Wednesday, February 12, 2025

GOODIES TO GO! ™
August 30, 1999 — Newsletter #43


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GOODIES TO GO! ™
August 30, 1999 — Newsletter #43
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Please visit https://www.htmlgoodies.com
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Greetings, Weekend Silicon Warriors,


I wanted to let you know that there’s a plan to put together
one of the largest surveys of the Web and its uses to date.
This will be a year-long process resulting in a book that
will offer more help and information than anything I’ve
seen on the market. Watch for the surveys after the first
of the year. We’re doing prep work now.


Did you hear…


>Have you gotten VBS.Monopoly yet? It’s a new virus that works
much like Melissa, but uses VBS script rather than Macros.
The subject line reads “Bill Gates joke.” Inside, the message
“Bill Gates is guilty of monopoly. Here is the proof. ;-)”
and an image of Gates’ face on a monopoly board pops up.
However, bettering Melissa, this virus sends information
about your computer to set mailboxes along with the list of
e-mails already in your Outlook address book.


>Still think Y2K will be little or next to nothing in the
grand scheme of things? According to Cap Gemini America Inc.
in New York, a company doing a survey of businesses, over
75% of all companies have already experienced some form of
year 2000 concern. The majority (92%) of the malfunctions
were financial miscalculations. Oh boy…


>A story by Danny Rimer asked why some Internet software
succeeds while some does not. His answer? “The Web is just
one big popularity contest.” Welcome to high school…
Internet style!


Now onto today’s topic…


School Day, School Days.


Dear old Golden Rule days,


Surfin’ the Net for a homework part


Not doing work because Springer’s on…



My first class was August 23rd, my first 8AM class ever.
I’ll get up, but will the students?


And what does this have to do with the Internet? Plenty.
This year the vast majority of research will take place on
the Internet. University students all over the world will
forego the walk to the library in exchange for sitting at
their Ethernet-driven dorm computer and surfing for stuff to
plug into that five-page paper the teacher assigned three
weeks ago that is due tomorrow.


Don’t tell me you’ve never thought about it! I’ve graded
so many papers that were put together this way that I, along
with many of my colleagues, have taken steps to curtail it.


Here’s the premise: Your paper on Mars is due tomorrow. You
plop down and enter “Mars” into Yahoo! and bingo! there’s a
list of URLs a mile long. Now, this would be a useful if you
actually read the content and evaluated whether or not it was
worth citing. But I ask that we all be honest with each other
here: You probably don’t, unless a quote is needed, right?
Then it’s a simple copy-and-paste into the paper. Add a few
words here and there and poof! a five-page paper.


Of course, the font size is set to 14, margins set to two
inches all around, lines are set at triple space, and the
fifth page has a couple of lines on it.


Am I right? Huh? I’ll bet many of you can see your own paper
in that little rant. Now, I agree that there are those of you
out there who really do work hard to use the Internet
correctly when performing research. But the real comedy comes
from those who shoot to fake it. For instance…


A student handed in a paper to one of my fellow profs. There
were 40 (or so) cites, all Internet addresses. The prof did
the unthinkable: She looked the URLs up on her computer. None
of them existed. When questioned, the student replied that
the URLs didn’t exist because he hadn’t created them yet.


Another student handed in a paper that cited a link to a
pornography site. No, he didn’t want that in there, he had
just copied and pasted the wrong address. Oops.


One student handed in a paper with a cite from a fake version
of a page she wanted. When I asked her about it she admitted
that she thought it was strange that the information had all
changed when she went back the second time.


The funny thing is, this doesn’t stop with students.
Professors have also run into Internet concerns. When the
Internet first came out, I remember posting all of my
conference papers and publications online. Many professors
did the same. It would be a free flow of ideas and allow us
to possibly get cited in others’ work more often. A good
idea, right? Not according to the American Psychological
Association (APA), who set the standards for APA style,
which is a popular method of citing material in research
papers.


The APA said that posting a paper on-line was akin to
publication, and once a paper is published, it cannot be
submitted to a conference or published anywhere else. So,
basically, if I write a paper and post it online then,
according to the APA, I’ve published a paper.


Woo hoo! Usually, universities require a professor write
one publication a year to be considered viable for tenure.
One a year? Heck, I can do 10 before lunch if all I have to
do is post it online!


You can see that this was a poor decision and from what I
understand, it has quietly gone away.


But let’s get back to those pesky students!


So, how do we, the nasty professors, deal with students who
hand in papers riddled with nothing but Internet citations?
I require “traditional media” equal to every Internet cite.
Any good Internet cite can be substantiated through another
form of media; that is, if you cite CNN.com, I also want a
cite from Newsweek, or the New York Times newspaper, etc.
Quotes? No more than two in a paper and never more than 30
words each.


But those parameters only set students in a battle of wits
with professors. If I tell you what you can’t do, I am not
telling you what you can do. The Web is a stunning research
tool! I usually devote an entire class to applying critical
thinking when researching on the Web. Telling students how
to use the Web correctly goes much further than simply
telling then not to use it at all.


I like following the thoughts from Jan Alexander and Marsha
Tate of the Wolfgram Memorial Library at Widener University.
They’ve laid it out pretty plainly. There is more than what
is listed here, so take a look:


http://www2.widener.edu/Wolfgram-Memorial-Library/webeval.htm


When you log into a page looking for support for your paper,
you must evaluate each page with five criteria (taken from
the page listed above):


>Criterion #1: AUTHORITY


1. Is it clear what individual is responsible for the page?


2. Does the individual responsible for the page indicate his
or her qualifications for writing on this topic?



>Criterion #2: ACCURACY


1. Are the sources for any factual information clearly listed
so they can be verified in another source? (If not, the page
may still be useful as an example of ideas of the individual,
but it is not useful as a source of factual information.)


2. Is the information free of grammatical, spelling, and
other typographical errors? (These kinds of errors not only
indicate a lack of quality control, but can actually produce
inaccuracies in information.)


>Criterion #3: OBJECTIVITY


1. Are the person’s biases clearly stated?

>Criterion #4: CURRENCY


1. Are there dates on the page to indicate:


a. When the page was written?


b. When the page was first placed on the Web?


c. When the page was last revised?


2. Are there any other indications that the material is kept
current?



>Criterion #5: COVERAGE


1. Is there an indication that the page has been completed
and is not still under construction?

If the page you have logged into doesn’t meet the majority
(if not all) of these criteria, don’t use it.


Each page will carry its own beliefs and bents and must not
be cited alone but in association with the other pages you
are citing. For example, a page from the NRA site probably
meets most of the criteria above. The information is may be
well-authored and heavily supported. However, Criteria #3
might not be met. The NRA page is pushing a specific
political ideal. Simply citing the NRA alone does not keep
objectivity. You’ll need to make a point of finding an
opposing viewpoint in another page. It would be the same
if you were citing PETA or the Republican party page.
Following me?


I am requesting that students check Criteria #2, Objectivity,
when they need to find a second source outside the Internet.
Past this list, I tell students to be sure to print the page
when they cite it. Pages die. They go away. Get a hard copy
with the URL printed on it in case the prof checks and you’re
left without a page.


I urge you to see the Web Evaluation page above if you’re a
teacher or a student. It will help you put together better
papers using the Web. During my second year in graduate
school, I wrote a paper using nothing but the Internet as
source material (a novel concept at the time). I presented
it more because of the process than the topic (paying for
the Web). It would have been nice to have had these criteria
when I wrote it.


So, here’s to grading lots of papers. This year I urge all
students to make a point of writing for the sake of learning.
Your paper was assigned so that you could stick some
information into your brain, not so you would finish it in
record time thanks to Yahoo!

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>


And that’s that. Thanks again for reading.


Joe Burns, Ph.D.


And Remember: White chocolate is made up of around 30%
vegetable fats, 30% milk solids, 30% sugar, and a bit of
cocoa butter. You know what isn’t in it? Chocolate.

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