Becoming Information Literate in a Global Society
The site that I explored was All About Explorers at www.allaboutexplorers.com . The first thing I noticed from this site was that it was a company due to the address containing the (.com). The embedded links after going to www.altavista.com still gave the site the appearance that this was a legitimate and credible site. The links all appear to be informational and include activities for students to participate and explore. The site has a disclaimer that states that it was developed by teachers to teach students about the internet. The AltaVista site has very little advertisement and is a very clean site with almost no clutter or busy appearance. I entered explorers in the search and a few but very little sponsored results appeared, mostly educational sites appeared. The second search I tried was www.excite.com and it was completely the opposite from altavista. Excite.com was very busy with lots of advertisement, articles, and videos. After entering explorers as a search almost all results were (.com) sites. To find the author of allaboutexplorers.com I went to www.easywhois.com and learned that this site was created in 2003 by Gerald Aungst and address, phone number, and email were provided. The history was searched on www.archive.ort showing some activity in 2004, very little activity in 2005, lots of activity in 2006, some activity in 2007-2008, but no activity after 2008. This site was designed to present objective information.
The site that I frequently visit is National Geographic at www.nationalgeographic.com . From easywhois I learned that the Registrant is National Geographic Society, it was created in 1995, and it is a company due to the .com in the URL. I went to altavista and entered link:nationalgeographic.com and so many links appeared and appear to be credible. The history at archive.org shows a lot of nonstop activity since the site was created.
I must say after this assignment that google is no longer my one stop shop tool any longer. I help students in the Gee Library everyday and I have students that I tutor and I use google for everything. Unless I was writing a paper or working with students on papers I almost never researched the sites. In college and as a teacher I utilized many websites that were recommended but did not research them further. These are great and simple tools that students should be using everyday and should be learning not to take the internet at face value. I plan to show the students that I tutor the benefits of knowing who is posting information and are they posting credible information. Just to be safe I always directed my students to gov. sites or ed. sites only because I thought researching sites was time consuming but this weeks activites has shown me that it is not and that it is very easy.
My favorites is so full that I have almost stopped using it. Because I use so many teaching tool websites with my tutor students I think Delicious will be my new favorite bit of information learned. Having the capabilities of sharing my favorite sites with my students and fellow educators is priceless. My students will be able to see what I am bookmarking and I hope they will be inspired to bookmark some of their favorites as well especially after they learn how to research the authors, links, and history of the sites.
I must say after this assignment that google is no longer my one stop shop tool any longer. I help students in the Gee Library everyday and I have students that I tutor and I use google for everything. Unless I was writing a paper or working with students on papers I almost never researched the sites. In college and as a teacher I utilized many websites that were recommended but did not research them further. These are great and simple tools that students should be using everyday and should be learning not to take the internet at face value. I plan to show the students that I tutor the benefits of knowing who is posting information and are they posting credible information. Just to be safe I always directed my students to gov. sites or ed. sites only because I thought researching sites was time consuming but this weeks activites has shown me that it is not and that it is very easy.
My favorites is so full that I have almost stopped using it. Because I use so many teaching tool websites with my tutor students I think Delicious will be my new favorite bit of information learned. Having the capabilities of sharing my favorite sites with my students and fellow educators is priceless. My students will be able to see what I am bookmarking and I hope they will be inspired to bookmark some of their favorites as well especially after they learn how to research the authors, links, and history of the sites.
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