MAPping Activity

Before:

Honestly, I’ve never thought about that way I search the web. The World Wide Web is any amazing tool to have in our lives. I rely so much on it. When I don’t have access to the internet, I feel lost. It’s sad to say, but that’s the truth. I will have to say that Google is my main site when searching on the web. I am not real savvy with the internet, but know that Google will get me where I need to go. I like how easy it is to navigate. I never use Wikipedia because I know that just anyone can get on that site and put anything they want. I learned that the hard way when I was doing a research folder one time. I know that you can use “quotation marks” and find exactly what you typed in, for example song lyrics. The more you use it, the more secrets you can find out about how to get what information your trying to find faster.

After:

After doing the MAPping activities I found out that I need to really pay close attention to what I’m doing during my searching process. I use Google for almost everything I do on the web. Doing this activity has made me more cautious of websites. I never realized that many search engines do not list the full address. I find this very useful because there are many suspicious people on the internet, not to mention all the people who know how to hack into your computer. I also noticed that sites that have edu., ac, and sch. are very reliable sources to look for.  I looked at the Victorian Robots site that was listed. I couldn’t believe that someone actually put that on the web. When I searched this site, I could tell right off that the site was all for fun. If someone was looking up information for a research paper, they would probably believe the information that they were reading…simply because we usually always believe what we read on the internet.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, I realized why this was such an important activity. I didn’t really understand why the professor was making this an assignment, but now my eyes are open and I am now more cautious. It’s a scary fact that just anyone can put anything on the internet. I also learned that there are certain tool and functions that you can use to check the site before using it, or even putting your personal information in. When doing a research paper, we always want to do our best and get the best grade we can. But, when we use these sites with false information that can come back and haunt you. I hope that I can educate others on how important it is to pay attention to what you are looking at on the internet. I will now start to look at all of my websites that I look at and get my information from. I will do things like looking for the full web addresses, checking the author and checking the information found with other information. That will now be my new method of searching the web.