Blogs

Every morning is a monotonous cycle that started with my alarm going off. The loud buzzing startled me into awakeness. I slowly rolled out of bed and threw my sheets back into their original position. I carefully placed my pillows upright to make my room look presentable. I would continue my routine in the bathroom, washing my face to wake me into a functional being for the rest of the day. My routine finished with me getting dressed and finishing my look off with my makeup and hair.

    Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and therefore I never skipped it. I made myself some eggs and paired it with a side of yogurt. This energized me until lunchtime. After my first class, I walked to the Newman Center to get my favorite crispy chicken wrap for lunch.

    I was lucky enough to have one of my friends drive me into school yesterday. This made my life so much easier by saving me over fifteen minutes that I would have spent walking to class in the morning. I enjoyed walking to my other morning classes and to lunch yesterday morning. The fresh air relaxes me when I am stressed from the overbearing schoolwork.

       Yesterday started bright and early at 6:30 in the morning when I woke up and went to the bathroom where I brushed my teeth and showered. I followed my standard morning routine of getting dressed, packing my bag, and grabbing a pop tart and water for breakfast before leaving to go to the bus stop. Over the course of the day I walked a lot, whether it be to the bus stop at 7:45 am or to class at 8:25 and 10:00, and even to get lunch at 11 am. The majority of my morning time was spent in class. From 8:30 to 9:45 I was in the ILC before leaving at 9:45 to get to Morrill II for a 10:00 class. Once class was over, I walked to Bluewall o get lunch. Here I waited in line to order food, proceeded to get my lunch and then spent some time finding a table. Once one was found, I sat down and ate my lunch while simultaneously doing homework.

This website does not seem reliable. A lot of the posts are posted by authors such as “guest”. These articles do not include references. In addition, the information seems outdated. Underneath the ecology today section a lot of the articles are over two years old. The group that runs the page- Ecology Communications Group does not have very much of an online presence outside of the website. The website seems largely unmaintained, many posts are from several years ago. Additionally, there are no featured articles and many links on the website go to blank pages.

For this assignment we investigated the accuracy and reliability of an encyclopedia britannica article about ecology. To determine the trustworthiness of the site we first looked at the authorship of the article. The article was authored mainly by two seperate professors, Robert Leo Smith a professor of wildlife biology and ecology from the university of West Virginia and Stuart L. Pimm a professor of conservation ecology from Duke University. While these two authors seem reliability upon further investigation of the article it was discovered that several other authors contributed alongside these professors. These other contributors typically had no other credentials besides ambiguous titles such as “information analyst”, casting doubt upon the accuracy of the article. Alongside this issue of authorship there were few to no references to outside works, such as research or review papers. I would trust this article as much as I would trust a wikipedia page, as there is validity to many of their statements yet authorship is questionable.

This website does not appear to be from a University, but is from a scientific journal called "Cell Press." It has advertisements for the website and you can get a subscription and link it to your social media. It has many different articles and 31 different volumes and appears to have a pretty significant following, indicating that it is a valid site trusted by many people and that the articles have a lot of work and fine tuning put into them. It has a section labeled "Popular Articles." They also have a tab with job offers like "editor in chief" and "lead editor" that you can apply for yourself, which also indicates that they are probably legitimate.

The website we looked at was Sciencemag.org, which we know as a credible site for publications in scientific fields. First and foremost, the ".org" in the URL indicates that the site is run by an organization. Generlly, this also implies that this site is non-profit, but not always. The tabs in the top contained a section specifically for journals published through Science, and journals are the main hub for cutting-edge research. A direct quote from their About Us section: " Today, Science continues to publish the very best in research across the sciences, with articles that consistently rank among the most cited in the world". With this in mind, Sciencemag.org is definitely a reliable and valid source for scientific literature; it acts as a gateway to a wide array of different journals and publications across the internet.

The website belongs to the scientific journal called CellPress. The website contains advertisements promoting the journal and you can purchase a subsciption, or link your social media account. There are 33 volumes of this journal, and the website contains sections that include the most recent articles, the most popular articles from the past 2 years, and articles from the current issue. The artile links bring you to an online version of the article where you can read, download, and share the document. They also have a section where you can apply for a job to work for CellPress. This website seems very valid due to all of these reasons, and I would trust the articles on this site to be factual and valid. My one red flag is that it is a .com site and not a .org or .edu. 

Our group's website was https://yournewswire.com. Upon first glance, this website appears to function like a reputable news source. However, there are a few aspects of this website that lead us to doubt its reliability, validity, and trustworthiness. At the top of the page, it says "News. Truth. Unfiltered." This leads us to doubt its trustworthiness since the website feels the need to explicitly state that it can be trusted. In our past experiences, reliable news sources allow the validity of the articles to speak for themselves, contributing to their trustworthiness. A lot of the titles of the articles seem far-fetched, which instills some doubt in how valid the articles truly are. For example, "Dalai Lama Says Europe Belongs to Europeans; Migrants Should Return Home" is one of the articles showcased on the website. It is written by Baxter Dmitry, and it seems like a lot of the articles are written like blog posts. Some of the same authors show up but it is unclear as to who they actually are, which decreases its validity. There is also a tab on the main page of the website that allows visitors to inquire about advertising, which seems to suggest that the website values commercializing the news over providing valid and reliable information for readers. The authors and editors of the website also make numerous spelling and grammar errors, and images used are cartoonish. All of the factors above lead us to question the trustworthiness, validity, and reliability of this news source.

reliability, validity, trustworthiness.

Google itself is not a reference. It should not be cited nor used as a credible delivery service of information. However, it does serve as a resource to provide reputable information. The problem is that it can also provide incorrect information or non accredited sources. It is necessary to individually vet each source of information from whatever source is providing it. Google does not provide information, it only provides sources that it programmatically thinks will be relevant and/or credible.