How to Use the Internet With Schoolwork

In my history class, we performed two different activites that were designed to help us find appropriate sources online and find the correct answer to any question by just using Google.  Using the internet responsibly is very important when completing research papers in history because using unreliable or inaccurate sources can lead to false information.  Being able to obtain true information in real life is a vital technique to have, and these two activities can teach anyone how to do it.

http://images.forbes.com/media/lists/companies/google_200x200.jpg

In the first of these activities, my class went to Google.com and searched for A Google A Day, a site run by Google that teaches people how to search effectively and get the right information at the same time (http://www.agoogleaday.com/#game=started).  We were all given a question, and we had to work in groups to find the answer.  Each question contained multiple parts and required many different searches to find the answer to the big question.  Although it was fun finding out the answers to interesting questions, it was very difficult to do so and became frustrating if you couldn't find the correct answer.  By completing this activity, I learned that sometimes it takes multiple searches to find the information you are looking for, and that the information is sometimes not on the first site that pops up.

The second activity was meant to teach us about authentic, accurate, and reliable sources.  To complete this activity, first we defined the words accuracy, authenticity, and reliability.  Accuracy is the state of being correct or precise, and authenticity is when something is real, genuine, not copied, and is what it claims to be.  Reliability is when someone or something can be trusted to provide what is needed.  It is important for the sources you use to be authentic, reliable, and accurate because your information should be true, up-to-date, and trustable.  An example of a website that should never be used as a source for any paper is the website of the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus (http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/).  This website is not authentic, accurate, or reliable because there is no such thing as a Tree Octopus, so all of the information on the website is fake.  Using the right information and the correct techniques to find information is very important to your work in school.