Practicum - Eric (6)

Like I explained in my last post, I used the article feature on allrecipes.com when preparing to bake my mint chocolate chunk cookies. Several days later I decided to spend some time on the website exploring the article feature.

When I first used the feature, I simply used to search bar on the home page and typed mint into the article feature. Although there are a majority user-submitted articles, like there is a majority of user-submitted recipes, the first search result for a lot things, mint included, is an article created by Allrecipes staff. The article is structured somewhat similarly to articles on wikipedia. I did some more research and typed in other ingredient names like thyme, salt, baking powder, for example. It turns out this is the standard article the website has created for all ingredients. It starts with a general description of the ingredient and a picture, and then includes sections on uses, origins, and other information of the ingredient.

The other nice thing about the article section is where most of the learning probably takes place on allrecipes. It's at least the place with the most potential for learning to take place. The allrecipes staff also has contributed a large amount of how-to articles. These include things like "how to make a fluted pie crust". This marks a bit of a difference from the rest of the website. In my presentation in class I explained that I hadn't really learned anything tangible in my time on allrecipes and had just gathered information that I could come back to (via my recipebox). These how to articles do more than just instruct you in making a recipe, however. Knowledge like that of understanding how to make a fluted pie crust can be valuable skills to use in the future. These types of articles can prepare cooks to be able to make recipes they find elsewhere on allrecipes. Also, if and when somebody comes to a recipe that calls for a fluted pie crust and the reader doesn't know how to make one, they can type in "how to make a fluted pie crust" on the search bar under the articles tab, and find the proper resources to learn how.