A8.1: Adaptive Technology Project: WiVik on-screen keyboard [Revised]

A9.1: Adaptive Technology Project-Self Evaluation

This self evaluation will be guided by standards taken from The Foundation for Critical Thinking that can be located at http://www.criticalthinking.org.

 I believe that i have met the standards required for this project to check for clarity i went back through to make sure that my statements made sense. I modified wording on a few slides to avoid unnecessary words that may make passages more lengthy and confusing. I also pulled the definition of adaptive technology from another source because not everyone supports Wikipedia and i do no want to discredit my work because someone may or may not have an opinion of Wikipedia. I think I made the relevance clear by illustrating WiVik as an adaptive technology. I thought that it was important to address the subject of adaptive technology by using a definition found in the IDEA Act that is written by the government. I think this connection makes the presentation and purpose stronger. I think that the clarity has improved with the changes that I have made. The images used reinforce meaning because they give a graphic display of the program or tools associated with WiVik. I think information in the presentation in accurate and can be verified by the references. Hyperlinks are provided so that people that read the presentation via the Internet will be able to immediately check the accuracy of information; however, journal articles are not instantly available. I think I could have been more specific in some instances but i because we were under length guidelines, I had to be as specific as possible in a small amount of words. I think the presentation has depth and the factors that make this difficult are being able to separate or combine the project categories when necessary. For example, where and who, relating to the technology, can either be addressed separately or together. I decided to put them together to make it more clear. I think that I addressed logic by coming up with a good order for the slides presented. I think that it is important to have good flow so that it makes sense. I think that the presentation is logical and easy to follow. I think that the central idea is that Wivik is an adaptive technology that can aid users in communication. I think that all the aspects of the central idea have been covered and support the significance of the project. I also do not believe that there is any trivial information found within the presentation. I feel like it is important when doing reports or presentation on a software to not endorse your materials. I think that there are benefits to this software but i have to describe them not sell the product. I do not feel that the presentation in biased nor does it support any population more than another.

A9.3: Better Dog Food Website Evaluation

The following is a website evaluation that evaluates the site www.betterdogfood.com. The tool used to guide this evaluation is, “Evaluating Sources and    Sites on the Web & Internet: a tutorial”. The evaluation guide was created by Jennifer Sharkey, Assistant Professor of Library Science at Purdue University Libraries and can be accessed at http://www.lib.purdue.edu/InternetEval/.

Objectivity:

The purpose of this website, assumed from the content, is to provide products for dogs by selling items (via the Internet) such as dog food. The website endorses the love of dogs vs. the love of cats. The endorsement is accomplished by saying that everybody loves dogs and then claims that those who do not like dogs, like cats. The information and claims located on the website are biased and are based solely on the author/website opinion.

Accuracy:

The company does not cite any sources for information or development purposes. The site authors, Rebecca H. and Carl M, have small pieces of information about their past job experiences but information about the authors does not parallel previous background to the current site. The link for Rebecca is a link that brings up broken images and an faulty website that seems to be connected to the Purina website. Carl M. is mentioned to have background information in public speaking and what seems to be information about some digital networking experience. All information seems to be a biased construct of the organization because of the radical claims and lack of research and resources used in the formation of the site.

Authority:

The author’s names are unrecognizable. Rebecca’s role is said to be the president and chief creative officer of betterdogfood.com while Carl is said the be the chairmen/CEO/founder of the website betterdogfood.com. There is a link on one of the pages that says betterdogfood.com is owned by petchick when the link is followed an Outlook e-mail pages is provided with Rebecca’s email in the send window. Earlier it was unclear that she was in fact the owner of the site. E-mail addresses are included for both but Carl’s address was accessed via the link in his biographical section; however’ Rebecca’s is provided through hyperlink found within the text. The biographical information was lacking in content and did not seem relative to the purpose of the site. For example, in Carl’s biography it said that he was an international speaker and there was a hyperlink provided that came up to be a transcript written by Carl on the Internet World Exhibit dated 2006. The name of the hyperlink was a ‘kazakhstan’ which i thought to be a poor choice because it was about a particular event and not the country. This poor naming is seemingly unrelated to the content of the website and lacks in appropriate categorization. There was a rating of the website found via hyperlink provided within the website to an ‘eopinion’ page that had a rating from a user. The user rated the site as being 1 star out of 5 categorizing the site as

Currency:

The copyright was indicated on the following pages: homepage, investor page, and store front page. The date the site was created, first post, and any revisions were not found on the website. The page content does not necessarily demand updating although it would be in the best interest of the company to do so. If the company were to have specials or sales then the website would need to be updated. Almost all links are not in working order however, this was explained in that the sites ‘E-commerce provider’ went out of business so product links and other graphic interfaces are either not working or partially working. Other links found within the page are not correct;for example, there is a passage that says ‘we are the first food related dot com’ and then it provides a hyperlink that is assumed to serve as an example. This link navigates away from a page and send the user to another company overview page. This company is unrelated in that it is a company that has to do with the stock market.

Coverage:

Almost all topics within the website are superficially addressed and developed. The link that tells about the available stock options within betterdogfood.com seems to be well developed but I do not know much about stocks. The inconsistency in the way the financial information is presented compared to the other content within the site may relay that this site is fraudulent or attempting to scam users. There are links that are used for examples but the links are either incorrect or not working or they are completely unrelated to the topic at hand. I do not see any of this information as being valuable for anyone. There really is no content in the site; the information is inaccurate and unclear and visibly biased.