Internet Detective
Internet Detective is a free online tutorial designed to help students develop their Internet research skills. The tutorial looks at the critical thinking required when using the Internet for research and offers practical advice on evaluating the quality of web sites.
The tutorial is specifically designed to help university and college students to develop skills that will help them use the Internet more effectively to support their research for coursework and assignments.
It takes around an hour to complete the tutorial, though the advantage of an online tutorial is that students can go over the material as often as they wish, practice their skills and test their understanding. It can easily be embedded into taught courses, Web pages and VLEs and is freely available in two formats; a Web version and a downloadable version for use in Virtual learning Environments (VLEs).
Intute
The Resource Discovery Network (RDN) which consisted of a number of JISC-funded subject gateways has become Intute.
Intute is a free online service providing you with access to the very best Web resources for education and research. The service is created by a network of UK universities and partners. Subject specialists select and evaluate the websites in their database and write high quality descriptions of the resources. The database contains 113377 records, covering Science & Technology, Arts & Humanities, Social Sciences and Health & Life Sciences. There’s also a dedicated FE section.
Full documentation of this excellent service is available here.
http://www.intute.ac.uk/
New and noted
Some websites which should be of interest.
- Squashed Philosophers – abridged versions of some classic philosophical texts;
- Sports Management Report - online full-text journal on sports management;
- Moving Image Gateway (MIG) - directory of education sound & video;
- CompWisdom - search engine for computing, programming, Internet resources;
- Artpromote – directory covering visual art, music, and literature;
- Search Medica - directory of health information chosen by GPs;
- Flash Earth - Flash mapping like Google Earth.
New MyAthens service
Over the summer Eduserv launched the new MyAthens service. MyAthens has been redesigned and there are several new and innovative features.
These include:
- a MyAthens homepage with an account summary and list of ‘favourite’ resources;
- an improved Resources list:- allows the selection of ‘favourite’ resources to display on the homepage;
- a keyword search that dynamically displays a subset of your resources (this searches the resource title and URL);
- a ‘Recent’ tab showing the resources used in the previous two weeks;
- the Account Details page now shows the organisational contact details;
- a comments form allowing users to e-mail their Athens administrator if they need support.
Hopefully this service will make all our lives much more simple.
