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Margaret Rily Dikel
Thursday, November 3, 2011, 10 am Pacific, 11 am Mountain, Noon Central, 1 pm EST, 2 pm Atlantic, 7 pm Zurich, 8 pm Istanbul
Evaluating Online Services and Resources
There are a lot of good information and service providers online right now, but there is also a lot of (to put it politely) crap. Aggressive marketing campaigns, fancy site design, and flashy animations are very attractive to the eye, but does this make what you are looking at worth your time, effort, and (possibly) money? It can be hard to judge, especially if the information or service is in an unfamiliar area. There are easy ways to evaluate sites and services so you have a good idea of what is valuable, who is helpful, and where you can turn online.
Bio
Margaret Riley Dikel is author of The Riley Guide (rileyguide.com), a directory of online career and employment resources, and co-author of The Internet: A Tool for Career Planning. Margaret holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Music from the Boston Conservatory and an MLS from Simmons College. And she still calls herself a librarian.
Contact
Margaret Riley Dikel
11218 Ashley Dr., Rockville MD 20852
Phone: 240-602-6043
Fax: 301-984-6390
Email: Margaret@rileyguide.com
Web: rileyguide.com
Exercise – Evaluating an online site or resource
Select any site online, even one with which you are very familiar. Then, see how many of these questions you can answer about that site.
- What is the purpose of this site?
- Who owns and/or operates this site or service? Name the organization or individual.
- What is the mailing address and phone number for the organization or individual?
- When was this site or service started?
- When was the domain name registered, and when does it expire?
- Do they share your personally identifiable information with others, and if so, why?
- Before you register, can you see enough of the site to determine if it offers what you need?
- How easy is it for you to find what you want?
- Can you understand the information presented?
- How current is the data? We are looking for dates.
- If there is a fee, how much does it cost and what do you get for your fee? What is their refund policy in case of cancellation?
- What do others say about this site or service?
Before we begin, here are a few instructions for listeners:
- If you have a question, press 5* on your phone.
- Directly after the interview, be sure to fill out the evaluation linked to your call-in instructions, especially if you want to earn CEUs.
- Please register at least 24 - 48 hours before the interview so we have time to send out the call-in information.
- If you'd like to listen to more of these tele-interviews, and your organization is not currently a subscriber, contact me with someone I can talk with about subscribing your organization so you can listen for free (except for the cost of your distance provider). Email info@ careerwell.org or call 415.312.4294.
This is Dr. Sally Gelardin with Careerwell Tele-Interviews. Margaret Riley Dikel is author of The Riley Guide (rileyguide.com), a directory of online career and employment resources, and co-author of The Internet: A Tool for Career Planning. Margaret holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Music from the Boston Conservatory and an MLS from Simmons College. And she still calls herself a librarian. Why do you call yourself a librarian, Margaret?
Interview Questions
- First, please define online websites and services.
- Why is it important to evaluate online sites and services before using them or recommending them to others?
- Why are you so insistent about having real contact information on a site?
- How do you evaluate online sites and services?
- How often do you evaluation online sites and services (i.e., new sites and services may take time to come up to your standards and old sites and services might weaken over time)?
- Do you add new standards and delete old standards as new technologies emerge? Can you give and example?
- Do you offer help for online sites and services to get them up to your standards? If not, do you know of any other resource for helping online sites and services get up to par?
- What factors in web design do you recommend for persons who are visually disabled?
- What factors in web design do you recommend for individuals who have hearing challenges?
- What do you think about “flashy graphics” and persons who are visually disabled? Are there file formats (PDF) and animations that cannot be viewed with assistive software?
- To recap, if a career service were to revamp its website (and a contact told me today that was in process in her center), what do you suggest it includes?
Upcoming Interviews
Just one more interview for November -
11/10/11 Carol Vecchio, A Universal Model of Career Development and Cyclical Weltanschauung (Worldview). Carol will present her model at the 50th anniversary of the World's Fair, so her interview should be very interesting!
The next week I am hosting the Poetics of Aging Conference in San Francisco. Go to http://poeticsofaging.org. Hope to see you there! It will be a very entertaining and instructional conference. It already has been for those of us who are working behind the scenes to make it a glorious experience for attendees.
This is Dr. Sally Gelardin with Careerwell Tele-Interviews.