"It has to be true, I found it on the internet!" - Future generations of the planet.

     Anyone who takes information at face value is set up for some of the worst human interactions in history. We all know this, right? Now you sit there,no doubt in a fine tweed jacket with your monocle and bowler, reading this blog post and expound, "Jove! My information is always rightly solid. No tomfoolery to be had in my discussions". I myself would have said so without a moments hesitation as well, had I not learned of some of the easy and "been there the whole time ,you dolt, why didn't you see them" techniques available to we proud and boisterous surfers of the World Wide Web. I fancy myself quite the technophile and have been using these fancy computation devices my entire pseudo-adult life. However, it appears I was not privy to the incredibly simple link: and easywhois tools available.

NO! My precious digital street cred!

  Before, when researching a topic, I would simply bang away at a major search engine until my desired information could be sifted from all the ads about divorce lawyers and cheap cars sales. Am I interested in why Kate Chopin wrote The Awakening? Ah, here is an easy website at the top of the search results that promise me all I need for a swift completion grade. The website seems legit enough, what with her picture and name at the top. So what if it tells me that the entire book was a metaphor for her favorite can-opener that was lost on a trans-Atlantic flight to New Zealand? 

   If I knew nothing about Chopin, and fully believed her ability to time travel (to Kiwi-land of all places), I would turn in a research paper that would be destroyed, and possibly unintentionally hilarious. 

"I'm sorry, Timmy. There were no Deinonychi at San Juan Hill."

   So, how does one check the legitimacy of a website? If only I could  see what other sites linked to it... 

Just by going to Google, and typing in "link:" then entering the website address you have it right in front of you. Like finding the contact list of your hated frenimie, all of the sites friends and dirty little secrets are there for your mocking pleasure. Still not sure if it's a legit or quit site, as you kinda believe the part where Edna Pontellier is a metaphor for the Vietnam War? Try www.easywhois.com . Type in the site and watch as all the personal information on the site is made available. It's like Facebook for webpages, only they don't offer to freely share how big your aunts bowel movement was last night.

Your life is awesome and I want to be you.

   So easy! I had never even thought to check the legitimacy of the site itself, always scouring for citations available on the page. After coming upon this information, it dawned on me that I wouldn't want my students to go about their research in the way I had been. As entertaining as it would have been to grade a paper that insisted that Mark Twain was a robot overlord from the far future, I doubt that the lesson would be learned. As the massive super-highway of information that is the internet gains more drivers by the day, the march of educational technology will be more and more subjected to the influence of anonymous sources. We and our students must be more conscious of the information we are redirecting... misinformation is the death of learning.