When I read that the assignment was over boilerplate I thought that I was going to be reading about internet safety, what the second part of the assignment is supposed to be. I realized that it was about a mechanical man, I immediately thought of the movie irobot. While reading through the introduction to boilerplate and about the creator of boilerplate, Professor Archibald Campion I thought to myself, how did I miss this awesome part of history?
The more that I explored the
website, it did not take long for me to realized that this could never be real;
other than the obvious book reviews on the left hand side of the website. It
was completely confirmed when I came to a section about boilerplate’s graphic
novels. This has to be one of the cooler things I have ever read about online
through a class, let alone an education class. Even though there are many
historical fiction novels for adults to read and for teens, I have never been that
interested but the way that Paul Guinan has written boilerplate into history I
have to admire. In fact still after only a few minutes on the website I found
comments from many people asking if this was a true story and how great they
found the history and boilerplate.
I cannot help but compare
boilerplate’s story to integrating subject areas in the classroom.
Boilerplate’s stories in different periods of history can help people that are
interested in the story to find history approachable and easy to learn. The
same we can do with any subject areas, integrating English with art, or math
and science to better catch the interest of our students. But the best
integration that we are really talking about is integrating technology with all
of our subject areas to really captivate our class.
Websites can be deceiving with their
information just like many people could not tell the difference if the
information from the boilerplate website was true or not. Sure the stories
through history where really well made and there are hyperlinks connecting you
to more webpage’s that have information about that certain person, phrase or
even in history. Those hyperlinks are similar to other websites that are
credible and Wikipedia which everyone uses. The other problem with this website
is that there are a larger number of pictures that are photo shopped to make it
look even more truthful.
This can also be the same with any
website that the children in the classroom might stumble upon. If they do not
understand how to use the internet correctly for research and cannot tell the
difference between a credible site and hoax then they will most likely be using
internet badly. On many sites that help us determine the best ways to evaluate
site and their credibility, there are some key points that they all agree on.
Credibility of a site is a big way to determine if a website should be used or
not. Easy ways to determine the credibility of a site are whether the author is
reliable in the first place. Simple questions are what is the author’s
knowledge? How did he/she become knowledgeable? Through schooling, a degree, their
job? Who published the website? A company or an organization?
Another significant key is the accuracy
of the information on the site. Wikipedia is a website that many people turn to
for research but it is also a site where people can change the information on
their own. I used Wikipedia for a paper once and found a date on the site and
the next day it was gone. We also have to rely on consistency and fairness.
Just like we should not plagiarize websites need to site their information
statistics and facts.
No comments:
Post a Comment