Infromation Literacy Reflection #5

Information Literacy Quiz
Before actually beginning the activities for the technology project that were listed for this weeks learning, I noticed that I did not know much of the simple things, such as, the three Boolean search terms, or the acronym of URL. I can honestly say that I fell into the somewhat savvy category of the information literacy quiz.

Meta-Web Information
For the activity, I chose to go with the "Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus". I felt that the name of the subject for the website was interesting, because I actually asked myself was there really an octopus that could live in a tree and/or water? However, based on the appearance of the site, I quickly noticed that it was not a legitimate resource website for many reasons. First, I did not recognize the domain name. It just seemed as if it was made up. Next the extension of the site was (.net) meaning that it was a network site and it could be purchased by anyone or any group of people. Therefore, the site was not a reliable site to get academic type of information. Also, based on my analysis and readings from the November Learning site, I came to the conclusion that the site was a special interest type site. Moreover, this is not a personal page because there are no names followed by these symbols ~, % that may indicate it being personal.

The credibility of the website had quickly lessened once I began clicking on some of the links. The external links were associated within the actual site and blog page of where I assume the website had originated. Majority of the links sent me to the blog site named ZPi/Blog in which I noticed was posted at the very top of the home page as well. The embedded links that were within the passages took me to the Wikipedia pages to elaborate on actual animals, plants, or locations.

As I began searching for the main idea in the search engines, I noticed slight differences. I chose three different search engines of what is not commonly used called AltaVista, Excite, and Infoseek, instead of the popular Google and Yahoo. In the AltaVista search engine, it listed the items by the most looked or viewed sites and then descended towards articles or pages that may have had one or two words mentioned on their page. In the Excite search engine, it listed the search with two popular sites first. One being ask.com and the other being ehow.com. The search did not seem to abide by the popularity of what sites were viewed the most, however, it was listing in relevance of what the actual searched item was, and then descended to the links of why the site or subject was created. In the Infoseek search engine, like most of the other search engines, it listed the items that were searched or viewed the most. I did notice a slight number of advertisements to the websites of Amazon, Calibex, and Liberty Mutual. I believe the advertisements popped up due to certain words used to conduct the search itself and words that were within the subject searched for. For example, Liberty Mutual Insurance, had the word octopus in one of their Responsibility Project article that was published in September 16, 2011 by Charles Siebert. He wrote about a marine biologist by the name of Roland Anderson, that explained the "colorful" personality of the giant Pacific Octopus. Furthermore, the advertisement of Amazon was geared towards buying books and product on their website that mentioned Northwest Trees, Plants of Pacific Northwest Coast, and so on.  

Author
As for the author of the website and domain, I searched for them in the www.easywhois.com link, in which I was unable to get a match. It stated that the expiration date may have been displayed in the record of the date the registrar's sponsorship of the domain was currently set to expire, and I honestly did not understand the ongoing verbiage it stated. However, when I used the Yahoo search engine, I typed the subject Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus, and seen links to Wikipedia explaining how the site was an internet hoax created by Lyle Zapato back in 1998.

Purpose
The purpose of the website and creation by Lyle Zapato was to explain how internet literacy can be important. It was to show the false information that was shared on the site can be portrayed and thought of as a reliable source along with mixed links to the pages of real species and organizations. The creation of this site was intended for her 7th grade class in which 24 out of 25 believed the content of her site.

This project had no choice but to open the eyes of myself and I'm sure others, that may have not looked at the severity of information we come in contact with on the internet. And how some the information we may think is reliable, can be information that an individual or group of people put for their own specific interest. The November Learning site shed light on how we can filter through the unreliable sources just by looking at the domain, author, and purpose of that site. At least I know that when searching for information pertaining to academics, I can verify that the extensions used should be (.edu, .gov, and/or .k12). As for the search engines we use to find information, the November site mentioned that the well-known and well-used are more than likely maintained, updated, and upgraded as necessary as possible to keep up with the growing pace of the web. I enjoyed this project, and I can surely say that when searching for information, I will use these exercises we used during this activity to make sure the site I am using is legitimate.