Teachers Only Page
for The Internet
Detective Agency, a WebQuest for grades 9-12 created in August
2004
Greetings from Debbie!
I was trying to figure
out how to provide more information for teachers without alerting
students to answers to assignments. Below are some of the ideas
woven into this WebQuest.
Background
The WebQuest is
a tool developed to help Eve Benson, Glee Mellor, and me to complete
the research phase of our master's degree program at CSU, Sacramento.
As part of our Internet Masters in Educational Technology (iMET)
program, we are conducting an Action Research project on the use
and development of critical thinking skills in searching and evaluating
web sites. In order to evaluate web sites, we have developed a process
called TAPAteach. It is a 4-step process to help students learn
how to evaluate web pages rather than just using the first one they
find. However, before being able to use the TAPAteach process, students
must be familiar with tools and concepts used to search and research
the web. The Internet Detective Agency WebQuest provides that foundation.
For those who might
be interested, data collection for our Action Research involves
administering the Cornell Critical Thinking Skills assessment tool
(CCTT), doing the WebQuest, teaching TAPAteach, then re-administering
the CCTT.
Navigation
Scaffolding
The major navigation
tools are the menu at the left of each web page and the image map
in the process area. A picture of the image map is below.
Students must solve
the first clue by clicking on the Begin button. The intent
of this first clue is to accustom students to navigating by clicking
on familiar icons. On each web page in the Process area,
there is a Back and a Next icon for students to
use. The icons for each step are repeated appropriately as needed
for navigation on the other pages.
Information
About the Process Steps
The Process
area of the WebQuest consists of four major phases or stages. Stages
1 and 2 are organized together as two courses in Detective School.
Stage 3 is the Detective License. Stage 4 is Your First
Case.
Detective
School
Students
take two courses in Detective School, Internet Fingerprints 101
and Investigating the Web 102. Internet Fingerprints familiarizes
students with terminology and keywords. Investigating the Web provides
tools in the form of search engines and other web resources used
to find more information about a web site under review.
Internet Fingerprints
101
Assignment 1: Write a definition
for each of the following terms: domain name, top level domain,
folder, http, and URL. Also, discuss the following question and
enter a 50-100 word summary: What is a top level domain, and why
is it important?
For the first assignment,
students define several terms. They use the web sites listed in
resources to find the answers. Answers for teachers:
A domain name is the
address for a web site. An example is microsoft.com or clingingsmith.org.
Domain names must be registered and must be unique. Anyone may register
a domain name for as little as $1.99. For example, I registered
clingingsmith.org so that my husband would remember his email address.
So, an email address at the clingingsmith.org domain would be debbie@clingingsmith.org
(which is my email address).
A top level domain,
also known as a TLD (pronounced by saying the letters, tee-el-dee),
is the ending of the domain name. There are lots of different official
TLDs. There are .gov (pronouced dot-gov), .com (pronounced dot-com),
.edu, .org, plus more. Originally, there were seven TLDs. More have
been added since. See http://leepoint.net/notes/comp/internet/dns-tlds.html
for a good explanation.
The acronym, http, stands
for HyperText Transfer Protocol. If you are web surfing, you are
using http. We used to enter the http:// in a browser web address
before going to a web site. Now, many browsers do this for us invisibly.
So, instead of having to enter http://www.microsoft.com, we can
shorten it to www.microsoft.com.
The URL, which is another
acronym, stands for Uniform Resource Locator. In short, it is a
web address. So, the URL for Microsoft is www.microsoft.com.
Let's take a look at
the www.microsoft.com web address. The .com (dot-com, remember?)
portion is the Top Level Domain. The portion, microsoft.com, is
the Domain Name. The whole address is the URL. We use the http protocol,
perhaps invisibly because our browser does it for us, to visit the
URL or www.microsoft.com.
Oh, a folder is a subdirectory
for storing files. If you look at a file in a folder on your computer
by using your browser, you will see another type of address or URL.
It will start with file:// instead of http://.
Another often-seen type of URL is ftp://, which is used
to download files over the Internet to your local computer.
Some ideas for the question
about TLDs and their importance: A TLD is part of a web address.
Without it, we can't get to a web page. Companies and individuals
may register domain names within a TLD. If I am trying to register
a domain name, like music.com, it may already be taken. So, I can
try another TLD, like a .org, and have a domain name of music.org.
The TLD also tells us something about a web page. For example, an
.edu TLD designates a university, and a .gov belongs to a U.S. government
agency.
Some additional resources:
http://www.domainhandbook.com/gloss.html
http://www.tcpipguide.com/free/t_DNSOrganizationalGenericTopLevelDomainsandAuthorit-4.htm
Assignment
2: Define the following types of top level domain names: .com, .edu,
.gov, .net,.org, and .la. Discuss the following question and enter
a 50-100 word summary: Does a web address with a .org address always
guarantee that it is the web site for a nonprofit organization?
Answers for teachers:
See the web sites above
for TLD definitions. Of note is the .la (or dot-el-a) TLD, which
is assigned to the country of Laos. Well, it turns out that the
country of Laos isn't using its name and is selling domain names
to residents of Los Angeles country. In assignment 3, students will
discover this by going to the www.cakes.la
web site, which is a bakery in Los Angeles, CA. However, here in
assignment 2, the student discussion focuses on a related topic,
whether .org means an organization is always a nonprofit. The original
intent for the .com, .org., and .net TLDs was that the .com would
be for businesses, .org would be nonprofit organizations, and .net
would be Internet service providers (like MCI, AOL, or SBC). However,
the distinctions for these three have blurred. The .edu TLD is still
reserved for universities, and the .gov for the U.S. government.
That is, individuals are not allowed to register domain names with
.gov and .edu. But, anyone can register domain names with the other
three. All one needs is a credit card. If you would like to see
a domain name registry web site, try www.reserveme.com.
(Disclaimer: I have no financial interest in reserveme.com. I have
used their service though.)
Final Assignment
3: Discuss and answer these questions as a team. Visit this web
site: http://www.cakes.la. Where
is this business located (city and state)? What is the definition
of the .la top level domain name? How do you think the web site
was able to obtain a .la domain name? You may use a search engine
to aid your research. (Extra credit: If the bakery was really in
the geographic area assigned to the ,la top level domain name, how
far would you have to travel for a great cake? Use any web tools
at your disposal to find the answer.)
So, in this assignment,
the bakery at www.cakes.la is located in Los Angeles though the
.la TLD is the country of Laos. The concept is that a web address
tells us information about a web site. However, the addresses don't
always conform to the formal definitions of the TLD, for example
that a .com is always a business. For the extra credit, students
may use mapquest.com or other web sites to figure out how far they
live from Los Angeles (and hopefully not Laos).
Investigating the
Web 102
This course introduces students to the different kinds of Internet
tools. There are more resources and exercises at Alan November's
web site: http://www.anovember.com/infolit/index.html
Assignment
1: Refer to the resources below. Use the appropriate Internet tool
to find the owner of the following web sites: www.microsoft.com,
www.northwindtraders.com, www.bonsaikittens.com, and www.stormfront.com.
Enter the name of the owner and the web site address in your notebook.
Did the same company own more than one Internet address? If yes,
list the company and web addresses. Discuss why a person or a company
might have more than one domain name. Enter a 50-100 word summary
of you discussion. List names of Internet tools your team used to
help answer the questions and what information you found with each
tool.
Answers for teachers:
Students should use whois.net and betterwhois.com to find the owners
of web sites. They will find that Microsoft owns both www.microsoft.com
and www.northwindtraders.com. Microsoft uses the northwindtraders.com
domain name for training, but does not actually maintain a web site
for it. The URL, www.bonsaikittens.com, is not active. That is,
there is no web site. But, the bonsaikittens.com domain name is
still registered. Students will use the www.bonsaikittens.com URL
with the Way Back Machine in assignment 3. The www.stormfront.com
web site is a white supremacist site. Students will see this again
in stage 4, Your First Case. (Don't be alarmed! They will
find out that what appears to be a civil rights web site, martinlutherking.org,
is not what it appears to be and is owned by stormfront.org. Alan
November has written about this at his web site. The reference is
in the Your First Case explanation below.)
Assignment
2: Use the appropriate Internet tools to investigate the www.bonsaikittens.com
web site in more depth. Answer the following questions as a group,
and enter the results in the team's notebook. What happens when
you try to go to www.bonsaikitten.com in a browser like Internet
Explorer or Safari? Based on your results from Assignment 1, is
the domain name actively owned by someone? Use Kartoo.com or Google.com
to see if there are active links to and from the web site. What
did you find? What do you think it means if the domain name is registered
and active but the web site can't be found or viewed? List names
of Internet tools your team used to help answer the questions and
what information you found with each tool.
As mentioned previously,
the www.bonsaikittens.com web site is inactive. However, the domain
name is stilled actively registered. So, the key concept is that
a domain name may be registered and still exist, but a web site
may not necessarily be active.
Final Assignment
3: Use the Way Back Machine to look at the www.bonsaikittens.com
web site. Answer the following questions as a group. Was bonsaikittens.com
a real web site at some time? Was it a hoax or did the web site
author really grow bonsai kittens? (Hint: Use one of the search
engines below to find out more information about www.bonsaikittens.com)
When students enter
the www.bonsaikittens.com address in the Way Back Machine, they
will be able to see how the web site looked when it was still active.
This is a very real looking hoax web site. It was so real looking
that the web site author was investigated by the FBI. Students may
find references to this when they use a search engine. Below are
a couple of web sites with articles about the FBI investigation.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,41733,00.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/02/10/fbi_goes_bonsai_kitten_hunting/
Detective
License
Students
answer questions about the following six web sites trying to determine
whether they are real or hoax sites. All of the web sites are hoaxes.
Some of the web sites may be blocked by content filters due to keywords,
specifically the Loch Ness monster site, though the content is OK.
Information on many of these web sites, plus others, may be found
in the following two web sites http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/sep00/piper.htm
and http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org.
http://home.inreach.com/kumbach/velcro.html
An analysis of the impact of the 1993 drought on the velcro crop
in California. Easy to identify as a hoax.
http://homepages.udayton.edu/~ahern/rurindx.htm
A home page for the country of Ruritania. Moderately difficult to
identify as a hoax.
http://descy.50megs.com/NewHartford/newhtfd.html
A home page for the city of New Hartford, Minnesota. Moderately
difficult to identify as a hoax. If a student enters this name into
Yahoo maps or mapquest.com, the location pops up as a street but
not as a city.
http://www.gatt.org
An imitation of the World Trade Organization web site. The real
web site is www.wto.org. The hoax
site uses the same logo as the real WTO site. This web site was
used by a professor in an economics class quizz. Many college students
were fooled by it. This is difficult to identify as a hoax. Details
are in the hoax article referenced in a URL above, http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/sep00/piper.htm.
http://www.bigredhair.com/boilerplate.html
This is a very realistic web site. It has lots of pictures and rich
detail about Boilerplate, a Victorian Era robot. The web site was
first established to promote a novel. There is evidence within the
web site to indicate that it is a hoax, but one has to look closely.
The hoax confirmation is at the URL, http://www.bigredhair.com/boilerplate/bp.report.html.
Moderately difficult to identify as a hoax.
Your
First Case
In this final
assignment, students are given a web site to evaluate, www.martinlutherking.org.
This web site is no longer active, and must be viewed through the
Way Back Machine. The domain name is still registered though. What
students discover is that what appears to be a civil rights web
site is actually owned by a white supremacist group, stormfront.org.
In examining the web site, there are references to David Duke as
well as an explanation why the Martin Luther King holiday should
be abolished. The internal information is not consistent with the
web site's civil rights motif. More information may be found at
the Alan November web site: http://www.anovember.com/infolit/owner.html
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