Climbing for Answers

     A few days ago in History, my class was split into groups to do a few activities (although they were more like challenges than activities.)  Together, we went on a cyber-scavenger hunt and also justified that a certain species of octopuses, the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus, were fake.  The activities we did in class taught us how to use search engines and online resources responsibly. 

            

     The first activity we did was A Google a Day.  Google a Day was basically a quest to find the answers to the randomest of the randomest questions.  For instance, one of the questions on the website was “Besides the Gorilla Press, what famous finishing move did the face-painted “Warrior” famously use on Hulk Hogan to end the match on April 1, 1990?”  It’s literally a game!  There were five people in my group including me and we all had some kind of techy instrument to find the answers with.  The challenging part was the technique to use to find the answers.  You had to break them apart into small pieces.  This game was actually really fun, but really frustrating because sometimes finding the answers took a really long time.  It was like wracking your brain.  This has definitely taught me that if I want to search something, I can’t copy and paste my question into the search engine.  I’ll have to work bit by bit to get the answer. 

            

Pacific NW Xmas Tree Octopus
http://zapatopi.net/
treeoctopus/sightings.html

     The other activity that we did was proving whether the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus is accurate, authentic and reliable based on its website to save the Endangered Pacific Tree Octopus.  Accuracy is how true the information is and whether the website is up to date.  Authenticity is the genuineness; whether the site was what it claimed to be and reliability is whether the author/creator is an expert on the subject at hand.  We concluded that the website was authentic, but not accurate or reliable.  It was authentic because the website claimed to be saving endangered octopuses and however crazy that may sound, it is what the website was about.  The website is not accurate because there is no such thing as a tree octopus and this site isn’t reliable because when you search the creator of the website’s name, Lyle Zapato, you don’t get any information about who he is.  This activity has taught me to make sure a website is all three; accurate, authentic, and reliable before using it for any reason.  

Zapato, Lyle. “Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus.” Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 Sep. 2014. <http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/>.