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Web Site Evaluations Site #1 Search Topic: MitosisSearch Terms: see chart below Type of Search: Keyword
Site #2 Search Topic: Mitosis Search Terms: see chart below Type of Search: Keyword Search Engine: Altavista
Site #3 Search Topic: Mitosis Search Terms: mitosis Type of Search: Keyword Search Engine: Yahoo
Evaluation *Evaluation criteria were based on Kathy Schrock’s website: http://school.discovery.com/schrockguide/evalhigh.html URL #1: http://www.teaching-biomed.man.ac.uk/ramsay/overv.htm Name of Web page: Overview of Mitosis URL #2: http://sidwell.edu/us/science/vlb/mitosis/index.html Name of Web page: Biology I Super VLB ’02 URL #3: http://www.iacr.bbsrc.ac.uk/notebook/courses/guide/mitosis.htm Name of Web page: Molecular Biology Notebook-Mitosis Technical and Visual Aspects of the Web Page Does the page take a long time to load? 1. No 2. No 3. No Do the pictures add to the page? 1.Yes 2. No 3. Yes Is the spelling correct on the page? 1,2, &3 Yes Are there headings and subheadings on the page? 1,2,&3 Yes, and they’re helpful Is the page signed by the author? 1. No 2. No 3. Yes Is the author’s e-mail address included? 1. Not directly, but a "Contacts" button is provided 2. No, but can e-mail bio-web@sidwell.edu (it is a school) 3. Yes Is there a date of last update? 1.Yes 2. No 3. Yes If so, is it current? 1. March 25,1999---not really by most standards, but the information is fairly timeless 3.Yes, January 26, 2001 Is the format standard and readable with your browser? 1,2,&3 Yes Is there an image map on the page? 1,2,&3 Yes Is there a table on the page? 1. No 2. Yes 3. No On supporting pages, is there a link back to the home page? 1,2, &3 Yes Are the links clearly visible and explanatory? 1,2,& 3 Yes Is there a picture or a sound included? Pictures are included in all three web sites Content Is the title of the page indicative of the content? All three: Yes Is the purpose of the page indicated on the home page? 1&2: Yes 3. Not explicitly When was the document created? I could not determine this for any web site, though #3 was copyrighted from 1997-2000. Is the information useful for your purpose? All three: YES Would it have been easier to get the information somewhere else? #1. No #2. Yes #3. No Would information somewhere else have been different? POSSIBLY, but no information on any of the three sites contradicted the other Why? Depends on grade level, the information in these sites would be suitable for advanced high school biology courses or college courses Did the information lead you to other sources that were useful? YES, though sites 1and 3 were most helpful Is a bibliography of print sources included? All three: No Is the information current? All three: YES Does up-to-date information matter for your purpose? No Does the information appear biased? All three: No Does the information contradict something you found somewhere else? All three: No Do most of the pictures supplement the content of the page? YES, though the images in site#2 were of poor quality, probably because they were of actual cells Authority Who created the page? #1. Four men (course instructors) whose names are on another linked page, #2. Friends of Sidwell School, #3. Nathalie Castells-Brooke, PHD What organization is the person affiliated with? 1. University of Manchester, 2. The Sidwell Friends School, Washington, D.C., 3. IACR-Institute of Arable Crops Research, Rothamsted Has the site been reviewed by an online reviewing agency? Not to my knowledge, though site #3 is written and reviewed at Rothamsted Does the domain (i.e. edu, gov, com) of the page influence your evaluation of the site? Not really, though it may influence whether I visit a site Are you positive that the information is true? Yes, I am confident of the information in all three sites What can you do to prove that it is true? Check it against other sources and sites Are you satisfied that the information is useful for your purpose? All three:Yes Can you get a printed version of the information? All three: Yes Comparison There are numerous search engines available for world wide web users. By default my computer uses MSN Search as the engine of choice. I found this search engine to be very helpful and user friendly. Nineteen hits are not an unreasonable number to research and/or choose from. MSN Search offered help and advanced search options. With AltaVista the same keyword produced over 29,000 hits! I had to narrow my focus to get a reasonable number of hits to deal with. I learned in class to use quotations with phrases to accomplish this. This search engine proved to be the most time consuming due to the sheer number of hits and the need to narrow my search. AltaVista did allow me to search in any language, offered an advanced search option, and listed related searches. Yahoo was fairly straightforward, and I again got only six hits on my first attempt. I prefer to have to expand rather than narrow my search terms/topic, thus I was pleased with this outcome. Yahoo also had an advanced search option, showed category matches, and listed other search engines at the bottom of its home page. (I experimented with Ask Jeeves, but was disappointed to find that this engine did not list the number of hits. I had to keep going to "next page". That got old real fast. This engine also appeared to be based on popularity of hits. Additionally, I tried Dogpile and found it a bit overwhelming. It showed results from eight other search engines with hits ranging from 1 to 211). In essence, I would recommend any of these three engines, as they were each fairly simple to use. |
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