Teaching Website Evaluation

In today’s world of the internet at our fingertips, it is especially important that students are taught the skills of evaluating a website for accurate information. Many students are naïve to the fact that not all information on the internet is true. Once they are told that it is not all true, what then? The answer is to teach them skills in how to evaluate websites for the reliability of the information.

One of the literacy skills that a media specialist teaches is how to use subscription online databases. Information from these web resources has been checked for accuracy and comes from reputable publishers. However many students prefer “Google” for their research and think that it is the easiest way to find information for research they are doing for an assignment. Although it may be the easiest way, it is not the most reliable without proper training on website evaluation. Therefore, media specialists need to teach this vital skill.
Providing students with a rubric for website evaluation can be helpful until they become proficient at recognizing reliable websites verses unreliable. One such rubric can be found at http://readwithkids.com/websiterubric.html (Bieber, n.d.). Within the rubric it guides students in asking question such as authority, date, purpose, affiliation with an organization, and distinguishing between fact and opinion.
When teaching elementary school students how to evaluate a website a webquest can be an effective tool (Lucas, 2009). This tool, designed for a specific learning purpose, will take students to pre-determined weblinks that have been specified by the instructor. This allows students to look at reliable and unreliable sources and evaluate them according to the criteria given within the webquest. This can be an enlightening activity for students to see just how ‘real’ a hoax website can appear.
When searching the web, Henderson offers six steps to consider when evaluating the reliability of webpages (2009). One of the most basic steps that he includes is ‘when in doubt, doubt’. In other words, use common sense. If it seems to be unlikely it probably is bad information, and unless you find the same information in a known reliable source, it is most likely inaccurate.
When evaluating websites for use on a project, students should consider the following six evaluation tools: authority, objectivity, authenticity, reliability, timeliness, and relevance (Johnson, Lamb, 2007). For authority, consider the author of the page and their expertise in the area of study. Have they written other works? What about objectivity? Does the website show bias toward a cause? Is it stating more facts or opinions? When considering authenticity, ask if the information comes from an established organization and can it be verified by other resources? For reliability, once again consider the authority and authenticity. Who supports or publishes the website? Is the website kept current or has it not been updated in years? Finally, students should consider whether the information they find is relevant to their topic. Will it add to what they know or is it the same information found elsewhere? If we teach students to evaluate websites and make these questions part of their research process, we can successfully teach them how to find accurate and reliable information on the web.



References
Bieber, J. (n.d.). Read with kids. Retrieved September 5, 2009, from
http://www.readwithkids.com/webeval.html
Henderson, J. R. (2009, August 26). ICYouSee: T is for thinking. Retrieved September 5, 2009, from
http://www.ithaca.edu/library/training/think.html
Johnson, L., & Lamb, A. (2007, June). Evaluating internet resources. Retrieved September 5,
2009, from http://www.eduscapes.com/tap/topic32.htm
Lucas, C. (2009). Spotting a fake: Teaching website evaluation skills. Retrieved September 5, 2009, from
http://www.education.com/magazine/article/Website_Literacy/