Com220 Week2

Where do you normally find information for topics that interest you? How do you know when sources are reliable? Explain your answers.

I believe with the recent advancements in regards to technology and finding information that is creditable and fast, your best option is the internet. It allows me to search any topic in a matter of seconds. Whether the information is for personal or professional needs, I tend to rely on resources from the internet and/or my peers. For me to even consider using information from one of my peers, he/she has to have the expertise in that area of research. I simply ask myself, does this person have the ability to articulate the information that I need? When researching information on the internet keep in mind that anyone can submit their opinions and views on a topic. This makes it more difficult to weed out the creditable sources from the sketchy ones. Internet sources need to be checked (and checked again) for creditability. Does the author have the qualifications to support this information? Does the site have a reputation in using bias writing? These are just a few of the questions that I go over in my head to make sure that I am getting the best information that is available. It wouldn’t hurt to perform a search on the author of the article, find out their background. When on a site, check for any affiliations’ that they might be linked with. A specific site that I steer away from is Wikipedia. Although this site can be useful for searching just about any topic out there, people must be aware that anyone can post their opinions on this site and they may not be creditable. Before enrolling in Axia College, I had a tendency to enter in simple keywords and review the top “hits” that were retrieved. To my understanding, I thought that whatever information was retrieved at that time was the best I was going to get, and learned to accept that. I now am aware of the importance of scrutinizing my web searches for creditability....