RESEARCH WITH DISCRIMINATION

Hello, Cool Chem Chids.

You did a nice job with your Link Lists as you gathered a first-round of websites for your research- a fine start to our adventure into real-world chemistry. In this week's blog, I'd like to pursue the idea of the reliability of our resources. Only ding-a-lings believe everything they see and read on the world wide web; and I trust that through your years of research, you've become very discerning about the reliability and veracity of your internet resources.

Think with me for a moment about finding information on the internet. Ask yourself these questions:
When you find a site, what features of it are indicative to you that the information contained can be trusted?
What actions should you take, once you find an article that seems to meet your needs, to ascertain the reliability of the source?
Are there any things that you do routinely or have been taught to do in order to "test" the information for accuracy and lack of bias?
What strategies do you use or do you think you/others should use?

Please write a post for your blog that explains, explores, or expounds on these ideas. These are really important things for us to think about, so I'll ask, in our next assignment, for others to read your blog and to compare their ideas to yours.

Also, it's time to make a final decision about what your topic will be for this project. So, if you haven't made up your mind, please do so and be definitive about it in this blog. If you've already made the decision, I should be able to find that in your previous blogs. Just check to be sure that you have "declared" your topic somewhere.

There two things to take care of then, for your blog: 1) paragraph or two about how to judge the credibility and value of internet sites and 2) make sure you've committed to a topic.

This assignment is due at 12 noon on December 7, EST.

Blog away!!