It Takes Ten-tickles (and Other Riddles) to Make an Octopus Laugh

In class we did activities that taught us how to search and use valid information from the internet. We started by doing A Google A Day. We then came up with definitions for accuracy, authenticity, and reliability and explained how each one was important. Finally we looked at the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus website to see whether it was accurate, reliable, and authentic.
A Google A Day was frustrating because the questions were phrased in a way that it wasn't easy to look up the answer. You had to search a couple different things and correctly put them together. However, it was fun because it was almost like a scavenger hunt: each piece of information was a clue, and you needed the fist clue to find the next. At times it was like a wild goose chase, but it showed us how you have to check more than one source and use keywords to get accurate information. Check out A Google A Day here: http://www.agoogleaday.com/#game=started
Each group had to come up with their definition of accuracy, reliability, and authenticity. Accuracy is how correct the information is. It's important that you're using accurate information when doing a research paper. A website is reliable if it has a history of being accurate or is by a trusted source, like PBS. Authenticity is how original information is or if it hasn't been taken from another source. We had to go to the website for saving the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus and see if it was any of those three things. It was a pretty entertaining website because it had photos of toys in trees and reported "sightings". Therefore it was not accurate. The author of the website wrote his own little biography and the information is a little "out there" and we have no idea if it's true because he wrote it himself; therefore, it was not reliable either. However, the website was authentic because it was doing what it said it was doing: raising awareness for the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus. Check out the website and save the tree octopus from extinction here: http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/

The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus awareness ribbon http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/tentriblarge.png