Week 5 Reflections

The MAPping activity was very useful. It didn’t take long for me to figure out that the website “Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus” was not a real website. I used the website activity with my children as well and my oldest was baffled that there would be something “fake” on the Internet. The links within the document led to either the document itself or Wikipedia. When using other search engines such as Google.com, Altavitsa.com, and Yahoo.com, the search yielded about the same results. The website listed “Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus” first and then some sites referencing it as a spoof. My son pointed out that it was listed first on all the searches so it must be real. It wasn’t until we read down the list that he realized the additional information regarding the site. I went to www.easywhois.com to do a search on the website but nothing came up. I did another search for another website and it worked fine so maybe it was the particular site. The website was created in 1998 and had numerous page revisions until 2009. It was originally created for entertainment but later became used for educational purposes, as noted in Dr. November’s article.

The implications were evident when I talked to my children about this. We have good filters on our home computer and I have not been overly concerned about them accessing inappropriate material. It was a great opportunity to share with them the importance of being an informed consumer of information. Lessons such as these should be conducted in the classrooms to teach children this at any early age.

I have been interested in setting up an account in Delicious for a while. It was a good opportunity for me to consolidate and organize some folders on my desktop and many links within my favorites. I especially like the fact that I can network and learn of other informative sites that could be useful. Bookmarking applications could be a useful tool for my students to gather useful websites, share them, and set up networks with other users.