I have realized that much of what we find on the Internet through search engines does not constitute as an academic site worthy of being used as a source in scientific research papers. All of my searches on http://www.bing.com/ and http://www.iboogie.tv/ were dismissed for not being academic in nature, and these were the top returning websites! Students in lower grades will not see the harm in using these sites that appear to be credible, but for some reason or another fail to meet the criteria of a legitimate website. I, surprisingly, would have probably used one or two of the sites I found in the course of this module, even though many of them should not be used. This has been a eye-opening experience to the amount of time and effort that searching for sources requires. Never before have I sat down and searched for the credentials of an author, verified them with another legitimate website, and looked for the littlest clues, like the domain name or other hints in the URL address, to assess whether or not I could use the site's material. I remember writing papers in high school and using sources like Wikipedia and others that I now know are not acceptable for any educational assignment.
Furthermore, I have learned the many things to look for in determining if a website is a hoax or a scam, or if it is just one site that I should not use for educational purposes. In "The Internet Detective" portion of the module, I saw the pages that are known to be hoaxes, like the World Trade Organization website for example, and had I not been trained to look for the smallest details, I may not have seen them as fake. A student of much younger age probably would not have recognized it as such.
I am confident in saying that once was, but no longer am, a 21st Century Illiterate. I too hope to help those discover the 3 Rs, Cultural, Visual, Media, and Computer Literacy that makes informational literacy and fluency possible.
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