Summary:
I designed my Weebly to be effective. I did not put videos or many pictures on my pages as it did not look nearly as professional. I tried to keep the pictures that I did use related to audiology, specifically the topics that were being addressed in the text that it ether preceded of followed. Even one of the default pictures fits into the them of my site. I placed buttons at the bottom of all of the pages so that the reader could always access the resources that were being referred to in the different sets.
I designed the sets to be on different pages because I thought that it would help keep the ideas separate even though there are clear connections between them all. The sets are broken up as follows: “Set 1 is composed of the components information, knowledge, expertise, evidence, and proof and will be under the tab “What We Know!” Set 2 is composed of the components argument, research,information, evidence, and proof and will be under the tab “How We Know It!” Set 3 is composed of the components discourse communities, communication conventions, information, and expertise and will be under the tab “How We Share It!”” I gave the sets names so that is for whatever reason, someone did not read the introduction, they would be able to get a general sense of what would be found under each of the sets’ tabs.
The introduction page is meant to show how the sets are designed and broken up. The explanation of WHY they are broken up the way they are is explained within the sets themselves. The introduction page is also the site of the links to outside videos to get a background on audiology for anyone who sought it. I did this because I was assuming that my audience was comprised of individuals who were not apart of my field. I also did this so that context of the field was not heavily integrated in my own text so that it would not bore people who are apart of my field and would find the definition monotonous, rudimentary, and unnecessary.
Reflection:
I have never thought about how knowledge and information come about, until I did this project. Knowledge and information are important to all fields, obviously, but so is their creation. Information in my field is created by research and data collection, proof and application of skill (or the employment of knowledge).
I have began to notice that when you look at a source, one of the first things that we are taught to do is to check to make sure the source is reliable. We do this because people who post information on the web can range from laypersons with opinions to experts with all the facts in the world. To determine the level of expertise of the author, we tend to take notice in how the information from a source came about. If the information was researched, includes data, and has academic support then the information is probably reliable and scholarly. The information you get from a wikipage with one source, is probably not as scholarly and certainly not as reliable. One who writes a scholarly piece and puts in enough energy and effort to get the qualifications to be considered an expert on the topic of the piece would not settle for it only being shared on wikipedia. They will get it put into journals, books, and other scholarly sources. This creates a community of discourse. This community is the audience and the contributors. The audience is composed of people who have interest in the field, people in the field, in people in related fields. By creating these communities, you create a culture. This culture is protective of information and makes it exclusively available to people who are members of this audience.
Though the information on the wikipage maybe correct, it is not being circulated in an appropriate medium or by a reliable entity with a reliable reputation, so we are conditioned to ignore them. For this reason, the entities, agencies, and organizations that publish information can be just as important as the person publishing the information. The person publishing the information also holds value in the information itself. This also creates a community of inclusion and exclusion, but from the audiences point of view.
The audience may choose to rely on information from one source over another, creating a sense of exclusion, based on the reliability of the source. Once they find a reliable source, they are more apt to rely on information, data, the knowledge and expertise of the author, as opposed to a less reliable one, creating a source of inclusion.
After having completed this project, I think that it is important that people not only of audiology, but of all fields should figure out how information is created, published, and built upon to become knowledge and further information in their areas of study. this not only makes learning about these topics more interesting, you find your self appreciating knowledge more once you realize its true value and exclusivity. This creates a sense of pride and privilege in the field’s community.
Jaron Thomas 