Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2003 22:17:53 +0530 From: Subbiah Arunachalam <arun@mssrf.res.in> Thanks very much Jorge. I am circulating this to many key people in India with a request to spread the word. Regards. Arun -----Original Message----- From: Jorge Gallardo Rius To: Subbiah Arunachalam Sent: 10/17/03 9:26 PM Subject: Evaluating Website Sources Evaluating Website Sources By Jorge Gallardo Rius Many students in Honduras use the World Wide Web to research homework topics. Sometimes they take the content directly from the web and insert it as their own work. Other times they take parts of the work and insert it into their own, often forgetting to quote the source. At best, they use it as reference material to write their own work but often do not indicate the source. Some teachers only require references from printed sources. Teachers in all academic areas should be concerned because often they won't know if they are evaluating the student's work, a respectable outside source or a quack's eerie sense of humor. That is why many schools are now using website evaluation worksheets as part of the homework completion material. By not using them, schools are missing the opportunity to fulfill important educational standards. Using a website evaluation worksheet helps students recognize authorship and helps them learn to respect intellectual property rights. Standard 2 of the North American Education Technology Standards (NETS) and other international standards place much importance on learning to use technology resources responsibly. It is important that students learn to indicate website references, using the URL, as well as printed references. Secondly, a good website evaluation worksheet will guide a student to properly evaluate a website and distinguish "good" sources of information from "bad" ones. This helps student develop their critical thinking abilities. Not everything in the World Wide Web is informational and students must learn to select respectable sources of knowledge or, at least, beware possibly tainted information. In a sixth grade science class, a teacher asked her students to search websites and find three important discoveries made possible by space travel. She gave students a list of websites which included NASA, CNN and other good sites. She included other sites to test her students. One was about space aliens and had links to "Elvis lives" websites. Another presented a detailed "scientific" analysis proving that squirrels are aliens. In social studies classes, website evaluation worksheets help students identify compromised opinions. Another sixth grade class did a project on the Middle East about the role religion plays in regional conflicts. By recognizing the URL and the author's resume they were able to determine what his biases were likely to be. This data was part of filling the website evaluation worksheet. Both of these projects, and others reviewed for this article, were designed by teams made up of class teachers and computer lab teachers, and all used website evaluation sheets to document the student's research and webquest results. Webquests are web pages that gather different resources and make them easily available for student projects. The computer teacher prepares them in conjunction with the regular class teachers. Students, specially younger ones, find it easier to simply click on the screen and access predetermined contents. Access to search engines, such as Google or AltaVista are also included for more advanced students who want to be creative. Website evaluation worksheets document the student's navigation through the web and are part of the project completion requirements. If you are interested in sample website evaluation worksheets to implement in your school or furthur descriptions of these and other similar projects, write to me at the e-mail listed below. I have several lesson plans for different topics and grades available in PDF format (Acrobat Reader is also free and easy to download and install in your computer). Send comments to: jgallardo515@yahoo.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search http://shopping.yahoo.com