This week Helen talked about how anyone can put any information on the web which can be right or wrong. Most people have their personal and professional reasons for creating their own webpage but not all the information on the World Wide Web validating for instance Wikipedia. One of the first things we looked at was the open protocols context of the world wide web and open protocol is a simple way to exchange information on the web anyone can do it. Therefore it is very important to search for quality information.
During the lecture we also found out how to find and look for quality information and the precise websites. It is essential to know the author or publisher and find out when was the last time it was updated. This way we can tell the reliability of the website and how accurate the information is. There are four important factors which should be considered when researching and there are:
Accuracy
Authority
Currency
Coverage
Tut Summary
During the tutorial we had to do some exercises where we had to visit a few websites and evaluate them based on the following steps Accuracy, Authority, Currency and Coverage.
Workshop tasks
We were required to complete three tasks which helped us with valuating websites to find quality information.
Reviewing the ICUYousee Critical thinking page.
1) Make sure you are in the right place: knowing where to look and having the right information is important.
2) When in doubt, doubt: anyone can publish anything on the web therefore it would be a good idea to compare it to another website for reliability.
3) Consider the Source: Find out who is the publisher and try to see if u can find anything about him.
4) Know what’s happening: look to see if the website trys to persuade, inform, educate or advertise something. A site should have documentation.
5) Look at details: check if the site uses the correct grammar and spelling for accuracy.
6) Distinguish web pages from pages found on the web: distinguish between quality documents published on the web and general WebPages.
After comparing the ICUYousee website to INCO 48 web I realized that the INCO 48 webpage was a lot easier to follow and better structured. It had better explanations of what to look for and it was set out much more clearer and contained more information.
Task 2 was to complete a reliving the sixties: we had to look through the five websites and choose two of the five to evaluate more closely. I chose American Cultural History: 1960-1969 and a trip through the sixties.
1) American Cultural History: 1960-1969
Accuracy : the information appears to be reasonably correct and the key points was referenced.
Authorship: the webpage was created by peggy whitley of the Lonestar college, taxes.
Purpose: The purpose of the website is to help the users gain a wide understanding and appreciate the culture and history of the 1960s.
Detail and design: key points and facts and figures are mentioned so the web page is rather long but it’s contains a broad overview of the culture at that time period.
Overall worth: the overall worth of the website is reasonable based on the biased referenced links and the wide range of information. if a broad overview of the subject is all that is required believe this can be a relatively valuable resource.
2) A Trip Through The Sixties
Accuracy: there was no author to each of the links however there was an email address which couldn’t be accessed.
Purpose: I think the purpose of this was to give the viewer information only to entertain but also had some relevant info about the sixties.
Details and design: The design wasn’t so efficient. The headings was hard to read about the of font. And there was many links on the page.
Overall worth: I think this website isn’t a very good source of information to use about the sixties however it is more of a entertainment website and the information’s on there isn’t all accurate. Therefore I wouldn’t recommend this website as a great source of information.
No comments:
Post a Comment