Missing out on critical skills
At the beginning of this year I gave a technology survey to a nearby high school class. One of the questions I asked was “When using a website for educational purposes do you have a method for evaluating if the information is reliable, valid, accurate, worthwihile to use? If you do have a method, be as specific as you can. Think of questions you might ask yourself or steps you take.” Here are their answers:
- I just read it.
- When I look at info, I believe it is true unless it is farfetched/ludicrous.
- Don’t have a method.
- No
- Yes, look for author, updates
- No, I take it as it goes.
- When using a website for information, I look for sources cited and a clear author. I also make sure that I use multiple sources to verify information.
- The date or domain
- I really don’t have a method.
- You can check the same information on many sites and compare the information.
- I ask myself if it sounds reasonable & if I read the same information from many websites.
- no
- I check to see if the writer has minimal errors in the article as well as making sure that it is a website ending in edu, net, org.
- I don’t really have a method.
- I look for an author or publisher and a date.
- I check multiple websites to confirm.
- No.
- (1) If it’s well known. (2) When last it has been updated.
- Does it have an alternative source? Is it credible?
- No
- I check to see what kind of website it is. Example - .com, .org, .gov, .net
Depressing, isn’t it?I imagine many of you would find similar answers in nearby classes. I’d say we’re not getting the job done and we are really doing our students a disservice by not teaching them. Julie Coiro has a nice handout, Critical evaluation on the Internet: What’s missing in the text? What’s missing in our instruction? from the IRA 2007. Pass it along….
March 15th, 2008 at 9:26 am
I absolutely agree with your sentiment of “Depressing, isn’t it?!” I too, have given a brief survey to my schools students and have received many of the same replies you have listed above. In fact, a few of the students replied with the answer of “Stuff on the internet must right, or why would they put it there?”
That is depressing and scary. I have worked with our students on different way to determine the credibility of the sites they use for research and they are struggling to break old habits and create new ones. Many students still go straight to sites that have used before without any sort of checking on the sites informational validity.
Thank you for the link to Julie Coiros handout, it looks like it has some good suggestions that I plan to use after our break.
March 16th, 2008 at 9:28 am
The sad thing is that adults are doing the same thing and just taking whatever they read on the internet as fact. It is important for students to learn to check out the validity of the information so that they learn that not every website should be trusted.
March 19th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
Maybe there’s hope for the online versions of the traditional encyclopedias. At least they’re credible and cite their sources. See this comment on the recent NY Times article:
http://kindlesforkids.wordpress.com/2008/03/17/start-writing-the-eulogies-for-print-encyclopediasny-times/
Gordon
Connect2Books.org
April 2nd, 2008 at 4:20 am
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