Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Librarian gets a (second) life

A wet bank holiday weekend seemed to be the perfect opportunity to get a Second Life.

Although I'm looking at the potential of Second Life as part of a work project I suspected (rightly) that there would be a lot to learn in a new world, so I thought I would devote some of my own time to it initially. If I'm going to walk into walls, fly into windows, sit on inappropriate things, or lose items of clothing I'd rather not do it at my first serious professional conference or meeting!

So that's how I came to spend the weekend meeting and chatting with a fox, a zebra with attitude, an eco-geek and several librarians.

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Essay mills join Google blacklist

I've just been alerted to a very interesting article on the BBC news about Google banning ads that offer essays for sale. Excellent news.

Having looked at some of the essays for sale on this type of site it's clear that the quality of many of them is lower than most students could produce for themselves, given a very little effort. Add to that the fact that plagiarism is getting very much easier to detect and it really makes more sense to just do the work yourself and save your money!

Monday, May 14, 2007

Smarter student

If there's one book I'd say was well worth students buying it's a book on study skills. It's excellent value as it will apply to every course, not just one. I don't know that I'd recommend any particular book as what works for one person doesn't always work so well for another, but this one is new in and gets lots of stars on Amazon, so it might be worth a look.

McMillan, Kathleen. The smarter student: skills and strategies for success at university. (Floor 1 - Study skills section - 029.6)