Critical Analysis of Information

After completing the Mapping information activity, which by the way I did for hours I was so amazed, I realized even though I have been searching the net since it started to boom in the late 90’s, I am not narrowing down my searches enough.  I searched several key terms however I took Disney Cruise (since we are going on one in September) and I went to Google.  I entered in Disney + Cruise and Galveston Cruises were the top 7, I did not put in Galveston so that told me the internet search picked up where I was searching from and used that as a way to give me the location of Galveston.  Then I used my typical search engine mode typed in Disney Cruise which was very broad and pointed more toward advertisements and travel agents rather than the actual cruise line.  So I took “Disney Cruise” with the added quotations and the search was narrowed down to only sites that actually offered Disney Cruises.  It was very interesting to see just a few different KEY words such as and, or, and the + sign can change the amount of junk retrieved on a key word search.  I will definitely be using the Mapping suggestions as well as referring back to Novemberlearning.com for future internet searching tips. 

I believe students need to be taught these implications because as shown in the MartinLutherKing as a student that would look like a very good site to do research for a project, however after investigating we see it is not.  It is important for students of any age to understand just because we read it or find it on the internet does not mean it is a scholarly site. 

Without a doubt I see sites such as Delicious, Google Reader, and Stumble Upon as having advantages to organizing my information.  Delicious and Stumble Upon remind me of Pintrist because it is set up similar and organized in a way that is appealing and easy to find information according to interests.  I enjoyed using delicious because not only does it show the description of the site but also has a direct link, therefore with one click you are where you need to be.  Also with delicious you can put things in categories where-as the traditional bookmarking is organized by lists and often very hard to find what is being searched for.  It was also interesting to perform the “easy who is” on Delicious site, it showed the information necessary to research a little further which led me to https://www.markmonitor.com.  I will be using these tools, websites, and mapping strategies to continue to grow in this technology filled market we serve.