All About Explorers. All About Explorers was developed by a group of teachers as a means of teaching students about the Internet.
Although the Internet can be a tremendous resource for gathering information about a topic, we found that students often did not have the skills to discern useful information from worthless data. So we set out to develop a series of lessons for elementary age students in which we would demonstrate that just because it is out there for the searching does not mean it is worthwhile. A typical novice strategy for searching the Internet is to type the topic into the address bar. For example, if you are researching Christopher Columbus, you naturally would look first at www.columbus.com. Unfortunately, as you will see if you click on this link, that is not helpful.
There are many less benign examples of site names that do not relate to the topic they appear to be about. To stay current on the site and hear about developments as they happen, follow @aaexplorers on Twitter. Publications. Evaluating Websites - AndySpinks.com. C.A.R.S.
Checklist for Evaluating Internet Sources You should evaluate every website you use for research or for personal information. Ask yourself the following questions about each site and try to use only those that have the best evidence of credibility, accuracy, reasonableness, and support. Download a Printable Version (PDF) Goal: A source that is created by a person or organization who knows the subject and who cares about its quality Is there a publishing or sponsoring organization? Goal: A source with information that is current, complete, and correct Does the information on the site agree with other sources?
Goal: A source that is truthful and unbiased Does the author, host, publisher, or sponsor have a bias? Goal: A source with verifiable sources of information Are the sources listed? Ideally, information such as the author, host organization, and publication date will be easily located at either the top or bottom of the page. Adapted with permission from: Harris, Robert. The Quality Information Checklist. Relevancy. The Museum of Hoaxes. Web Evaluation Workbench. 2: Information You Can Trust. Don't Spread that Hoax! Evaluating Information Found on the World Wide Web. Topics Activities Reasons to Evaluate We use the information we've found on the Internet or Web for a variety of purposes.
Sometimes we use it for entertainment, recreation, or casual conversation. When we use the information for research, we have to be sure the information is reliable and authoritative. In some situations, we don't have to do that work on our own. Here are some of those virtual libraries: Thinking critically about information and its sources means being able to separate facts from opinions. Goal When we access or retrieve something on the World Wide Web we need to be able to decide whether the information is useful, reliable, or appropriate for our purposes. Guidelines Who is the author or institution? If the author is a person, does the resource give biographical information about him or her, including any of the following: educational and other credentials, position, institutional affiliation, and street address?
Evaluating Web Sites: Criteria and Tools. The Gullibility Test: History and Culture. Web Literacy - Reading a Web Address. The goal is to make judgments about website information based upon what the URL tells you.
Here are three guiding questions that can help. 1. Do you recognize the domain name? The domain name is found after the and www. to the first forward slash /. For example in the URL www.novemberlearning.com, novemberlearning.com is the domain name. A domain name can sometimes provide clues about the quality of information of a site or tell you what a site is about. 2. .com and .net are examples of extensions. .edu Educational organization (most US universities) .k12 US school site (not all US schools use this) .ac Academic institution (outside of US) .sch School site (some schools outside of the US use this) .com Company (usually .co in the UK) .org Any organization .gov Government agency .net Network .mil Military institution.