How Google Search Works

This week's topic was on how google search works and further how it uses algorithms to power it's search engine, our tasks was to then share our knowledge and understanding via a podcast on audioBoom. audioBoom is a free website/application which enables users to explore, record and share sound files (podcast). The audio content on the website ranges from Business to Arts, Music to Comedy and Philosophy. audioBoom has content to appease everybody with its vast range of subject matter and with high-status people promoting it - such as Russell Brand - users are growing in number despite its recent release. As it says on audioBoom for Education, 'Audio enriches the curriculum' and 'engages the learner' and I strongly agree with this as in conventional educational environments, learning is biased towards visual learners and auditory/kinesthetic learners are expected to be able to produce results of similar standards to those who have a clear preference for it. But I believe that knowing and understanding all three learning styles will be very advantageous in our future as students, in any subject and even after we leave school so it is necessary to develop all three educational techniques. So even those whose dominant learning style is not auditory will benefit from audioBoom as it forces them to not only rely on what they're best at, which can debilitate a student's true potential but to train their cognitive skills so that they may be comfortable when needed to perform in such circumstances. 

 Should you wish to access my podcast, feel free to click on the following link:

How Google Search Works

I believe that Google is more successful than Bing and Yahoo because around a decade ago when it was starting up, was speed. The results were returned almost instantaneously within entering the search, which though now is not uncommon as most engines are fairly quick, was back then. The search algorithms: Google pioneered the form of crawling which returns far more relevant search results than Yahoo and Bing. Google has also exerted large amounts of effort in research of how to make computers interpret human language more efficiently. This translates to better results as the algorithm can search for what you mean and not just a collection of keywords. That the results are displayed in a consumable fashion is also and attractive feature of a search engine and I believe that people are drawn to the simplicity of it rather than the complicated interface of Yahoo which can be confusing initially. Finally, Google has multiple branches to it which cater to numerous fields such as Google Classrooms (educational), Google Mail (social/proffesional), Google Maps, Google Translate, etc., etc.

This week I have achieved an understanding of how Google Search works, about which I was clueless beforehand. I have also become comfortable with audioBoom and hope to use it in the future. A challenge I faced was the audioBoom app cutting out regularly when recording on my phone and then reopening it to find that the draft had not been saved and so in the future I will be sure to use the website instead. I could improve my learning by researching other search engines in greater detail. 

The Bubble Sort Algorithm

The Bubble Sort Algorithm, according to Wikipedia, is 'a simple sorting algorithm that repeatedly steps through the list to be sorted, compares each pair of adjacent items and swaps them if they are in the wrong order.' It is this algorithm that we have been focusing on in the past two lessons, aiming to create a tutorial teaching others how this algorithm functions and how to perform it yourself.

I chose to create my tutorial in the form of an animation. Not knowing any renowned websites, or having discovered any simple apps doing so, I simply searched 'make your own animation' and chose the first search result. It was a website named Moovly, one which I am aware is become increasingly popular.

Moovly offers tutorials on how to use the website but they are limited and somewhat misleading. After completing the tutorial, I had assumed it would have shown me how to edit the timings, alter the background, add voice over, and other key features to an animation-based website but it had involved none of these things and I had to learn how to use the website independently, which was the first mistake. I spent a lot of time exploring and making many mistakes. I had begun by selecting a premade template for my animation that Moovly encourages beginners to use at their aid. I was initially thoroughly disappointed when I discovered that all the template provided was actually a background texture/colour when it had shown the template with a font, colour scheme, and picture (the main reasons I chose it at all) which the Moovly user in reality, had to find from the innumerable options the website provides. As though to put further salt on the wound, after a period of time, the template's background texture expired and left me with a video which was half one colour, half another and no matter what I attempted, I could not extend the duration of the template until I had been working on this tutorial for a very long expanse of time. As for how I managed to do this at all, I stumbled across the solution, accidentally dragging a bar in the 'timings box' which again, Moovly had failed to explain properly in their tutorial.

I had formerly planned on adding subtle background music to my animation, knowing that videos always appear bare and unfinished without it but the website didn't provide this option unless you used music from your own 'personal library'. Not having any music I deemed suitable for my video, and knowing that when I had attempted to record a voice over to the animation from my personal library, it hadn't allowed this option, I decided that I'd leave this be and have an unfinished feel to my video.

At this point in making my tutorial, I had become very unwilling to exert the effort I had originally been putting in as I'd been working on a video - one that I wasn't particularly pleased with, or proud of - for several hours, too many hours, simply because the website was so outrageously incompetent. Once I had eventually reached the end of the dubious process Moovly had put me through, and began converting the video into a file which I would be able to upload to Google Classrooms, I discovered one had to pay for any option better than the 'Standard Quality', and pay further should you want to have a more discreet Moovly watermark. Far from parting any money with this website that had wasted such large amounts of my time, I clicked continue with all the most basic options provided in compiling the video and somewhat subduedly uploaded my video to the assignment page.

On a brighter note however, I do feel that I conveyed the purpose of the Bubble Sort Algorithm and how to execute it. I do regret not having included the specific terminology such as 'secondary pass' etc., but I couldn't recall it and no website I researched it on provided any help. I hadn't known what an algorithm was previously, and definitely a particular example of one, so I feel as though that was a minor triumph despite the many downfalls.

I think that the Bubble Sort Algorithm has its advantages to it and is simple for our usage but is not a practical sorting algorithm when n is large. It also had the ability to detect when the list is sorted built into it which is useful and I would use it in the future rather than other, more complex sorting algorithms.

This Half Term's Module

During this module, I've learnt a variety of new information and skills. I hadn't encountered any of the topics involved in the past which meant that all that I have created and learnt was more of a challenge and I'm glad that this was so, as I feel I have been pushed to the best of my abilities. I feel far more informed in subjects such as Cloud Computing and numerous examples of it, especially Google Docs. This is a great achievement when considering I didn't know the basic definition of Cloud Computing at the beginning of this module. 

I'm pleased to say that I didn't encounter too many learning difficulties during this topic but those that I did were not serious and were easily eliminated with a little extra effort and time applied. I'm fairly pleased with the effort I exerted in this module. Though there is always room where improvement could have been made, or extra effort employed, that which I did is of a standard that I can be satisfied with in relation to how I view my potential. I will of course continue to work harder and improve whether I am content with my work or not because that is how development and intellectual enhancement comes to pass. 

I believe that I could improve upon my effort in the next module by doing more research and putting thought into assignments during the lessons more, combined with the time spent at home and in my own free time. I would also like to look into uses related to businesses and professionals for the topics in question rather than students and educational purposes which is where most of my current research lies.

I would give this module a 4.5 out of 5 on the whole because I believe that an understanding of Cloud Computing is becoming more and more important and will be of use to me in the very near future along with advances in technology and a stronger dependence on this branch of IT. The remaining 0.5 would be gained by a further interest in it which I don't personally hold as I don't consider it exciting or have any particular passion for learning about it but this of course is specific to me and can't be prevented. For future learners, I think that this module could be improved by having allowed the students to present their presentations in person because though reliance on technology is important, and clearly in the subject of IT, I still regard communication skills highly and the ability to present clear and specialised information before an audience an important thing to learn how to do. It is also one which could easily be included in this module without impacting on the technological side of things and had the potential to bring a new meaning of the topic to the students themselves. 

Padlet

'Padlet' is a website which is a type of online bulletin board. It can be used for many purposes, teaching, work-related, student/education related, and much more. We used it for educational purposes. Open-ended questions were posed and we as the students could respond, as though writing on a virtual wall. We could do this in the form of images, videos, audios, documents, text, and links. We all contributed, brainstorming and gathering ideas, enjoying the freedom within the many options of form of response which one could select. We were able to browse through others' views and ideas, offer our own and form an online sheet of paper containing not a few individuals' but everyone's personal ideas.

I personally think that Padlet is good for learning. It is intuitive and this means that students can delve straight into the task at hand without worrying about learning how to use a new site or numerous features. The customisation options increase the enthusiasm from students too, enabling a feel of personality during what could otherwise be a tedious exercise. The 'depth' of the sight is subjective as it is quite frankly a blank page but as a result those using it are encouraged to involve themselves and exert additional effort. Therefore I wouldn't fault the website for this as some self-appliance is necessary in all subjects. Padlet does also offer lots of support and examples of best use and there isn't much more it can do in aid.

One fault I might point out though is that however organised the website is, it can become a little chaotic with people posting content to the wall concurrently and updating the page to find multiple other posts in the same position. It often seems like a 'time-out' should be arranged just to reorganise the subject matter. This problem also means that it is great for professional learning summaries but if the extent of information is larger or any depth more than 'basic', this site is probably not the best resource.

On the whole, I enjoyed learning to use Padlet and would not be against using it further into my education. 

My Google Docs Tutorial

To make my Google Docs tutorial I wasn't fully sure on which program would best suit the purpose of creating a short video compilation of screenshots. I didn't need a program or app which would be extremely intricate or complex, offering features that I would neither understand nor be capable of using because this would ultimately confuse me and would most likely have been aimed at more advanced users. I had wanted to use Microsoft Windows' Movie Maker as it appeared to be simple in layout and offer the key components necessary for my video tutorial. Unfortunately, it hadn't previously been installed on my PC and I therefore had to start from scratch in this process. My PC has recently undergone an upgrade to Windows 8.1 which I am rather unfamiliar with and I wasn't at all in my element. There were mishaps with Microsoft accounts, alerts and notifications about the instillation being from untrusted sources, multiple suggestions about boosting the computer's protection against viruses and many more worrying  encounters. When this process was complete, I couldn't find Movie Maker anywhere on my PC and was back to stage one. I attempted to repeat this process on my laptop as opposed to the PC but to no avail. At this stage I was beginning to accept that I wouldn't be able to do this without knowing how to install it properly, from a trusted site. I looked up tutorials of how to install this particular program and was rewarded with many search results. The process however revealed itself to be long and elaborate and I decided that I could no longer waste any more time on the program I had set my heart on and choose a less well known video-creator. 

Unfortunately, my laptop - a HP Pavilion g6-1232ea - doesn't hold any apps which would be useful for this task and a relatively resigned version of myself decided to use a website. I found a website fit for the purpose named 'WeVideo' and signed up using my personal Facebook details (though in hindsight, it would have made much more sense to have signed up with my Google Plus account as later on I would be handing in my assignment on Google Classrooms via Google Drive). 

Now that I had found a website, I gathered screenshots of different aspects of Google Docs that I wanted to use; At this point I experienced a power-cut and lost all of my work. This could have been easily solved had I only been using a cloud-based website in gathering them, especially when I was aware that Nepal is prone to power shortages. Prior to this experience however, this hadn't occurred to me, ironically considering that I had only just published a blog entry all about the benefits of Cloud Computing. Disgruntled, the next day, I repeated this process until I had reached the point I had previously arrived at and saved them.  I then uploaded them one by one to this website for usage in my video. The website proved perfect for my purpose - being free too - and I chose a basic blue template for the format and found a generic background music which seemed upbeat but wouldn't distract viewers. I cropped or lengthened the time each individual screenshot played for, placed them in the correct order, and added subtitled explanations of how each feature worked and edited until I was pleased and considered the tutorial ready for the finishing slide. I had considered recording over the slides so that it could cater sufficiently for both auditory and visual learners but I believe this would have made it too busy with both music, text, pictures, and effects, caused it to seem less professional altogether, and not worth the hassle when it might prove the polar opposite and be received as inconvenient or even disruptive.     

I submitted my finished copy of the tutorial but to the wrong place. When made aware of my mistake I corrected it and resubmitted it, a day late, to Google Classrooms, fairly pleased with the end product. 

Using Google Docs

Google docs is an online word processor which allows you to create, edit, format etc., documents with other users collaboratively and concurrently. It does this by the use of Cloud Computing - see previous blog entry for more on Cloud Computing- and it allows you to collaborate with other users in something known as 'real time'. 

This is a term used to refer to a computer's level of responsiveness which a user perceives as adequately instantaneous or which makes it possible for the computer to keep up with some sort of external process. In looking up an example of this other than Google Docs, I found the most perfect and accurate depiction of this concept on a site known as Worldometers whereby one can research World Population, Government and Economics, Society and Media, Environmental, Food, Water, Energy and Health statistics of which the data is to the millisecond and available virtually immediately! A few benefits of real-time processing is the efficiency and accuracy of it, one can get the exact, to-the-millisecond facts and figures about the data that they're researching, its benefits are beyond abundant and its potential uses in both businesses and organisations extremely profitable but a crucially important point is where the input data being process is coming from and the reliability of this source. 

Some of the features of Google Docs include (as stated in an overview of Google Docs by Google Support): 

• Uploading Word documents and converting them to Google documents 

• Adding flair and formatting to your documents by adjusting margins, spacing, fonts, and colors 

• Inviting other people to collaborate on a document with you, giving them edit, comment or view access 

• Collaborating online in real time and chatting with other collaborators — right from inside the document 

• Viewing your document's revision history and roll back to any previous version 

• Downloading a Google document to your desktop as a Word, OpenOffice, RTF, PDF, HTML or zip file 

• Translating a document to a different language Emailing your documents to other people as attachments 

Our assignment is to create a user guide/video/website for Google Docs and a few of our predominant objectives are to achieve a mature and professionally presented formatting to our user guide, to present a minimum of four features Google Docs has to offer, preferably unique and varied features, whilst using specialised vocabulary relevant to our topics, correct grammar and spelling usage, and finally, clear and precise information and/or instructions. 

I used this week's lesson to research ways in which I could film the screen of a computer in order to create a Google Docs tutorial-styled user video but each method I found to achieve this required software to be installed or program updates and on the whole, they were impractical and required time which could have been better spent on more reasonable and time-efficient presentation methods. Halfway through the lesson therefore, I made the alteration of creating a video not by recording the screen, but by taking screenshots of different features of Google Docs, compiling a video out of them and later adding a voice over walk-through. This is a simple method of carrying out this assignment yet effective and it will provide time to put greater consideration into the chosen features and how to best explain them and their functional uses, along with the configuration of the video itself. 

If I were to repeat this week's lesson, my main improvement to my learning would have to be to have made this transition quicker than I did because I wasted a half hour's worth of research on something that wasn't necessary to learn about in the end. I did however, in the process of this mistake, gain a great deal of knowledge about Google Docs as a program that I had not previously known so despite the negatives, a few positive points ensued. 

My main sources should you wish to find more information on these topics: 

Overview of Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides.

What is Real Time?

The Cloud

"The cloud" is a frequently used term and one which many use but it's rarely fully understood. Though we all know that it is related to the internet and can act as some sort of storage, the full extent of its use is somewhat of a mystery to most of us. Today, we looked into the cloud in greater depth and learnt a lot more than we had previously known. 

What is cloud computing?

Cloud computing is storing and accessing data/programs over the internet  rather than on a computer's hard drive. It can also be servers which provide an online service such as Adobe Creative Cloud. The cloud is not a physical thing which often causes confusion for people, but really the term is simply a metaphor for the internet, which is simple and widely understood. It is a network of servers. And it can be accessed anywhere at anytime of your choice.

When is something considered 'cloud computing'?

For something to be considered cloud computing, the data/programs in question need to be accessed over the internet, or need to be synced with other data on the internet as opposed to using your computer's hard-drive. If you store data or run programs on your hard-drive, this becomes 'local storage and computing' and has no correlation to the cloud. 

What are the pros of cloud computing? Is it really that beneficial?

- Cloud computing is cost efficient. It is arguably the most cost efficient method of accessing and storing data to use, maintain and upgrade. When not using the cloud, companies spend a lot in terms of multiple users' licensing fees. In comparison, the cloud is available at much cheaper rates and save companies a lot of financial expense in IT related areas.  

- Cloud computing practically has unlimited storage. Storing and accessing data in the cloud provides almost unlimited storage capacity and so running out of storage space and increasing storage capacity - which takes time and money - becomes an unnecessary worry. 

- Backup and recovery is much easier and effective when dealing with the cloud than traditional data storage methods. 

- Accessibility to information. Once registered in the cloud, you can access your data from anywhere with an internet connection. The problems of time  zones and geographic location no longer exists.

- The advantage of quick deployment. Once you have opted for cloud computing, your entire system can be up and running in a time-span of a couple of minutes. 

And the cons? 

- All technology is vulnerable to technical issues and the cloud is not an exception to this fact. The cloud is prone to outages and many other technical malfunctions even with the best servers with high maintenance. 

- Complete reliance on the internet. In order to access the data on the cloud, you must have access to the internet which can of course be inaccessible depending on a number of variants. 

- Security risks. All data is adopted by a third-party cloud service provider which could of course potentially put the cloud user at a great risk. The only way around this is to choose a service provider with the utmost security but even then, you can never be fully sure that your data is safe. Similarly, you must accept the threat of external hack attacks so one must always keep J. Law's experience close at mind when using cloud computing. 

So overall, should I consider cloud computing?

In my personal opinion, cloud computing is the future, it's being used more and more and evolving at incredible rates. Innumerable industry experts have stated their belief as to the trend continuing to develop and thrive. Some of the biggest companies have already adopted it and rely fully on its advantages to bring in more money and attract potential customers.

My sources and more information:

The Beginner's Guide to the Cloud

What Is Cloud Computing?

The pros and cons of cloud computing

Thoughts on today's lesson:

If I were to repeat today's lesson, one thing I would change is that I didn't research the individual uses and benefits of the clouds to individuals rather than large corporations and businesses. I would also have looked more into the alternatives to cloud computing more such as local storage so that I could gain a wider perspective on how cloud computing will be the next big leap in IT.