Ashley Singley

Assignment 2: Information Literacy

1.)
a.) Mobile technology
b.) Education Source
c.) I chose education source, because I thought it would be
interesting to
look at mobile technology as it relates to education.
d.) MLA Citation:
NAWI, Aliff, Mohd Isa HAMZAH, and Azwin Arif ABDUL RAHIM. "Teachers
Acceptance of Mobile Learning Teaching and Learning in Islamic Education:
A Preliminary Study." Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education 16.1
(2015): 184-92. Education Source. Web. 5 June. 2015.

e.) MLA Citation:

Chen, Baiyun, Stephen Sivo, Ryan Seilhamer, and Amy Sugar. "User
Acceptance of Mobile Technology: A Campus-Wide
Implementation of Blackboard's Mobile TM Learn Application."
Journal of Educational Computing Research 49.3 (2013): 32743. Education Source. Web. 5 June 2015.

f.)

g.)

h.)

2.)
a.) In her recent New York Times article, Uncovering Security
Flaws in Digital Education Products for Schoolchildren, Natasha Singer
raises awareness about the widespread security issue that many
educational websites and mobile apps face. The article is based on
research of Tony Porterfield, a software engineer with two school age
sons. When his sons came home with an assignment to complete on
www.Raz-Kids.com, Porterfield decided to visit the site first, in order to
satiate his curiosity about how the site dealt with data security.
Surprisingly, Porterfields investigation revealed that the site was
unencrypted, and stored passwords in plain text. This alarming
discovery lead Porterfield to investigate other educational sites, where
his found similar issues. The article mentions several other popular
educational sites that have been known to have security issues, and
how they have been addressed. The article also digs a bit deeper and
attempts to explain why security is such a widespread issue amongst
educational websites, and how the government has attempted to
intervene.
b.) MLA Citation:

Singer, Natasha. "Uncovering Security Flaws in Digital Education Products for

Schoolchildren." The New York Times. The New York Times, 05 June. 2015.
Web. 05 June. 2015.
3.)
a.) Keywords: childrens mobile technology
b.) MLA Citation:
Boston University Medical Center. "Mobile and interactive media use by
young
children: The good, the bad and the unknown." ScienceDaily.
ScienceDaily, 30 May 2015.
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/01/150130102616.htm.
Web. 01 June. 2015.

c.) Search engines: Yahoo, Bing

d.)
Number of
Results

Bing
Yahoo

50,500,000
56,900,000

Ability to
filter
results
based on
date (Y/N)
Y
Y

Number of
relevant
sources on
first page

Ability to
search for
scholarly
articles
(Y/N)

7
6

In comparing Bing and Yahoo, it seems as though they are pretty

evenly split. Based on this search, Bing did have a marginal
advantage over Yahoo in regards to relevant articles. I expected
to notice a bigger difference between the two search engines,
which prompted me to do a bit more investigating into why they
are so similar. I discovered that Yahoo is actually powered by
Bing, which likely explains their similarities.
4.)
4

a.) Time: This article was written 8 February 2015. It has

not been
updated.
b.) Relevance: The article definitely relates to the topic of
mobile
technology, because it talks about the security of
educational
websites and mobile apps.
c.) Authority: The article was written by Natasha Singer,
who is
qualified based on the fact that she has written for
The New York Times, a well respected newspaper for
nearly ten
years, and for the article, she refers to the research
and opinions
of individuals that specialize in technology. I know
about Singers
credentials, because I looked her up online.
d.) Accurate: The information is trustworthy because it
sites the
research of individuals in the private sector, as well as
government
officials, including comments directly from President
Obama.
e.) Purpose: The purpose of this piece is to inform the
general public
about valid concerns that affect most of us on a daily
basis,
especially parents and educators.
5.)
a.) Ease of Access:
The internet article was easier to access. To find and utilize
the New York Times article, all that was required was a web
browser and an internet connection. However, in order to
access the scholarly article, I had to have access to the CCBC
library, and in order to penetrate certain portions of the
librarys website and database, I was required to use my
student login in credentials.

b.) Timeliness:
The New York Times Article was slightly more recent than the
article from the scholarly journal. This is to be expected given
that newspapers are published daily, and journals are
generally published monthly, or quarterly.
However, the
primary article that I used from the library was quite relevant,
as it was published in June 2015.
c.) Authority:
The scholarly article is undoubtedly the best choice when it
comes to the authority of the author. This is the case because
in order to be published, the authors credentials must be
verified, and in order to qualify as scholarly, qualified peers
must review the article. Thus, before I even open an article,
from the library database, I am able to determine the
authority of the author. In the case of scholarly articles, the
authors authority is confirmed during the initial search, by
adjusting the desired criteria. However, in order to determine
the authority of the author of the internet article, it requires
more concern. Moreover, once the search results come up,
the first step is to determine whether or not the website is
credible. Once the websites credibility is determined, one
must decipher who the author is and then do more
investigation into the authors background in order to
decipher whether or not he/she is can be trusted to deliver
substantiated information.