Download Student Activity Sheet(s) for printout in PDF Format
Overview
Students learn that, because anyone can publish on the Web, they must carefully
evaluate the sites they use for research. They review evaluation criteria
and use a checklist to "grade" informational sites.
Objectives
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Explain how the ease of publishing on the World Wide Web may affect
the usefulness of some sites' content |
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Interpret the criteria on a site evaluation checklist |
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Apply the checklist to a site, evaluating its usefulness |
ISTE® National Technology Standards
Site Preview
Online Resources
Materials
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Activity sheets (3) |
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Online computer access |
Introduce (offline)
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Tell students that respected, award-winning books, magazines, and
journals go through many stages of development, involving authors,
editors, copyeditors, designers, proofreaders, and publishers. For
this reason, students can be fairly sure that well-regarded print
resources contain accurate, useful information. |
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Ask: How is the way information
that is published on the World Wide Web different from printed books,
magazines, and journals? Students may know that anyone can
author and publish a Web site, while traditional publishing has many
layers of approval, including editing and fact checking. |
Teach 1 (offline)
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Distribute Activity Sheet 1 for students to read. |
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Have students brainstorm a list of research topics needed for school
or personal use. Explain that a particular site might get a high score
for one research need but not for another. |
Teach 2 (offline)
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Distribute Activity Sheets 2 and 3. |
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Discuss each criterion, making sure that students understand what
the criteria mean and what to look for in a site to answer the questions.
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Teach 3 (online)
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Take students to www.becybersmart.org and click on the
diamond. Find the title of this lesson, and open its links. Assign
individuals or groups to one of the selected informational sites.
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Have students use Activity Sheets 2 and 3 to evaluate the site,
and encourage them to support their answers in the "Details" column. |
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Have students compare the scores they gave for the various sites. |
Close (offline)
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Ask: Why should you be careful
to evaluate sites before using their information in research projects?
(Anyone can publish material of any quality on the Web.) |
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Ask: Which of the questions
in the checklist do you think are most important? Why? Students
should support their answers. |
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Ask: How will using a checklist
to evaluate sites make you a better researcher? (It may prevent
them from using poor-quality sites and getting inaccurate information.) |
Extend (offline)
The following activities can be added for students who completed this lesson
in a previous grade.
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Have students review this lesson, then choose and write an in-depth
review of a site. Suggest that they use the checklist criteria to
help organize their comments. |
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For older students, initiate a discussion about the ease with which
extremist points of view are disseminated on the Web, including the
difficulty of detecting hate sites, which often look educational. |
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Identifying High-Quality Sites