Teaching Students To Use Critical Thinking To Find Quality Websites. Teacher's Guide to Assessing Credibility of Online Resources. Internet has definitely marked a revolution in the way human knowledge is being generated, shared, communicated, and stored. The answer to almost any question is available within seconds, courtesy of the invention that has altered how we discover knowledge – the search engine. With this abundance of online information comes the question of credibility. Some critics argue that a tsunami of hogwash has already rendered the Web useless. I disagree. We are indeed inundated by online noise pollution, but the problem is soluble. According to Dobson and Willinsky, to be information literate a person “ must be able to recognize when information is needed, and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information”.
Throughout my work as a blogger, I discovered several techniques to assess the credibility of the online information and here are some of them : First ask the question who is the author? More resources : Student Guide to WWW Research. Evaluating Information: An Information Literacy Challenge. Mary Ann Fitzgerald, Assistant Professor, Department of Instructional Technology, University of Georgia The new Information Power contains information literacy standards that emphasize, among other skills, the ability to evaluate information. This skill is difficult and complex. Evaluation consists of a number of component processes, including metacognition, goals, personal disposition, signals (which initialize an evaluative episode), deliberation, and decision.
Research shows that specific problems may occur during several of these components. Contextual factors, including environment, problem structure, and processing depth, impact evaluative processing as well. In addition, research shows that a number of factors influence evaluation, including cognitive development, epistemological stance, affect, and level of prior knowledge. No one would argue that students need not learn to evaluate information. However, evaluation is an immensely difficult and complicated process. Disposition. Evaluating Web Pages: Techniques to Apply & Questions to Ask.
1. What can the URL tell you? Techniques for Web Evaluation : 1. Before you leave the list of search results -- before you click and get interested in anything written on the page -- glean all you can from the URLs of each page. 2. 2. 1. INSTRUCTIONS for Truncating back a URL: In the top Location Box, delete the end characters of the URL stopping just before each / (leave the slash). Continue this process, one slash (/) at a time, until you reach the first single / which is preceded by the domain name portion. 3. Check the date on all the pages on the site. 3. 1. What kinds of publications or sites are they? Are they real? 3. Expect a journal article, newspaper article, and some other publications that are recent to come from the original publisher IF the publication is available on the web. Look at the bottom of such articles for copyright information or permissions to reproduce. 4. 1. A. Type or paste the URL into alexa.com's search box.
B. 1. 2. 5. 1. 2. WHY? Evaluating Internet Resources - Evaluating Information Found on the Internet - Library Guides at Johns Hopkins University. Evaluating Internet Resources. How do I evaluate the quality of websites? How can I teach students to evaluate websites? Where can I find checklists for evaluation? Evaluating Internet Resources There's lots of good information on the Internet, but you will also find opinions, misconceptions, and inaccurate information. How do you judge the quality of Internet resources? Read Evaluating Information: An Information Literacy Challenge by MaryAnn Fitzgerald. Do you believe everything you read? Look for what Wikipedia calls the "verifiability" of information. Read Wicked or Wonderful: Revisiting Wikipedia by Annette Lamb. Misleading Websites Some websites were designed to be intentionally misleading.
Read How to Spot a Fake Website by Garen Arnold (2009). Use the following websites to explore the issue of Internet content. Fake news has become a popular form of satire. The Onion The Daily Show from Comedy Central Colbert Report from Comedy Central A few websites are addressing the issue of misleading information. Try it!