domenica 5 aprile 2009

In my opinion...

And the question of the day is: "what do you consider when evaluating online sources of information?", "what criteria do you use to judge information sources?". Last wednesday, in class, we made a list in groups of 3-4 people about the criteria we use to make judgements when we search online. We all came up with these considerations: -author (who is the author? Someone known? Someone who could be considered authoritative?); -date of publication (i think this is really important, above all when when you need updated material); -content (what can be said about the content, context, style, structure, completness and accuracy of the information provided by the source?). But the most important question that should be asked is: why was the information provided by the source published? Who is the intended audience? Is anything being sold? Whenever you do researches, be it in the library or online, you have to ask yourself why that information is published. You should always take a hard look to what you're reading, watching or listening to and try to develop a personal opinion about everything. I think that "an authoritative voice", "someone known", should be "the author" you choose to take into consideration when evaluating online sources of information, but sometimes, it could be preferable to follow the voice behind that "authority", because this could be a more reliable source of information. It could be more relevant to your information needs, or it could offer you a different perspective, a different point of view.
Exploring "Google blogs", we searched for the phrase "personal learning environment" and I had a look to the blog of a researcher who investigates what PLEs are meant to be and where they might be going. I read his article, written after tracking conversations in the blogosphere and following social bookmarking. He stressed the importance of using the dynamic services such as instant messagging, online forum and weblog conversation for enabling personal growth and learning. I agree...

2 commenti:

  1. evaluating anything is a hard task! it is difficult to go beyond personal beliefs and to judge someone else's work from an objective point of view. it is good to have some good pieces of advice from people more expert than us! using the different google tools we can discover various interesting sources ready to be exploited!

    RispondiElimina
  2. Hello!
    Are you as satiated as I am after the Easter challenge?!
    As Mario said I think that evaluating sources is a difficult task! We will have to learn how to make a good analisis of a text especially for the final elaborate!
    As I gave suggestion to Mario also, I would like to suggest you to re-read what you write, because you wrote "when, when...i...." they are not bad mistakes (and you know I hate so provide this kind of suggestions....)
    see you soon!
    bye bye!!

    RispondiElimina