***My comments on team reports are in Week12.***
For this week's report, I used a search engine called,"Tribal Voice."
I typed in "parenting" and got a list of sites transferred. It was just a long list of sites without any description about each sites. I always felt frustrated whenever I got this kind of result. Sites without description nor introduction always made me nervous because I had to look over all of them one by one. Not giving a clue about what the site is about is not really helpful. However, I had to go on, looking up each of them just to figure out what the site is like. Most of links looked familiar since I've been doing research on this particular topic for twelve weeks. I wanted to discover a new and totally mind-storming site that I've never seen before. Among sites, I found a site called, "New York State Adoption Blue Book."
The New York State Adoption Blue Book Photolisting is used to disseminate
photographs and descriptive text regarding children available for
adoption through
DSS/New York State Adoption Services (NYSAS).
NYSAS has implemented a prototype of the Blue Book to reside on the
Internet to
improve the description and publication of children awaiting adoptive
placement.
The children included in this automated version represent a small subset
of the
children currently awaiting adoption through DSS. Personally, I was
little shocked by the information they had. The topics of interest are
like;
Who are the children awaiting adoption?;
How can I learn more about children who are available?;
How can I explore whether adoption is an option for me?;
The Next Step;
Review Children Available for Adoption;
Review full Adoption Brochure;
DSS Home Page.
I actually went through the lists and pictures of children. Even though I
knew that it's a necessary step for adoption but I wondered if they had
to put the pictures of children as if they are products. I was little
bothered by the way they presented them. However, this search engine had
several unique links like adoption page that I've never seen. The
information was not so
broad but it covered all major interests in the topic of parenting.
Another search engine that I used was "WWWW."
It is also called, "World Wide Web Worm." I typed in the word, parenting
and got the reult of search. I found this search engine to be very
simple. What they had were only the titles of the sites. But it was
well-organized and easy to look at. One more remarkable thing about this
search engine is that it contained so many educational sites, but not many
commercial sites. I guess it's because the search engine is sponsored by
Colorado State University. Among many educational links, I found a site
called, "SmartParenting."
I've never seen this site before but it surely looked very educational. In introduction part, it says that SmartParenting is an onn-line-every parent's resource for raising happier, well-adjusted, and more confident kids. SmartParenting is dedicated to helping parents learn the most effective techniques for managing children's behavior, improving school performance, and reducing the stresses and strains of parenting in today's hectic world. SmartParenting was conceived by Dr. Peter Favaro, child psychologist, author and educator. Dr. Favaro has lectured all over the world on effective techniques for managing and raising children. His approach is warm, practical and most of all FUN! There they had electronic news, catalog, and books. All the information was available free and even a free video was available. One thing that attracted me most was a copy of the Parent's Answer Book:101 Solutions to Everyday Parenting Problems which is the electronic version of the full text book available in book stores. I found the book to be very interesting and educational. There I realized that every search engines had their own characteristics. For example, Pathfinder from Time Warner Company had so many links to commercial sites. Meanwhile, search engine like this one had so many educational links. I think it would be helpful to recognize the characteristic of a certain search engine before starting a search.