Friday, 16 November 2012

To consider before buying a new Laptop/PC


Report

As a student, I think it is definitely more practical to have a laptop because you can work anytime, anywhere from it. Personally, I have always had a Dell laptop and it has everything I need: it’s easy to use, it wasn’t too expensive and it’s very efficient. As a student you are always working on assignments and stopping half way through, that’s why it’s much more practical to have a laptop that you can take everywhere.

The first thing to do before buying a new laptop or PC would be to go online or to a shop and compare prices to make sure you’re getting your money’s worth (
www.dell.com and www.cnet.com are good ones to take a look at). Cnet gives you product reviews and comparisons to other hardware/software. As a student, cost is always an issue! So you want high quality for low prices as a bad quality computer can really slow you down in your work. You would also want to consider any extra things you might need for example what kind of a printer is compatible with the computer you’re buying and how much the ink to that printer cost.

Because we are students in Applied Psychology, it would be important that we have a lot of memory space in the computer to save projects, lecture notes and assignments and it would be good to have a computer that can run Photoshop (for our multimedia class). This would require a good CPU processor, the “brains” of the computer and also plenty of RAM (random access memory). Also, you would need a laptop with a long battery capacity as you don’t always have access to a plug.

One of the most important things to do is make sure that the laptop you’re buying has easy access to the internet and consider if you are going to have access to Wi-Fi, if you’re going to buy an internet stick etc… because being connected to the world and having easy access to information are two of the most essential things for any student especially considering that all of our lecture notes go up on an e-learning system.

Once you have decided which laptop you are buying, it is a good idea to look at computer accessories such as memory sticks or perhaps a plug in mouse or even speakers (www.misco.ie is a good website for this).

Thursday, 15 November 2012

http://allrecipes.com/

I love to cook in my spare time, this website has a lot of amazingly good recipes! One of my favourite ones to do is the honey roasted duck YUM!
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/one-born-every-minute/4od

This is one of my favourite things to watch...my dream is to one day become a midwife, unfortunately I didn't get accepted but I may re-apply as a mature student a couple years from now...I find the women in this show really inspirational =)

Wednesday, 14 November 2012

Worth watching!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMbS-qgqZnQ&feature=related

Hahahahaha very amusing indeed!

Interesting Psychology Facts!

http://www.businessinsider.com/100-things-you-should-know-about-people-2010-11?op=1

47 extremely interesting facts you should know about yourself! This site kept me busy for a while! =)

Visual Illusions!

I found this website very interesting, we had a look at in in Percetion and Ergonomics, it's lots of different visual illusions:

http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/

Summary - Is the internet changing the way our brains function and the way we think?


Summary


http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/aug/15/internet-brain-neuroscience-debate  


This article from the Guardian poses the inevitable question: is the internet changing the way we think? Some experts give their opinion on the matter. The writer Nicolas Carr claims that the internet is altering our brains. Sarah Churchwell, an academic and critic, believes that it is changing our habits of thinking, as soon as we need information, we will instantly google it. We have become entirely dependent on these types of search engines and it would rarely occur to us to go looking for answers in an encyclopaedia or a dictionary anymore. The novelist, Naomi Alderman, argues that anything humans come in contact with will change our brains to a certain extent as we are constantly learning and taking in new information. She says it’s normal that we have become used to reading short summaries on Wikipedia instead of reading a whole book. Geoff Dyer explains how using the internet has reduced our ability to concentrate on one thing at a time.

The second article I have chosen from www.onlinecollege.org gives us 15 ways in which the internet is changing out brain. The first one being “the internet is our external hard drive”. I find this statement accurate. It goes onto explain how because of the internet, the way we learn and find information is rapidly changing. We have access to so much information but how much do we actually retain? However, the article poses the question, is the internet increasing our IQ over time?

I believe the internet is a positive change in our lives. It has brought the world closer together and made information more accessible to everyone. Yes, it had reduced our ability to concentrate for a long period of time, but modern life style is fast moving, we don’t have time anymore to sit down and read a book, we need to be able to read a summary and be provided with the information we need as quickly as possible, the internet is a necessity to keep up with the lifestyles we are required to be leading.

Monday, 5 November 2012

Tillie :)

 
A recent trick I thought my dog, she's very clever and learnt this one very fast!

Thursday, 1 November 2012

The history of Psychology in 3 minutes



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzAXM5jR8oA

Useful Links for Applied Psychology

I found that these links may be useful for us psychology students:

- http://psychcentral.com/ (this site has a lot of information about different areas of psychology and different mental disorders, also has a question and answer page which could be useful)
- www.psychologicalsociety.ie ( the offical PSI website, to stay updated about upcoming events/conferences etc...)
- http://www.simplypsychology.org/ (I found this one particularly interesting, it was specially designed to help psychology students in their revisions)

Introduction

Hi everyone, my name is Heather and I've just started Applied Psychology in IADT :)
Last year I did a course in Pre-Nursing and am now working part-time as a  qualified care assistant...
I grew up in the suburbs of Paris and am still adapting to life in Ireland, but I'm finding the Irish very friendly (which is quite a change from the parisiens =p ).
I enjoy cooking, tv shows (grey's anatomy, desperate housewives, revenge etc...) and also taking my newly adopted dog for big walks down the pier. This is her (isnt she so cute?!):