Essay on Describing Your Inquiry
Computer technologies in education, particularly multimedia and the Internet, give rise to the creation and maintenance of interactive learning; to the modeling of special learning environment that allows us to rethink the way of communicative competence formation. Spread of the Internet poses a new challenge to understanding of the possibilities of using such a powerful source of information during research work. Thus, in this paper it is necessary to talk about the necessity of websites’ use in research work, and how and why it is possible to use the internet to research particular topics.
It is a well-known fact that computers have been actively used as a teaching tool in education in recent years. Specialists in education began to actively use a big variety of concepts related to the computer technology: a database, hypertext environment, workplace learner, multimedia systems, computer communications, e-mail, educational and scientific video, etc. It allows to suppose that the use of computers and the Internet became an ordinary thing for contemporary students and professionals in any area of knowledge.
Humanity is experiencing just the usual global revolution now. It is associated with the entry of the Internet (as a kind of the world information network) into our daily lives. It has no less important meaning for the intellectual life of mankind as the invention and implementation into the practice of printing had during the time of its discovery. Most likely, we have not yet realized the power of information and possibilities of the Internet. There is no doubt that the use of the Internet in all the areas of life has become a part of our life nowadays. Thinking about the area of philosophy, for example, we see that the Internet has its own facilities not only in the study of philosophical disciplines, but it also greatly impacts on scientific and research work in the area of philosophy. These features are associated, as I believe, with some form of network resources. Different scientific and educational organizations that have both formal and informal scientific sites became main centers of specific forms of network resources. Thus, making a research any student or professional has a possibility to visit this website and find the appropriate information there.
Discussing credibility of information taken from the Internet we should remember that scientists received an opportunity to look for different kinds of information in the Internet and have the access to a big variety of internet libraries during the transformation of social relations of new information order. The problem of filling the Internet with scientific information in all areas is acutely faced to researchers. The development of any science is unthinkable without the interaction of researchers and exchange of scientific information; thus, the global computer network (the Internet) provides an opportunity for direct, almost everyday professional communication among researchers with the purpose of the access to scientific information and exchange of information. It is obvious that information networks and computer interaction, of course, can not substitute the direct ‘live’ communication between different scholars, but it can greatly enhance its effectiveness.
Thinking about my own experience of the Internet use, I want to mention that it allows me to be involved in the big world of information development without leaving my home. Now the Internet brings together hundreds of millions of servers that host the billions of different sites and separate files containing different information. This is a huge repository of information and there are also various methods of finding information in the Internet. Its creators have developed special information retrieval systems to find information in the Internet. Search engines have their usual address displayed in the Web-page that contains special tools for searching (a search line, a subject directory, various links, etc.). To call the search engine the user just need to type the address into his/her browser. Thus, it is understandable that it is rather easy to find the necessary information in the Internet, but the main problem is in its credibility. In many cases there is no confidence that information taken from one or other website is really true and has its scientific meaning in the research of particular topics. So, the user should check the information presented in the Internet and use only credible sources among which I can mark out websites of different universities and special organizations, where qualified professionals check information timely and always control the level of reliability of any source in any area. Taking my own experience into account, I, as the user of the Internet, always check the reliability of information taken from various websites in different ways: check the domain name; check the author (where he or she is from and what organization or institution the author is associated with); how many publications the author of chosen article, book, or any piece of information has; check the information in comparison with primary source; look at a list of works cited and compare its credibility in accordance to authoritative sources; check the relevance of information (because it is necessary to understand what kind of information the website shows: a fact about the topic or opinion of some author, who needs to share the own thoughts with his readers). Thus, it is necessary to mention that the Internet is full of various information that can help in the research, but only attentive users due to critical and analytical work can find useful and true information to complete an excellent research. For example, the first website, such as wikipedia.org is a kind of free encyclopedia that anyone can edit, so there is no any confidence that article, presented there describes real facts and events, thus, this website is bad for use, despite the fact that it tries to show information almost about everything in the world. The next websites in the line of creditability are websites with domain name ending with ‘.edu’ – these websites allow to believe in their information as they are associated with universities and have people who have to response for their information, because sometimes students can also post their not always right articles or opinions there. In my opinion the most credible websites are those that allow to find primary sources of information, such as internet libraries with scientific articles, for example, www.questia.com.
In conclusion, making the own research and discussing different websites and the necessity of the Internet in the research work I came to the opinion that it is not easy to evaluate the reliability of the website that a person is going to use, but the internet is a necessary tool as a research aid, because the network can be used not only as an effective source of necessary information, but also as a unique tool for professional communication, and its abilities allow to transform technology of research. I strongly believe that each website provides a challenge to its user belief and make people to plunge into a researched question with more details giving the possibility to develop.
