Week 5: Information Literate

Week 5

Information Literate in a Global Society

            I started this week by taking an information literacy quiz.  Well, it’s confirmed, I’m an internet amateur.  I know nothing!!  I had no idea what URL stood for, or that “quotation marks” were used to highlight key words.  The biggest eye opener was that Google ranks it’s websites by popularity. 

            I decided to pick a site that was completely out of the norm for me, and see if I could make sense of it.  I chose Victorian Robots.  The website seemed to contain authentic information, and a detailed history of a specific robot.  I even noticed that the website quoted a few news corporations such a World Report and The New York Times.  The domain name contained wording that didn’t seem to be relevant to the site, and I noticed it was a .com site, which tells me that it is not an academic site.  When I searched for the links, I only noticed four, however some of them seem to have moved to new sites, and one was even a blog site.  This is where I began to feel skeptical of the information in the original site. 

            When I search ‘Victorian robots’ I chose to use Google, Hotbot and Excite.  The first website that showed up on these sites was the original Victorian Robot site.  However, when I checked out some of the other top links, I noticed that the robots site contained hoaxed information.  I can see how this website could prove to be confusing by students searching the web.  Without knowing the background information on the creator, it’s hard to determine whether the information contained is true.  When I checked out easywhois.com, I wasn’t able to get any information on the author. 

            When I took a look at the ads on the websites, I realized that they were on everyone.  These engines rely on paid ads to stay in business.  I think it’s important that we teach our students about these results.  All three websites turned up similar results. 

             After using the resources provided this week, I feel that I will be a lot more cautious in the future.  I will make it a point to teach my children the basics of using the World Wide Web for research and the relevance of the loads of information out there!