Teaching students to become critical evaluators

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Teaching students to become critical evaluators

• HCPS Instructional Technology

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Why Evaluate?

• The World Wide Web can be a great place to
  accomplish research on many topics. But putting
  documents or pages on the web is easy, cheap or
  free, unregulated, and unmonitored (at least in
  the USA). There is a famous Steiner cartoon
  published in the New Yorker (July 5, 1993) with
  two dogs sitting before a terminal looking at a
  computer screen one says to the other "On the
  Internet, nobody knows you're a dog." The great
  wealth that the Internet has brought to so much
  of society is the ability for people to express
  themselves, find one another, exchange ideas,
  discover possible peers worldwide they never
  would have otherwise met, and, through hypertext
  links in web pages, suggest so many other
  people's ideas and personalities to anyone who
  comes and clicks. There are some real "dogs" out
  there, but there's also great treasure. Therein
  lies the rationale for evaluating carefully
  whatever you find on the Web. The burden is on
  you - the reader - to establish the validity,
  authorship, timeliness, and integrity of what you
  find.

http//www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Int
ernet/Evaluate.html
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The WikipediaDebate

• Wikipedia vs. Encyclopedias
• Even Professors Disagree http//thedartmouth.com/
  2006/11/15/news/disagree/
• It Depends on Who You Ask http//news.bbc.co.uk/2/
  hi/technology/4530930.stm http//news.cnet.com/Bel
  atedly,-Britannica-lambastes-Wikipedia-findings/21
  00-1025_3-6053754.html

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Resources

• Bibliography on evaluating web information
• http//www.lib.vt.edu/help/instruct/evaluate/evalb
  iblio.html
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• Librarians Internet Index-Websites You Can
  Trust
• http//lii.org/
•  
• Great Guidelines and Tips for Evaluating
  Information Found on the Web
• http//webliminal.com/search/search-web12.html
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• Webquest on Evaluating Web Sites for Middle/High
  School
• http//www.sdst.org/shs/library//evalwebstu.html
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• Online Tutorial for Evaluating Web Sites for
  Elementary/Middle School
• http//www.openc.k12.or.us/citeintro/elementary/ev
  aluate/index.htmltop
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• Five Criteria for Evaluating Web Resources
• http//www.library.cornell.edu/olinuris/ref/resear
  ch/webcrit.html
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• 3M Keyword Method