Reflective Blog # 5 MAPping Information and Social Bookmarking

Mapping Information

I will admit that this assignment has been the most challenging for me so far. 

I chose to use the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus   http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/

Solely based on the url, I could not decide if it was a personal website or not.  It did not contain tilde or %, and it is a .net which means it is a network.  

When I checked the external links, I found several sites that suggested that this site was incredible.  The main one that stuck out for me was http://www.philb.com/fakesites.htm.  My site was listed on this website as being a fake website.  Then I started to realize that this website was also a personal webpage. So I decided to see what external links were connected to this page.  After careful consideration, and examining multiple sites, I decided that the site that stated my first site was incredible was correct. 

I used Google, Infoseek, and Yahoo for my search. I typed in Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus in each search engine.  Zapatopi was listed in the top three search results on each site, which is scary considering I believe it is not a credible site. I also noticed that most of these search engines are powered my Yahoo.

My research shows that Kevin Fraites is the owner of the site. He does not have any affiliations with any schools or organizations. This continues to lead me to believe that this site is incredible.  

The only reason I can find that for this site being created was for entertainment purposes only.  Looks like this person wanted to see how many people they could convince the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus was real.

This assignment made me realize how important it is to have the skills to research websites in order to determine if they are credible or not. I was shocked that such an unreliable source would show up first in search results.  This is a skill that I need to practice daily in order to teach my students this skill.  Most students will choose the first search result because they think it’s the true and the most relevant because it was displayed first.  They need to know that Google results are based on how many hits a site receives.  The need to know which search engines to choose to get the results they need.  

I am not too sure about the information that I have used throughout my college career.  I would like to say that all of it was true, relevant, and accurate but honestly I do not know.  One thing is for sure, I will be confident about the information in the future, because researching websites is my number one priority now when deciding which websites to use.

Delicious

Do you see any advantages for organizing your information via Delicious? What else did you find when exploring the other bookmarking applications? What are some ways you think you could use tools like these in the future?

Delicious is a user friendly bookmarking tool. Having all my bookmarks in one central location that is accessible wherever there is an internet connections, has helped me stay organized.  The toolbar that is installed is highly useful.  The feature I found most beneficial was the recently bookmarked.  In case I was wondering what the last thing I bookmarked was, it shows automatically.  I also found that Delicious was the easiest to use to network with other users.

I was not really interested in Blinklist.  It was not very user friendly. I found it hard to install the Blink button.  Blink does not have toolbar like the other sites, which seems to be an inconvenience.  I also did not see a place to add tags.  I feel if I used this bookmarking tool that I would not be able to stay organized. 

I didn’t really care for Stumble Upon.  There was not a place to create tags.  My websites would be jumbled up, making it hard to stay organized.  I did however like that the favorites were categorized.  

Diigo is the social bookmarking tool that I use daily.  I prefer this one over all the others.  The best feature is the collaboration tool.  I can create groups for my students to have class discussions, or to post a reading assignment.  The feature I find myself using regularly is the Read Later and Unread button.  Sometimes I forget which sites I have actually read, and which ones I only bookmarked.