Criteria for Evaluating Websites

I have been working with a wonderful partner at my school. She is our Library Media Specialist. Early on the two of us felt kids needed to have some instruction on the use of the internet. Together we spoke to 4th and 5th grade students about using the internet. We started by asking what were sources of information. They named a lot of things newspapers, magazines, the internet, google, MSN and then somewhere towards the bottom BOOKS.

Valid sources and the idea of validity are tough for that age group to understand. They just don't have the life experience that adults have had. The idea that something is valid or not. We go into discussion about what makes a source good or believable. We ask a lot of questions and try and get real responses. It is sort of like confession, they ask some good questions that often have to do with their misconception of things. Once we have established what makes a source checked we move on to less traditional sources like Wikipedia and Google and Blogs. Many kids don't know what a blog is or what to do when a search finds one (Is a blog a good source?).

As a side note with the economic downturn effecting newspapers and news gathering organizations they have come to rely on bloggers for information sometimes as a primary source. I am not sure I like this idea. Slate magazine did an experiment, for a week journalist had to get information either solely from the newspaper or through online sources. They made a podcast out of the discussion. Here is the link : http://www.slate.com/id/2223262/

With our students we try and add some humor so I usually represent a dubious website and claim I have all the answers. One time my website was called chickenman.com and I knew all there was to know about chickens. Another site was Dinosaur Bob's Fossil Emporium where you always get 4 fossils for the price of 3, I insist that there questions would be answered if they just took advantage of 3 for 4 and so on. So how to find the valid site? We try and break down the parts of the web address. For example .com is commercial and will try and sell you some items some sites are good others are like Dinosaur Bob's Fossil Emporium. Sites with .gov or .mil are from the government and are usually valid. Organizations with .org are again sometimes valid and sometimes not. It is not easy and every year we try and do a lesson with every grade level from 5-8.

We have even taken our show to the faculty and they too are not always as savvy as we would like. They thought wikipedia was just fine as a source. So again this year we will get out our drum and bang it for common sense.