Week Six - Evaluation and Authentication

LECTURE:
This weeks lecture was on Evaluation and Authentication. I learnt information about the IQ Context on the WWW - Open Protocols and Open Architecture. The WWW has no control of who publishes things on it, why the publishers publish and what is actually published. The Internet was developed from the ARPANET. Not all sites are created equal, therefore does free sites = bad? To determine whether a site is good quality or not considers on the content, visual feel, navigation, ease-of-use.

TUTORIAL:

Reading 1 - Thinking Critically about World Wide Web Resources
This website is about strategies for evaluating the information on webpages. It provides guidelines such as Content & Evaluation, Source & Date, Structure.. etc to help people determine whether a website is authentic or not.

On the website http://www.taftcollege.edu/newTC/Academic/INCO48/sec6-4.htm, it is also similar to the previous reading and has the same if not more points and guidelines on how to tell if a website is genuine or not. It lists points such as 'The Ten C's" which is:

Content
Credibility
Critical Thinking
Copyright
Citation
Continuity
Censorship
Connectivity
Comparability
Context

The 'Ten C's' help us to determine the authenticity of a webpage. Without these guidelines it would be difficult to determine whether the website is real or fake.

Exercise - "Reliving the Sixties: a Web Site Evaluation Assignment"
Website Evaluation 1 - http://www.hippy.com/php/sitetopics.php?topic=1

This site is meant to be giving information and reviews on events that happened in the sixites. There seems to be a lot of advertising of Calendars and 'Hippy Chat'. The articles and facts arent documented and there are no references. The page seems to come across that it was designed by an amatuer. The colours clash and dont look professional. There are too many different fonts on the page, At the bottom of the page it reads "Published by Hip Inc" which indicates that the site was not produced by professionals, as 'Hip Inc' is just a made up name. There is no links to any authors on the site, which proves that the information was obviously just copied and pasted from other sources.







Website Evaluation 2 - http://us.history.wisc.edu/hist102/lectures/lecture27.html
This site is a journal article. It is titled 'Lecture 27', so therefore this website is authentic. It has an Author and Publisher, therefore this indicates that the information given is real and not copied from another author. Its Author is Stanley K. Schultz, Professor of History and William P. Tishler, Producer. There are no advertisements or links to other sites on this page. The font is clear to read and the colours do not clash. The dialogue is of professional standard and everything is referenced including pictures. It is published by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System, this indicates that this is a journal from a University in Wisconsin, which shows that this site is authentic.