RJA #9: Evaluation of Sources

Periodicals:

"The Importance of Quality Ealry Childhood Education"

I looked mostly at the author of this article. I wanted to look at the credibility of the actual person writing the piece. I found that the author is quite credible and seems to know a lot. She has a Ph.D in clinical psychology and has done some extraordinary things for the ECE world in New Mexico. One important thing that shows me she is credible is that she provides training and technical assistance to Head Start early child development programs in New Mexico and the Texas Panhandle. Head Start is the "head honcho" of the ECE world and it takes a credible and know what you are talking about person to do training for them.
Rivera, Miquela "Importance of Quality Early Childhood Education". Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education, The. FindArticles.com. 29 Oct, 2009. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb3184/is_200803/ai_n32195045/

"The Economics of Early Childhood Education"

After looking at the article again I came to the conclusion that this was not a very good resource. The whole article is a paragraph long with information that I can find inside the body of another source. I was also looking for an author of the paragraph, there was not one. The only thing that I could find was the periodical itself which was market wire. I did not go into research detail about this periodical because I will probably not end up using it. If I do decide to use it then I will research market wire to find out how credible it is.
"The Economics of Early Childhood Education". Market Wire. FindArticles.com. 29 Oct, 2009. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_pwwi/is_200510/ai_n15748846/

Books:

"Theories of Childhood"

Well I pretty much asummed this was a great source because it was a "textbook" that I needed for one of my classes. I also looked at the same old publisher (Pearson Education Inc.), written 2000 and published 2006. The index is fairly long and it seems that there are some topics in there that can be useful in my research. After each chapter there are suggestions for further reading, some of these can be good sources to look into. I also read about the author. She has a masters in early childhood, cild care services manager for head start (mecca for ECE), and faculty member at the college of Lifelong Learning.
Mooney, Carol Garhart. Theories of Childhood: An Introduction to Dewey, Montessori, Erikson, Piaget and Vygotsky. Pearson Education Inc., 2006.

"Exploring Your Role"

Again, a textbook needed for a class and a very good one I might add. The authors both have a lot of experience writing in the field and both work in Universities in the Education department. This particular book provides resources for teachers to look online about different "things" about children and their learning, these can become very helpful. It has tons of pages of resources that too can be helpful if and when I find the correct one. There are two different indexes one is a name index and the other is a subject index. These seem to be very helpful when looking for a specific "thing." This was also published by Pearson Education Inc. and this is the third edition.
Jalongo, Mary Renck, and Joan Packer Isenberg. Exploring Your Role: An Introduction to Early Childhood Education. 3rd ed. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, 2008.

Websites:

"The Importance of Early Childhood Education" edubook.com

This website makes me a little nervous, I am not sure how credible it really is, kind of seem likes a blog site for educational topics. It is copyrighted 2008 so it is fairly new. The author of the article seems to be some what credible but the about the author page that she wrote does not sound very professional to me. She is the director of a non-profit organization Project Eureka. I am not too sure about this so I will probably use something else before I use this and before I use this I will research the non-profit organization to see if it involves early childhood education.
http://www.edubook.com/the-importance-of-early-childhood-education/6837/

National Association for the Education of Young Children

This is a professional site, many early childhood schools follow the guildlines of NAEYC and recieve accrediation from them as well. There are different ways to contact NAEYC, through the website, phone and address. There are two diffrent toolbars at the top of the page that are very clear in what will be provided there. There is also a search bar so you can type exactly what you want to know and they will find it for you.
http://www.naeyc.org/

Website Review

Blinkxhttp://www.blinkx.com/


Blinkx is the world's largest video search engine. They claim to have over 35 million hours of video. The have more than 530 media partnerships that include, national broadcasters, commercial media giants and private video libraries. Blinkx allows users to search for videos, create playlists and build a video wall for myspcae or facebook.

Positives:
20 or more Video Categories to choose from
Link buttons to informational and entertaining videos-"inform me" and "entertain me"
Search is not case sensitive
Searches contextually as well with standard keyword search
Advance search includes adding words like AND ,OR, NOT
Safe Search is an adult content filter- if cookies are disabled the filter will not work.
Pico- world's smallest search engine-as you work it pulls relevant info. for you from the web, TV, news and your desktop
Personal Playlists-add videos and will keep until you delete it
Bookmark using delicious, digg, reddit, facebook and stumble upon
E-mail videos
Toolbar at the bottom of hte page that leads to more information-user questions/answers by clicking "about"
Sorts search outcomes by relevance or date

Negatives:
Advanced search option-says there is one but cannot seem to find how to use it besides adding AND, OR & NOT
You have to play around with the site for a while to be able to figure out how to create a playlist-there does not seem to be a link on the homepage which could be helpful to the user

For a video only search engine this is the best. Using over 530 partners there is a lot of video on here, including videos from the popular youtube. I would give this site an "A" becuase a lack of user knowledge is what will hurt you on this site, once you gain that knowledge it is very helpful.

RJA #8c: Multimedia

1.) blinkx.com
importance of early childhood education
keyword search
10/19/09
25,000 hits
relevance: 3.5

2.) blinkx.com
importance of early childhood education, students, teachers
10/19/09
6 hits
relevance: 1 maybe 2

RJA #8b: Social Media

1.) oneriot.com

importance of early childhood education

keyword search

10/19/09

3 hits

relevance: 0



2.) oneriot.com

importance of early childhood education, students, teacher

search engine math

10/19/09

10 hits

relevance: 1.5 or 2



3.) icerocket.com

importance of early childhood education

keyword search

10/19/09

1,375 hits

relevance: 2 or 2.5



4.) icerocket.com

importance of early childhood education, student, teacher

search engine math

10/19/09

201 hits

relevance: 2.5



Social media is more abpout the opinions of people who blog or what not and I think I want to go with more factual information, although it is good to hear what the mommies have to say!

RJA #8a: Websites

1.) bing.com
Importance of Early Childhood Education
Keyword search
10/19/09
5,110,000 Hits
Relevance: 5

2.) carrot2.org
Importance of Early Childhood Education
Keyword search
10/19/09
8,120,000
Relevance: 4

3.) academicinfo.net
Importance of Early Childhood Education
Keyword Search
10/19/09
8 hits
Relevance: 0

4.) incywincy.com
Importance of Early Childhood Education
Keyword Search
10/19/09
47,200 hits
Relevance: 2.5

RJA #7c: Field Research Plan

I am not yet set on a specific field research idea. I am in between observations and interviews. I see cons with both. With observations they are what I observe directly accompanied by my analysis of what is going on. This can and is very bias, not sure if that is something that I would want to include in the paper. Also with observations the children will sometimes act up and then my observation will be altered to what happened on that day and what the children's reactions were with having a stranger in the classroom. Observations though are extremely important when talking about early childhood education and sometimes not understood without the observation. With interviews I will be interviewing someone who is in the profession of early childhood education. With that I cannot decide if I will choose an ECE teacher in a day care or if I will choose my professor whom is very knowledgable about ECE. I think whatever answers I get form either will be extremely bias because that is the field in which their passion lays. I also cannot think of good questions to ask that will give me the information that I want. Part of this too can be that I am not sure what information I want. Can't decide, maybe I will do both...help!

RJA #7b: Internet Research Tool Test

1.) blinkx.com
importance of early childhood education
no search strategy
Oct. 12, 2009
25,000 hits
Relevance 3 or 4

2.) blinkx.com
benefits, early, childhood, education, teacher
search engine math
+benefits +early +childhood +education -teacher
Oct. 12, 2009
22 hits
Relevance 3 or 4

3.) blinkx.com
importance of early childhood education, teacher education
"importance of early childhood education" NOT teacher education
Boolean
Oct. 12, 2009
3,540,000
Relevance 3-too many

4.) blinkx.com
importance, benefits, early, childhood, education, teacher, student
+importance +benefits +early +childhood +education -teacher +student
Oct. 12, 2009
0 hits
No relevance

RJA #7a: Internet Research Tools

I fall into the category of the dreaded "google" researcher. I find a lot of useful information for what I want to know right then and there. Honestly, whenever I have a disagreement with for example, my father I google the subject so that I can prove him wrong. I do not even care if the information is accurate; I just want to prove him wrong at that point. What I like the most about google is that it gives you answers quick and sometimes you do not have to click on any hit. I do feel that sometimes the hits that I recieve on google are not accurate though. Sometimes during my mindless research I find a lot of contradicting hits. This gives me the impression that google may not be the most accurate place to recieve information. I also like and dislike that it is well known. I like that it is well known because many different people have recieved valuable and helpful information. I dislike it because so many people use that it seems to take the credibility out of it. http://www.google.com/

I also fall into the category of the "ask" researcher. I feel that ask is a lot like google, which makes me a comfortable user. I use ask whenever I do not like what I get from google. I mostly use ask when I am researching something for school, less often when I am doing personal research. I started using this when it was introduced to me at school, back then it was askjeeves.com. I think when I first started using it I liked it better and felt that it may have been more credible. It makes me feel better when I get some of the same hits on ask that I did on google because it makes the hits more credible to me for some reason. As with google I like that you can research things like "news," "images," etc. There really isn't anything that I do not like about ask. http://www.ask.com/?o=0&l=dir

RJA #6c: Protopage

http://protopage.com/michelle21

RJA #6b: Search Strings

I did not recieve any comments on my search strings so I checked them using the reminder link. As far as I could tell they are fine....here they are again.

Search Engine Math
+importance +early +childhood +education
+benefits +early +childhood +education -teacher
+importance +benefits +early +childhood +education -teacher
+importance +benefits +early +childhood +education -teacher +student
Boolean
(child* AND early education) AND (important* AND Benefits) OR "Importance of Early Childhood Education"
+early +childhood +education AND importance OR benefits
"Importance of Early Childhood Education" NOT Teacher Education
"Importance of Early Childhood Education" AND Students NOT teacher education

RJA #6a: Periodical Articles

Better Luck with the Periodicals!! Researched Oct. 5 2009-Searched: Early Childhood Education
1.) freelibrary.com
"A Qualitative Study of Early Childhood Educators' Beliefs about Key Preschool Classroom Experiences."
Written March 22, 2009
Copyrighted by Clearing House on Early Education and Parenting

2.)findarticles.com
"Importance of Quality of Early Childhood Education"
Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education
March 10, 2005

"The Economics of Early Childhood Education"
Market Wire
October 2005

RJA #5c: Search String Check

This first guy has got the search string down....he must have done this before!
http://boa76.blogspot.com/2009/09/ethics-and-engineering-ethics-and.html#comment-form

This lady knows what she is doing when it comes to search strings, plus she has a great topic!
http://drtyffknee.blogspot.com/2009/09/rja-4b-search-strings.html#comment-form

RJA #5b: Books

I have some books already that can be helpful in my research and they are (1&2):
1.) Theories of Childhood: An Introduction to Dewey, Montessori, Erikson, Piaget and Vygotsky
By Carol Garhart Mooney
Merrill Education/Redleaf Press College Textbook Series
Published by Merrill/Prentice Hall
Copyright 2000
2.) Exploring Your Role: An Introduction to Early Childhood Education
By Mary Renck Jalongo nad Joan Packer Isenberg
3rd Edtion
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publicaton Data
Publisher Kevin M. Davis
Copyright 2008, 2004, 2000 by Pearson Education, Inc.
3.) Beyond Quality in Early Childhood Education and Care: Postmodern Perspectives
By Gunilla Dahlberg, Peter Press and Alan Pence
First Published 1999 by Falmer Press Reprinted 2000,2001,2002(3 times) by RoutledgeFalmer
Copyright 1999
online book through books.google.com then search importance of early childhood education
*There are other books that I have that can become useful but I have not chosen to use them as of now.

RJA #5a: Reference Articles

I am having the worst luck with the resource article stuff. I cannot find anything that is relevant to my research. I have tried so many of the reference works listed on the assignment (I went down the list for days) and nothing will come up. I tried different search strings on each site and either it says no results or it will give me things for my education, like associate/bachelor degree programs. I even tried to access some things off the library website and I am not having any luck. I used the search strings of RJ 4 listed: +importance +early +childhood +education+benefits +early +childhood +education -teacher+importance +benefits +early +childhood +education -teacher+importance +benefits +early +childhood +education -teacher +student. If anyone has any good ideas please share them!!