OK, so I did not score too well on the quiz. I was a low scoring "moderately savvy". This IS a huge improvement from where I was before beginning grad school and taking many ETEC courses. Although there were several questions that I did not know (6, 8, 10, 12), I was really close, but maybe not exact, on many of the questions. Numbers 3 and 5 were holdovers from my high school days sitting in a semester long computer class. Number 1, 4, and 9 I learned playing around on the Internet at home. Numbers 2, 7, 11, and 13, I learned something about during my grad studies this last year.
2. Meta-Web Information
I chose to look at All About Explorers.
- I don't recognize the domain name, but it seems at first glance to be reliable.
- This is .com which means it is a company and could have been purchased by anyone so I would be wary to trust this site.
- I do not see any evidence that this website is personal page.
- There are a variety of sites linked in including: 3 .coms, 1 .gov, 1 .org, 1 .edu, 1 .co.uk, what looks like a personal site, and one I didn't figure out.
- There's one linked to an elementary school where I assume they would use it in history class (if I didn't know better) as well as one that looks to be linked to a library. A Library Science program has linked to this site for a resource probably to demonstrate to future librarians how easily it is to fool someone into thinking that this site has quality information.
- One embedded link leads to a "class action suit" where All About Explorers agreed to pay 113 million points to users of this site for school projects that were failed due inaccurate information.
- This site: http://philbradley.typepad.com/phil_bradleys_weblog/2009/03/all-about-explorers-incorrect-data.html made the point that children are susceptible for believing wrong information on the Internet. Bradley noted that teachers should use this site as a lesson with students proving how very accurate-looking information is not always accurate. He also provides a link to a New York Times article stating how a librarian used All About Explorers to teach her students about web reliability.
- Using Google, the inaccurate site All About Explorers was the fourth entry right under Wikipedia. This site is full of links to various things which must have been the reason Google rated it so highly as to put it close to the top of the list. With altavista, All About Explorers was the 4th entry as well. However, other early entries are from more reputable sources like National Geographic. With excite, All About Explorers was farther down in the list only because this site listed information about Ford Explorers first. All three did not lead me to quality information easily. I had to search a page or two into each just to find a good website that contained accurate info.
- Google had the least advertisements, which surprised me. I suppose that it has gotten SO popular, it has enough income so as to not bombard users with ads like the other two search engines do.
The author is a man named Gerald Aungst, but the given email address isn't valid. It was registered with FastDomain, Inc. If the author cannot be traced or contacted, then that would be another red flag warning not to use the information from the site.
4. Purpose
The website itself discloses why it was created. All About Explorers was created by a group of teachers that wanted an example with which to teach their students about the dangers of trusting online information and strategies to discern quality site from those that are not. The website has changed very little since its inception in the spring of 2004. The factual information IS not reliable, but the website is a good resource for teachers because the lessons provided for teachers to use with their students are still relevant and can be used today.
5. Repeat
I used this approach to look at a search engine, yahoo.com.
- Since I use this website all the time, I am fairly familiar with Yahoo. By seeing the .com, I understand that Yahoo is a company and may not ALWAYS have unbiased information. In addition, it has been in use AND in the media for quite some time so I think this site is trustworthy and beneficial enough for me to risk sifting through all of the information presented. It is definitely not a personal page, although you can easily personalize the Yahoo page to fit your style or needs. One negative aspect is that Yahoo has been known to crash before or crash personal computers instead.
- In examining the external link, I found that there are about 7,400 of them with a extremely far ranging sources. This lets me know that yahoo.com is a global site that an extraordinary number of different cultures, groups, and individuals use. There are so many various reasons for the external links to yahoo. From this, I know that I will find information that may be presented in a biased or unfamiliar and I must accept this information with caution. The embedded links can go to any number of sites and they also have a wide range of topics that may or may not always by appropriate for younger viewers. There seem to be an extraordinary number of dating site, health, and higher education links.
- Using Yahoo is much like using Google in that searches and news feeds are based on trending issues rather than on factual and revelancy aspects. Yahoo also has a tremendous amount of advertisements that slow my computer down on a regular basis. There are advertisements on every page, no matter what link you may follow. If it is still a Yahoo page, then there will be advertisements.
- Yahoo is the oldest directory and has human editors that sort information into categories. In 2004, it changed its format to crawler-based listings. Yahoo now uses its own search technology. Sites listed on Yahoo must pay a fee to be listed and must meet editor approval. This weeds out some of the more unsavory sites from finding their way onto the yahoo site.
- Yahoo.com is registered by MarkMonitor, Inc. and run by the Domain Administrator.
- Yahoo.com was first archived on Oct. 17, 1996 and looked extremely basic with a link to 14 categories, such as "computers and the Internet", "social sciences", "reference", and "education". It looked as if it was truly just a directory for linked information instead of the massive, all-inclusive site it has since become. The information within the links was much less 'trendy' and 'popular' in nature than it seems to be on today's site.
While these two sites may look very professional and trustworthy, All About Explorers is not and was designed that way. Student awareness of All About Explorers is minuscule in comparison to their knowledge of Yahoo. Many students use Yahoo on a regular basis for the homepage and personal email. However, if they did happen onto All About Explorers, perhaps through searching on Yahoo, then they may be fooled into accepting the information found there as truth. Although these two sites are very different from one another, they can both be researched in terms of their purpose, history, possibility for bias, and usefulness of content and links.
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