Week #1 Blog

In my opinion a person who is information literate is one who pushes themselves to continue the learning process. They have a need for knowledge and they seek it out instead of expecting the knowledge to find its way to them. Information has never been as easy to access and locate as it is today. That is not to say that the information is correct. People of all ages who are looking for various types of information should be aware of what they find and use from the internet. At times we can be fooled into a false sense of security with the internet. What we must always remember is that anyone is able to publish anything they want to on the internet. There is no screening process or editor there to review the work and decide on whether it should be published or not. I could publish a story on how to stay thin eating pizza and ice cream but that would not make it true, as much as we all wish that it could be. We must become web site investigators and evaluate the information and judge for ourselves the worth of it on a case by case basis. The information located in the address of the website is a good place to start our investigation. By dissecting it we are able to see if it is a personal web site, one produced for profit, or one that is from a credible source. We should then move on to the information contained on the site. What links are given and do they work? All of these things are components we can use to judge the reliability of the site. We should be as picky with the information we choose to believe from the internet as we are the foods we eat or the shows we watch on TV. We should not just pick whatever is available and easy because we should value ourselves enough to expect the very best for ourselves and the information we choose to educate ourselves with.

As adults we can preach the wonders of many things but until the students see us practicing what we preach they will not put much value into it. The old saying “Do as I say, not as I do” is just not acceptable with this topic. We must make ourselves get into the habit of making the conscious effort to find reliable sources online and not just click on and print the first one that happens to be listed.

I think that the first step in this process is educating ourselves on how to determine a website’s worth. In our lessons this first week we were able to begin leaning how to become website investigators. I think that this process is one that is ever changing and we must continue to learn and keep up to date on all the new ways of finding worthwhile information from sites that are trustworthy. I will be the first to admit to not always taking the necessary time to do this. While I have been developing my technology philosophy I have become more aware of the issue though, and believe that this will make me more conscientious about the subject.