1. Assignment 6 - Quality and "Credibility of Web Sites Amy Hartwell awhart2@vt.edu July 30,2011 awhart2@vt.edu

2. Exploring the Web can be a fun and easy way to learn new information. With a click of your mouse you can enter a world far away! Let’s look at some questions on how to be safe as you explore…..

3.  Can I find relevant information about the author?  Do they have the expertise to publish the information?  Better-Whois.com information describes who registered the site, the name and address of the organization behind the site, contact information and server information. http://www.betterwhois.com/

4. Look around the page. What do you see? What are the advertisements, links and other information? You can find out which sites link to a specific Web page by going to a search engine and entering a "link:" command in the search box, followed by the Web page's address (URL). You can see the pages linked which will help decide the validity of the page. Links to a site can give much information. You can determine the intention of the author and the opinion of the site. Take a look!

5. Learn to deconstruct a Uniform Resource Locator (better known as a URL or "site address"). We’ll use the Media Awareness Network URL as an example: http/www.media-awareness.ca/english/teachers/index.cfm http/www. The "http" notation indicates that this is a hypertext document (as most online documents are). The "www" is short form for the "World Wide Web," where all Web sites reside.

6. The second part of a URL contains the domain name of the person or organization hosting the Web site - in this case, media-awareness. The ".ca" which follows indicates that the site is hosted by a Canadian institution. www.media-awareness.ca/english/teachers/index.cfm The last section maps out the pathway of directories and sub directories leading to the page you are on. For this particular page on the Media Awareness Network site, "english/" indicates that you are on the English part of the site. The final URL entry ("teachers") indicates the name of the page or document you have arrived at. "cfm" indicates the code or format the page was created in (in this case, Cold Fusion Markup).

7. These are some key questions you may ask:  When was the site originated?  When was it last updated?  Is the information complete and accurate?  When would you use the information provided?  Are there hyperlinks, where do the go and do they all work?

8.  Why am I at this site?  Why am I using this page?  Why was this message sent?

9. Who is the author? What is the purpose? Where did the site originate? When is the information dated? Why has this page been published? Knowing these points is how you make a safer search for information. Congratulations!!

10. http://www.martinlutherking.org/ 1 http://www.mlkonline.net/ 2

11. The author is The purpose is The site originated The site is updated to The information is White nationalist share info on MLK Stormfront.org no date shown politically biased

12. The author is The purpose is The site originated The site is updated to The information is mlkonline.net share info on MLK Intellectual Properties Mgt Estate of Martin Luther King Jr. no date shown historically based

13. Brief Descriptor for Edweb I chose these two sites to show how two sites with the same subject can have a vastly different wealth of information. martinlutherking.org Much of the criteria for website analysis proved this was not a valid unbiased site. The site that supports it is a white supremacist organization. The links either pointed to like-minded authors or were not operable. If a person used this site they need to make sure it is examined with careful eyes and view with the biased perspective that it is written. mlkonline.net The information from this site came from a organization that was licensed by his estate. Although there may still be some biased, the information is accurate. The links seemed to work correctly and were linked to a variety of sites. I was surprised at the copyright that it did not allow reproduction for educational purposes.