BLOG (Day 9) - Web 2.0 Making the Web Work for You (Unit A)

Research 2.0

The dynamic shift on the information highway has gone through really three phases: the static and kinda trustworthy, the not so trustworthy, and the reliability. As the chapter in this book discusses, the first phase emerged with the inception of the Internet. Not many people were adding information to websites, with the exception of the tech savy experts. With only a certain, fixed number of people adding to the information highway really makes people who read the material trust it. I do recall, however, at this first stage people were still kinda hesitate to trust the material. They would often respond, "I need to see it in a book." So even with the limited number of people who could add information to the World Wide Web, people still did not fully buy into the use of the Internet for research purposes. The next phase, which actually transitions into the web 2.0 technology, really caused people to distrust almost all research based (scholarly) material. People really needed to cite it in a printed publication. Since almost anybody could add information to the Web (specifically targeting the popular information site, "Wikipedia"), you could easily find misinformation. In fact, this stage or phrase has done so much damage that the third phrase still really has limited impact because people still hold such low regard for many information sites. The third phase involves reliable information on the Web because sites like Wikipedia have really reformed many of their ways to add information. Also, many educational institutions have really joined the game with adding reliable information to the Internet.This has really ushered in the third stage of Internet research.

The chapter in the book discusses how to judge a site's validity. I really enjoyed this portion of the reading because so often, especially in college, people just can't seem to find a source which they can feel confident to cite in a research paper. If you see a .edu on the website, that definitely helps the validity of the website. A few other things to look for in a credible source are motives, confirmed author, and contact information. The book really offers much help for a beginning user in determining the crediblity of the website.

I really enjoyed this book because it is straightforward and offers many practical suggestions to any user of the Internet, especially for those looking to do serious research about a host of possible topics.

Boom.