Web resources for contents and skills: how do we find and use them?
Paper abstract submitted to the Association of Asian Studies annual conference, 2006
San Francisco
Tim Xie
California State University, Long Beach
txie@csulb.edu
Abundant web resources for teaching contents and skills exist on the Internet. Some
new web sites/pages are born every day. Others disappear suddenly and silently. The
ephemeral nature of the web resources makes it difficult to find and keep the relevant
information for long. Therefore, developing a skill of searching for needed information
and making a good use of them becomes a new issue in academia.
Searching for web resources is similar to doing library searching. Books in libraries are
catalogued in a structured way. The library cataloguing system helps users to find the
books quickly and easily. The web pages may be categorized and grouped by human
based on some criteria. The contents of web pages may be “indexed” automatically by
computer programs and made available through computer search engines. Researchers
need to understand how the web resources are structured, how keywords are indexed
and learn the strategies of finding the wanted resources.
Appropriate use of information found from the Internet is another important issue in
teaching and research. Organizing the web resources in an appropriate way, keeping
them most recently updated and using them fairly are three major issues to be discussed.
It is also suggested that the web resources be treated with care. The contents of the
web pages and information provided may or may not be professional. Both instructors
and students should be aware that using web resources in teaching and research is
beneficial, but it needs careful screening and evaluation.