Week 6 Evaluation & Authentication

Lecture

This week lecture is about evaluation and authentication. The slides just briefly explain how to find quality information on the World Wide Web. The World Wide Web IQ has two context and they are open protocols and open architecture. Open protocols is convenient for exchanging information and anyone with the access to a computer can create a web content. But open architecture has no enforceable quality control and the dynamic/fluid content structure causes error. The IQ has no control of who publishes on the World Wide Web why they publish it and what is published. There are five ways of evaluating the internet these are accuracy, authority, objectivity, currency and coverage.

Tutorial

For this week tutorial we had to view the following two WebPages.
http://www.ithaca.edu/library/training/think.html
http://www.taftcollege.edu/newTC/Academic/INCO48/sec6-4.htm.

We were asked to compare the differences between the two websites and to briefly describe the criteria’s in the website which is accuracy, authority, objectivity, currency and coverage.

When investigating a website you should consider the following six suggestions.
1. Authority - Make sure you are in the right place. You need to know who the author is and check for their educational background if it’s available.

2. Accuracy - Make sure that the website information is reliable and the documents are factual.

3. Objectivity - You need to recognize purpose of the site, what are their intentions? What are they trying to accomplish?

4. Currency - You must make sure if the site is updated daily, monthly and yearly. Not all WebPages are updated regularly, so it’s best to check when it is last updated.

5. Coverage - Check if the site is designed for educational or entertainment purpose. Check if the site provides you information based on your topic.

6. Value – you should check if the web information is supportive. Check for grammar and spelling errors.

The two websites are very similar I didn’t notice the difference between the two. They both offer information and guides to a successful research.
However this site http://www.taftcollege.edu/newTC/Academic/INCO48/sec6-4.htm gives detail on the domain type and the meaning.
Domain Type .com............ ...a commercial business, organization, or company
.edu ...............an educational institution
.int................an international organization
.gov ...............a nonmilitary government entity
.mil............. ..a military organization
.net...............other organizations: nonprofit, nonacademic
.uk, .au, .us etc...... Country codes denoting servers found in other countries.

We were then asked to evaluate the two websites using the steps we have written above. The website that I choose evaluate is the American Cultural History: 1960 -1969. This website is basically about some of the events that occurred in America during 1960-1969 and the way it changed the way we live today. It has information on Important Historic and Cultural Events such as 1961 - Peace Corps created by Pres. Kennedy, 1963 - Martin Luther King and his I have a dream speech, 1963 - Pres. John F. Kennedy and his assassination in Dallas, Texas and much more. This website looks accurate to me and it is well written. It was last updated in December 2006 by Susan Goodwin. It has author’s details and contact number so it’s trustworthy.

The second website that i evaluate was The Psychedelic'60s.
This site was madeby the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia". From reading through some of the links from the home page I think most of the infomation on this page maynot be all completely factual and probably not a very good source of infomation but i also don't believe that all the infomation on the site is unture. I think that this site was put together by students and is mainly made up of stories and interviews from people who lived in that generation.