Important - Academic resources such as journals, conference papers or books willgenerally be unsuitable for this assignment as they are generally not publicly available, are not concise, are not necessarily easy to read and often don’t focus specifically on the assignment topic(s). The resources should be substantial (producing a 300 word summary from a 400 - 500 word resource is inappropriate) and only contain information directly pertinent to the task. You cannot use the resource more than once in the assignment.

What do I need to do? Download the template. There are ten (10) tasks, one for each week: the tasks are detailed below (and in the template file). Each task requires you to collect and summarise one (1) publicly available online resource. The resource summaryshould be around 200-300 words. You should collect interesting and relevant resources that address the task. The resources should be easy to read and describe the topic/technology concisely and simply. The resources must be specific to the topic (i.e. just focus on a single technology or topic and not be about multiple topics). These can include (but are not limited to) online magazine/news articles, technical reports or documentation.

It will be necessary for students to use online resources to complete this assignment, so please ensure you cite and reference any such materials using the Harvard format. Plagiarism detection will be used in this assessment. It is VERY important that you do not copy content directly from either the text or Internet resources: this assignment is to be in your own words. You will lose marks if you do not use your own words! Suspected plagiarism will result in the instigation of the student misconduct process.

Note that late penalties apply (5% of the total available marks per calendar day late or part thereof). Assignments received 14 days or more after the due date will not be marked and will receive zero. Students may apply for extensions but must provide documentary evidence to support their request (for example, a medical certificate). Short extensions of one to two days may be considered if students include their nearly completed assignment (i.e. one or two tasks to yet be completed) in their extension request.

The purpose of this assignment is to select and discuss relevant online resources that exemplify the application of the topic(s) nominated each week (1 - 10). There are ten (10) tasks, one for each week: these are detailed below and in the template. This assignment can (and should!) be completed progressively (i.e. one task each week). The assignment is marked out of 30 and forms 30% of your total unit marks.

One last thing - remember, the resources you choose must be public, freely available resources. The link you provide to them must not rely on being authenticated by a username and password or require you to buy the resource. Markers will be checking each resource and if they cannot get to them from the URL you provide, you will receive zero for the task. If you have doubts about a resource, please discuss it with your tutor, post to the Q&A forum or email the unit coordinator.

3) When you’ve finished reading the resource, do you feel you have gained a good understanding of the topic? If you don’t understand the resource or you are confused, the resource isn’t a good one. 4) Would you give the resource to a family member? Pick the member of your family who has the least knowledge of technology. Would you be able to give them your summary of the resource, and the link to the resource, and would they gain some understanding from it?

This is why you need to avoid the academic literature and find accessible, interesting resources. You should be able to find these using a few Google searches. When you are choosing resources, ask yourself the following questions: 1) Is the resource simple to read? If the resource uses highly technical language that you keep having to do other Google searches on, then it probably isn’t ideal. 2) Is the resource very short or very long? If the resource is barely 500 or 600 words, it is nearly certain that it hasn’t gone into a topic in enough depth. However, if the resource is several thousand words (like a book chapter or academic article), then it is likely that it isn’t a concise explanation, moreover, it is impossible to summarise something so long into 300 words.