But first ...

• Written progress reports feedback
  • comments on online surveys
  • default selections (pull downs and radio buttons)
    0-10 10-20 20-30 30-40 older than 40
    Click here to specify your age. 0-10 11-20 21-30 31-40 older than 40
• No class next Thursday - Thanksgiving
• Draft of final report due in two weeks - Dec 3rd

Evaluation of web sites

• How to tell whether information from the Web is believable or not
  • Example of not-very-credible information presented in a plausible format: The Springfield Effect from the Flat Earth Society web site

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  Evaluation sites

  • Bibliography on Evaluating Internet Resources
  • Kathy Schrock's Critical Evaluation Information
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Evaluation Prompters

  • Last spring - prompters for teachers to evaluate student created pages (Steve Rutledge)
  • last summer - prompters for students to evaluate web pages created by others (EdPsy 387 Su 98)
    (these teachers modified a "template" Javascript file, without knowing any Javascript)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Heuristics for evaluating web sites

  • convergent validity - is the content consistent with that found on other sites? on other information sources, including those not on the web?
  • credibility - does it make sense, given what you already know?
  • the length - shorter is more credible?
  • credibility of the base IP name - uiuc.edu vs. mycompany.com
  • credibility of the domain - ".edu" vs. ".com" vs. ...
  • web of credibility
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Web of Credibility

  • "Trusted sites"
  • Those linked FROM trusted sites acquire much of the same "trust"
  • Those linked TO trusted sites acquire some of the same "trust"

  • THose linked FROM untrusted sites acquire much of the same "mistrust"
  • Those linked TO untrusted sites acquire some of the same "mistrust"

  • the degree of trust is the sum of all the incremental positive and negative contributions from links
  • "trust" propogates through the network of web sites
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  The Web as a Distributed Network Learning Framework

  • web as a network of interlinked geographically distributed servers
  • information flowing dynamically through the network
  • mediator roles in determining the flow of information and the creation of structure (links) / knowledge
  • incremental and distributed nature of this network learning
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Spectrum of knowledge spaces

  • Personal internal
  • Personal external (own files)
  • Narrowly shared (email to one other)
  • More widely shared (email list or small group conference or web pages)
  • Yet more widely shared (Intranet or larger listserve)
  • Very widely shared (widely advertised and linked web pages)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Incremental construction of expert systems

  • Specification of local rules (Eudora "filters", for example)
  • Gradual movement of those rules outward toward where they are needed
  • Standing answers
  • Standing questions (agents/avatars)
  • "push" technologies on the web (Pointcast, etc.)
  • from procedural to object-oriented to agent-oriented
  • externalization of the most routine, most boring leading to a local "expert system" assistant
  • movement of that knowledge outward toward repeated requests
  • movement of this knowledge as organizational learning
  • "economics" of learning
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  For next week:

  • Thanksgiving - no class

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  For next class meeting (Dec 3):

  • draft of final report