented mare’s milk) and exchanges gifts.

The day before Tsagaan Sar is called “Bituun”. On this day, families gather together_______–immediate family usually, in contrast to the large feast gatherings of White Moon day–and see out the old year. Traditionally, Mongolians settle all issues and repay all debts from the old year by this day. Mongolians eat their fill at the Bituun meal, as tradition says that if you are hungry after Bituun you will be hungry for the whole coming year.

These are sources that we have found so that we can change the tsagaan sar page, and not be removed by wikipedia editors:

“Tsagan Sar: The Mongolian Lunar New Year”. Mongoluls. 2007. March 13^th, 2008.       
     <http://mongoluls.net/tsagaansar.shtml>

“Festivals”. Asia-planet. 2002. March 11^th, 2008.
     <http://www.asia-planet.net/mongolia/festivals.htm>

 List of things that I should have done in order to know at the end of the project:
-Did we include a correct format of MLA bibliography?
-Did we follow what criterion B asks for?
-Did we use our time during class effectively?
-Did we get our assignments done on time?
-Did we do a thorough, wide range of research (meaning that we used more than one site on the Internet)?
-Did all of the members in our group do our work together?

What should I include?
I should include an accurate bibliography from the Internet. This means that I should site the sites/ sources that I have visited by an MLA format. I think these are basically it for all the things that I need to include for the Wikipedia. I should also make sure that I used a good site- probably a government based organization.

How will I know if I did a good job?
I will be able to know that I have done a good job by the comments that the grade that Ms. Wilson will give me. Or, if nobody changes that information that our group had edited; then it would probably mean that they didn’t even bother touching it because it was way too good! Basically, the grades tells us everything about how well we have done. Lastly, I can go back to read all the rubrics in the assignment sheet to make sure I have done what each criterion has asked me to.

What is a wiki? Who creates them? Why use them? Who edits them?
Wikipedia is one of the greatest world wide used online encyclopedia. They are all translated into various languages in order for anyone to access and obtain information. The wikipedia site itself was created by a man named Jimmy Wales. However, all he did was just to “create” the site. The people who adds all the information onto the network are the netizens. This means that anyone can add or change or even delete information that is already posted on the site. Wikipedia definitely would not be a good source for academics. However, many people still use them nowadays. Why so? It’s mainly because many think that it is 99.9% reliable AND easy to understand. In most of the categories, all the information are easy to understand and read.

What is your task? Why is it important for you to learn about Wikipedia?
When working with my group; our task was to first answer some questions related to Wikipedia. Then, we were to find errors (or inaccurate information) in Wikipedia and correct it. Our group, the JJJs chose the topic of ‘Mongolian Tsagaan Sar’, the traditional lunar new year celebration. It is important for us to learn about Wikipedia because it is a great chance for us to learn that not all Wikipedia informaiton are correct. It definitely will help us improve our skills on researching, and writing a correct bibliography.  

How reliable do you think Wikipedia actually is?
Personally, I think that Wikipedia is 60% reliable. This is because obviously, anybody can change any sort of information at anytime, anywhere. However; because it is a world wide used web, there could be people out there wanting to deliver correct and accurate information for the sake of human being’s knowledge. If it is about your own cultures, religion, favorite entertainments; people would want to deliver correct information… because it is something that they enjoy!
On the other hand, however, many netizens like joking around for some odd reason. Since they know that they won’t get caught whatever they do on Wikipedia; they like to go around the give out false information. This is why it cannot be always reliable to use, especially for school.

How would you know whether a particular article is accurate?
Well, there are ways to find out whether or not all the information posted on Wikipedia are true. They have citations at the bottom, including a bibliography. You can access to the sites or sources that they’ve used and see them for yourself. In other cases, you can even just try using other sites (other than Wikipedia) and try if they are true or not. Other than these, there aren’t many ways to check whether or not you are obtaining 100% correct information. There are millions of other sites on the Internet. You just need to be looking further other than Wikipeida!

How would you go about discovering whether an article contains inaccurate information?
This question ties in with the question right above. Once again, you can just visit the sites that they’ve used and see them for yourself whether they did write an accurate information. However, it is also important to see which site they used in getting these information from. Sites that are made from organizations, government based, non-government based, etc are definitely 99.9999% reliable. However, if one of the information you get from Wikipedia is from a personal BLOG, for example; then you would have to do more research.
In other ways, you can research all of the topics that interest you. For example, I am interested in “Mongolia, hurricanes, rainbows, cartoons, celebrities, movies, soap operas, etc”. If I have time, then I can certainly see whether or not correct information has been posted. This would be only possible if I know about the particular subject in detail.

Sources for correcting wikipedia
These are paragraphs we found on the internet that we can use to change the wikipedia page
___________________________________________________________________________
1. “Tsagaan Sar, meaning White Month or Moon, is one the main two big public annual events, next to the Nadaam. It marks the end of Winter and the beginning of spring and the new year´s cycle.” http://mongoluls.net/tsagaansar.shtml
2.”The greeting normally said is “Sar shin saikhan shinelch baina uu?”as the milk and khadag are given to the oldest member of the family. The younger member of the family has his or her palms facing upwards and grasps the older one’s elbows. The older member has palms faced down and the arms are above the younger’s. While this is occurring, the two kiss one another on the cheek or touch cheeks.”

These are the changes we plan on making: Each strikethrough is something we will edit using the two paragraphs above. Also we will add information in some vague areas. This is underlined.

*(This is the tsagaan sar paragraph from wikipedia)

The White Moon holiday is celebrated two months after the first new moon following the winter solstice. In 2008, White Moon falls on Feb. 8th. After Naadam, Tsagaan Sar is the second-most important Mongolian holiday.

Around the New Year people greet each other by saying “Amar mend uu”, a very formal greeting which one says to one’s elders. Mongolians also visit friends and family on this day and exchange gifts. A typical Mongolian family will meet in the home dwelling of the eldest male in the family. _______ When greeting their elders during the White Moon festival, Mongolians grasp them by their elbows to show support for them. The eldest male receives greetings from each member of the family except for his wife. During the greeting ceremony, family members hold long pieces of colored cloth called khadag. After the ceremony, the family eats buuz and drinks airag (fermented mare’s milk) and exchanges gifts.

The day before Tsagaan Sar is called “Bituun”. On this day, families gather together_______–immediate family usually, in contrast to the large feast gatherings of White Moon day–and see out the old year. Traditionally, Mongolians settle all issues and repay all debts from the old year by this day. Mongolians eat their fill at the Bituun meal, as tradition says that if you are hungry after Bituun you will be hungry for the whole coming year.

Discuss:

1. how reliable do you think wikipedia actually is?

   -not 100% reliable, because anyone can change any information at any time. It is harder to detect who added or deleted further information onto the website. It is useful in some ways, however, it is NOT good to be used for school or to be repeated onto another website.

    

2. How would you know whether a particular article really is accurate?

   You need to look on a reliable website, other than wikipedia. There are sources sited on the bottom of each article in wikipedia- and you should visit them to check whether or not they are true. If there aren’t sources, then google it to check it again.

    

3. How would you go about discovering whether an article contains inaccurate information?

   As we said above: You need to look on a reliable website, other than wikipedia. There are sources sited on the bottom of each article in wikipedia- and you should visit them to check whether or not they are true. If there aren’t sources, then google it to check it again.

   You could contact a professional, ask your teacher, look up on a textbook, etc. There are many other ways if you want to check whether or not your information is.

Do:

1. construct a method (steps) for discovering inaccuracies on Wikipedia.

   1) first choose a topic

2) find the article related to the topic in wikipedia

3) look for possible inaccuracies

4) visit the sites cited of the article

5) if these are reliable sites; then double check with a teacher or textbook, or other RELIABLE sources. If everything checks out, then repeat #1~4 to find a new article with possible inaccuracies.

6) if it is NOT a reliable site, then research on the internet like step #5, to find the possible “REAL” information.

 

1. Put your theory to the test!

The topic that we chose is Mongolia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolia

1. Where does Wikipedia get its information?
From netizens from anywhere around the world. These people get their information from the Internet, books, newspapers, or any other source of media that carries out the information about that particular topic.

2. Who is in charge of deciding what goes into an article and what gets removed from an article?
Everyone. Everything is written by people from all around the wrold. Anybody can change it, if someone comes to wikipedia and changes something, it shows the changes and the original data, this makes it so that jerks can’t just come and delete wikipedia page.

3. If there is some debate about whether a particular bit of information should or should not be included in an article, what is the process of deciding?
Unresolved disputes between editors on validity of content, can be addressed through the talk page of an article, through requesting comments from other editors or though Wikipedia’s comprehensive dispute resolution process. Thus meaning that each information that is included in the article is viewed by wikipedian editors, and therefore adding unncessary information will be rejected.

Evaluate your finished podcast against your own design specifications

After looking back at my design specification from my ‘Design’ journal, I don’t think I fully followed all of them. My design specifications were to include a music in my background, speak slowly and clearly, make it 3-7 minutes, add some sound effects, and try making it sound entertaining and interesting. The only thing that I followed was to make my podcast length 4 minutes long. I could not add any songs or sound effects- because I could not find any appropriate songs to add. On the day I was recording after school; the lab was really noisy. People kept on talking and signing. Due to the time restrictions- I was in a rush- and ended up reading my script quickly.

Evaluate your finished podcast against my design specifications (recorded and published)

The design specification that Ms. Wilson wrote is similar to mine. Her’s reads: i will include music in my background, i will speak slowly and clearly, my podcast will be 20 minutes long, and i will include an interview with… As mentioned earlier, my podcast does not follow any of them. Her time restriction is up to 20 minutes- while mine is from 3-7 minutes long. I guess i did speak clearly but very quickly at most of the times when reading.

Evaluate your work at each stage of the project (A, B, C, D)

I must say that working on ‘investigation’, criterion A of this project was the most annoying part. I spent after school listening to various podcasts and researching ways to publish podcasts. It wasn’t until I noticed that all the things that I wrote in my podcast changed. Even my final investigation was deleted! So many things were getting erased or either altered. (Learner blog did get on my nerves). Getting back to the point, Mrs. Wilson did read what I wrote and therefore I did not have that much of a big problem. I did answer everything that the assignment asked for- and kept all the bibliographies of each site.

Moving on to criterion B; I believe I answered everything that the assignment asked me to do. I tried to make it as detailed as possible. Researching different ways of publishing podcast was a little bit annoying yet somehow hard for me. I don’t have a quick access to the Internet at home. So I decided to save time by working on researching during class and answer all the questions at home. My design got deleted along with my investigation in the beginning. Luckily, I had everything saved onto my network and did not encounter that much of a big catastrophe as last time.

I then made a time-line/ plan of what I did and what I will be doing. I was required to write down all the dates, times, steps, materials and resources. Thinking of what I did for each class was somewhat easy. Planning what to do for each class made me think hard. I tried to follow all of my plans. Indeed, I did follow all of them- except for one time, on February 20^th. I was supposed to record for 20 minutes during class but I couldn’t. Each person was given the time to record for each class- and i decided to do mine during class on Friday. I couldn’t record on this day as well, because I did not have all my researches ready!

Although I didn’t follow all of my criterion C plan; i did actually Then on February 25^th to 26^th, I was able to finish recording my podcast. On the 25^th, I was able to record the first part of my script after school. However, there were other people in the room who kept on talking (making some background noises). I was able to finish my podcast the next morning. I published the podcast during class- right after I finished recording it. I followed all the instructions for criterion D. I had my friends to comment on my podcast.

Test the podcast according to your plans under INVESTIGATION above

The tests for a good podcast for me was: how long is it, how well the person talks (slowly, clearly and energetically), and what it is about. It’s a little difficult for me to test my podcast since it’s actually mine (HEHE). My podcast is short and simple. It doesn’t drag that long for the audience to hear it. Although there isn’t any sound effects or background music to make it more interesting- it helps the listener to concentrate better. I did talk quickly, however if they read along with the script- it will be easier. Because my podcast is an explanation about each blood type-thorough concentration would be good.

Record the results of your tests

Enkhzaya said…

Well,,,your podcast was very interesting..but you were speaking SUPER fast……

12:53 AM  

Anonymous said…

very interesting Jo! i didn’t know that..wow! Good job yo! if possible can you make another podcast like this? bet it would be interesting and cool.

12:54 AM  

Anonymous said…

it’s SUPER dUPER gooiooood
i can’t believe you made it really nicely!
good job, jo!
from saihknaa

Once again, in order to hear my podcast, go to: www.bloodtypesjo.mypodcastcom

In order to listen to my podcast, you can just click on:

http://bloodtypesjo.mypodcast.com

 Possible topics for my podcast:

• comedy

• life in Mongolia

• life in Korea

• information about our school ISU

• about myself

• jokes from joke books

• book reading

• comments about songs and video clips

• instructions of cooking

• travel guide to Mongolia

• interview with someone special

• horoscopes

• blood types

My intended audience for this podcast is simple ANYONE who is willing to listen to my audio from the beginning ’till the end- without skipping anything in the middle. Mrs. Wilson, our IT teacher will definitely be one of my audiences- as well as our grade 10s. Any netizens online serfing for any one of these podcast subject is my audience as well!

Steps of recording and publishing my podcast

First step
1. Record my podcast in “Audacity” program
-Get a microphone ready
-Open up “Audacity” program
-Start recording (Click on the red circle button)
-once you’re done recording, click on stop (brownish green square button)
-name it by clicking on the “Audio Track” on the left side. (click on “Name” under it)
2. save it under a MP3 file
-go to files => Export as MP3
-save it under a file in which you’ll remember where you’ve saved it!
3. Make a podcast site with MyPodcast

Second Step
www.garagepodcast.com
This site enables you to upload your own podcast. After you record your audio in podcast in audacity, you can export it as a mp3. Then from the site, you can obviously import it as the same file- and then post it.

Third Step
iTunes
Basically, the first step of publishing a podcast is to record your audio in some kind of program. The best one I would like to recommend is to record it in ‘audacity’ program. Once your done, go to iTunes. You need a membership if you want to upload a podcast. However, it requires payment. Then you can link from iTunes directly to podcast as an import file. Next, go to music store for customer service page. Follow the instructions for adding a podcast to the catalogue.
<http://101.findexcellent.com/26/record-edit-publish-and-let-your-podcast>

Fourth Step
Ourmedia.org
Upload your podcast if you don’t have a website or an FTP server. This site allows you upload a podcast for free. You can upload a file in any size. This is an advantage- since you wouldn’t have to worry about the limit of the file size. However, be ware that the speed publishing would take quite a while!

Fifth Step
Recording the podcast without using the Internet. This can be done so by calling a certain radio station. You can read off what you want to say through the phone and they can record it- and publish it for you. I got this information from Mrs. Wilson. There are 3 different sites that you can publish your podcast through phones: gabcast.com and voice2pod.com. These two sites enables you to record any sort of audio. The next site instructables.com requires you to research how to record an audio. The steps are the following.

1. Gather supplies: 2 phones (in order to capture 2 of the interviews), a phone audio recording device (for example, the Quick Tap from JK audio), a laptop, audio recording software, audioBlogging/Podcasting hosting device.

2. Connect inbound Audio: with 2 phone devices, use a device called “Quick Tap” from JK Audio to tie these phone lines into one audio cable that plugs into the laptop.

3. Launc hAudio software:

Now you need to launch whatever software you will be using to record the audio on your computer. use Sonic Foundry but there are a number of packages available for little cost. This application will not only capture the audio but will allow you adjust the recording volume and other variables that will allow you to produce better quality audio.

If possible, normalize (usually a common feature in this kind of software) the audio, this will smooth out the difference between loud and quite parts of the recording. Then you save audio as wav file (this preserves the original in a high quality format). Finally, you convert wav file to MP3 file (try to include ID3 meta data). This is done because MP3 files are so much smaller than wav files and are easier to dowload.

5. The Learning Feeds (www.learningfeedsd.com) is the one that has set up to handle all of the podcasting. When you publish something from the AudioBlog site- this iw where it lands. Use the “View Source” command in your browser and copy the relevant pieces out of it and past e them into the Learning Wiki.

6. After the audio shows on the blog, add it to the Learning Wiki (www.learningwiki.com)

One chosen method

I decided to follow my first step of publishing the podcast. It seems as if I’m more familiar with the steps. If I need to work on this at home, I can easily work on it without any problems. Although it does require an access to Internet in order to publish it- hopefully, I will manage it without getting into any trouble.

Design specifications

• I will include music in my background

• I will speak slowly and clearly

• My podcast will be 3 to 7 minutes long

• I will add some sound effects

• I will try to make it entertaining and interesting- instead of dragging/ or making it sound boring