Week 3

Wow! Lots of stuff this week to consider. The MAPping information activity really opened my eyes. It's like peeling away layers to get at the truth or what's really behind the curtain. I had no idea there was so much information to find out about a website. Educating everyone, not only students, about this seems necessary. I chose the one about the "Tree Octopus" (giggle, giggle). I kind of figured from the start that this was a hoax since octopi are marine organisms, and I had never heard of tree octopi. The url had a .net ending and the strange word "zapatopi". Checking the external links, I found sites with tags like: "serving the paranoids since 1997", "your source for conspiracies and other discussions", "Fake websites and spoof websites", and my personal favorite, "Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanies or AFDBs". This tipped me off that the Tree Octopus site might not be real. I did some further research and found out that this hoax site was created by Lyle Zapato in 1998. This website looks very real and authentic with links to other organizations and internet sites about the tree octopus. It has videos and pictures of the creature. It took someone a long time to create all of that. Others apparently are playing along as well, as evidenced by the protest by elementary students to help save the creature. There were pictures of the event. Students had made posters and gathered in front of the school. There was a picture of the local news crew filming the event, adding credence to the whole ruse.
The lesson learned here is that you can't always believe what you see on Al Gore's Internet, or A.G.I. Students need to be aware of this, and what they can do to check the validity of websites. Students without the skills to check the validity or reliability of websites could be exposed to misinformation or opinion presented as fact. The Martin Luther King website is an excellent example of this potential for disaster.
I'm very excited about Delicious. What a great tool! The social networking aspect of it is also very intriguing. My wife has so many websites bookmarked on our laptop that it literally takes 2 or 3 minutes to scroll from the top to the bottom. This will definitely help with that problem. Also, by tagging each entry, information can be found much more easily and more quickly.