Reflection on the search process : Non peer reviewed articles

 

 Another type of research was to look for non peer-reviewed articles. These kinds of articles are available in websites (commercial websites : (.com), educational websites :(.edu), and organizational websites (.org)...) . These websites give can give you relevant information, even if these articles are not reviewed by experts, but you need to be careful to the domain of websites while searching because there are a lot of websites that can give you irrelevant information. In my search process, I decided to look for some quotes to use in my body paragraph to support my ideas. It was a hard task because I found a lot of websites that contains irrelevant and unreliable information. It took me a long time to find some websites that contains some articles with relevant information.

The search for non-reviewed articles in websites was a somehow difficult task because you need to check the domain of any website you visited, and to check for the author, the publisher, the date of publication to make sure that these websites contain relevant informations.

Reflection on the search process : Peer reviewed articles

 

Before starting our research on online databases, we attended a workshop that helped know how to use these tools. A library assistant explained to us in details how we use these online databases, such as EBSCO Host and Jstor, and for what purpose. This workshop taught us how to do a simple research and an advanced one. With this database, the research is guided. We can search by keyword or by subject terms for example. We can also limit or extend our research. We may choose some added information like narrowing the date of publication or the language, and we can also impose to the database to search only peer-reviewed journals for example, and many other options are available to facilitate our online search process. When searching for some peer-reviewed articles using online databases, I found some interesting articles that were relevant to my topic. Thanks to the library assistant, I knew exactly how to use these databases efficiently. I personally found that the EBSCO Host database is more efficient than Jstor because it contains a huge amount of data and it gives a variety of options that facilitate your search process.

The online database search for peer reviewed articles was very easy than the book search process because Internet facilitates a lot the search process, and also the EBSCO Host & Jstor databases that contains a huge amount of professional and peer-reviewed articles.

Reflection on the search process : Books

After using Google and Wikipedia as a starting point reference, now I have to find the most accurate book. To start my research, I used the online library catalog (OPAC: Online Public Access Catalog) in order to locate some interesting books. So to find them, I looked first about titles that contain one of the key words or all of them. The results were not very satisfying because I didn't find any book that has one of these words in its title. Then, I searched by using key words which are: Social network, children safety. I found some relevant books that seemed to be interesting. I took their call number, and search for them. The book that I found was very relevant to my topic: “Children and the Internet: great expectations, challenging realities” by Sonia Livingstone. After a little overview on this book and its table of content, I decided to use some statistics and quotes from it to support my arguments.

Looking for the right book was not an easy task as I thought. However, it was a good source that helped me adjust my topic and try to make it more interesting and specific.

Reflection on the search process : Starting point

The first idea that came to my mind to get a general information about my theme "Social network " is to start by using search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and others ... For me, I chose to search in Google since I am used to it. After I typed my theme in Google, I did not find any relevant information, I just found some links to famous social networks such as : Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, and others. So, where should I look for to get some general ideas related to my theme? The solution was to use Wikipedia as a starting point for my research process.

When I typed my theme : "Social network" in Wikipedia, it gave me general information about this theme that was interesting but not related to my topic. But when I typed "Social network service", it gave me relevant information because in the table of contents I found child safety under the social network issues, and that is my topic : "Social network issues : child safety". The information I found was relevant and interesting, and I found some very helpful references that helped me get more knowledge about my specific topic.

Introduction about the topic : Social Network & Child Safety

Throughout the time, the world has known different historical facts that changed the people’s way of life. For instance, World War I & II, The walk on the moon, the French revolution or the Brazilian's longest wave on the Earth . But the world did not know only these natural or historical events, it has also met a more revoulutionnary phenomena:   Internet. All over the years Internet has been developped and made more public. As a result, it creates one of the most dangerours   conception: Social Network. In fact, besides making the world open and connected, Facebook, for instance, has been repeatedly put under fire and landed itself in hot water especially in terms of the  users’ privacy.

It goes without saying that the world's largest social network occurs to users a number of advantages. Users possess a wall where they post, comment statues and express their opinions about other ones by the “Like” option. They can share pictures, links, articles, etc. Facebook can also be a place where to share opinions and points of views about different topics. Indeed, people can join groups and discuss different issues. In addition, it helps to keep contact with friends and family. However, to create an account, users need to give enough information about them (full name, dates, relationships, likes, religion, Political views, etc). This might be a real danger. Indeed , data mining is illustrated as one of the biggest issue concerning social network privacy. Moreover, the privacy issue has different factors starting from cyber-bullying and cyber-stalking passing through the brain changes and that can lead to one of the most critical issue which is child safety. Without any doubt, a children who has access to internet is faced to real dangers such as fake profiles or the information that he/she provides and receives along with pictures.

Introduction about myself

Hi everybody !! My name is Ayoub Fikri. I was born in 22nd August 1993. I am a student at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, my major is Computer Science, and this is my second semester here at this university. As you may have noticed , I am 17 years old : I'm very young :D !! I got my baccalaureat degree while i was just 16, which is something very special for me. I am now registered for Summer session at AUI university with 2 courses : Data Structures CSC 2302 (a nightmare!! :s), and SSK 1212, and fortunately I accomplished successfully my language center courses which is great because now I have the opportunity to opt for a lot of choices without the constraint of pre requisites, I forgot to say that I live currently in Rabat. I enjoy playing bastketball, and what was surprising for me is that I joined the basketball team of AUI from my first semester which is not very common. I can say that I enjoy my life in Ifrane because there are so many activities and clubs that you can join and learn from so that you will never get bored !! ;-)