Resources
Here’s where you’ll find a range of resources that will help you when you are studying on-line. We are constantly adding to it so check by regularly. You never know what you might find!
Really Useful Websites
Wikipedia - If the Internet didn’t exist we’d need to invent it because of resources like Wikipedia. It is perhaps the greatest encyclopaedia of knowledge ever created. No matter what information you are looking for, you’ll find it here. That doesn’t mean you’ll find absolutely everything you need but there is no better place to start learning about a particular topic.
Google - Is simply the best way of searching the Internet. Whenever you are doing online research for your assignments you should use Google Scholar
, a part of specifically aimed at students. It allows you search literally millions of academic articles, many of which you can read for free online. It also allows you view related articles to the one you are reading. This will obviously reduce the amount of time you spend looking for materials before you actually begin
researching. If you’ve never used Google before, you might want to read this guide to using it as a research tool.
Turn It In - is the site through which you submit assignments. You will need to create an account before you submit aterials. Click here to start the process of creating an account.
Software
Virus Protection Software - If you use a computer, you’ll need virus software. This will protect you against people infecting your computer with software than can literally delete everything on your computer, make it unusable or destroy all your work. We cannot over-stress how important this is. You can download possibly the best virus protection software here. Best of all its free!!!
Searching for stuff on your computer - Everyone forgets where they put files on their computer. Google desktop is a simple application that will help you find them. You can download it here.
Playing with images - is a great tool for finding, editing and sharing photographs. Even if you know next to nothing about computers you’ll be able to use this in minutes to make your photos look even better. You can download it here.
Reading documents - Lots of documents - such as course materials for example - are published as files called PDFs. You can read and print these but you cannot edit or change the content of this type of document. To read them you will need a piece of software called Adobe Reader. You can download it here.
Talking to people - If you have a microphone and a set of headphones you can talk to colleagues and friends through our Chat application. But a lot of people (more than 20 million throughout the world use an application called Skype to talk to other people. You can even make calls to phones from it!!! Download Skype here.
Browsing the web - If you’re reading this page then you’ve already got a browser! However, they are getting more and more advanced everyday so you should try and have the most up to date one. Most people choose either Firefox or Internet Explorer. Both are excellent and it as much about personal preference as anything else. You can download Firefox here and Internet Explorer here.
You can download all of these and a range of other applications here.