Evaluating Websites

Evaluating websites before using them in a classroom or to do research is very important for many reasons. The first and foremost important reason to evaluate them before research or in the classroom is to make sure the website even works. It is also very important to check a website before research or for the use in a classroom because you want to make sure you are getting accurate information. Many websites out there are fake, or do not give accurate information, so you want to make sure when you are using a website for research you can get proper credit for correct information.

I think most people do not understand or apply the evaluating techniques when looking at websites. Like the example in class where professional journalist were were misinformed of the landing on the moon by Americans. These journalist proved they did not do their full research on the topic. These techniques are important and should always be in the back of someone's mind using the internet because there are a lot of fake websites out there. Student need to make sure their information is accurate because if you wrote a research project based off Wikipedia, a site where people can add and change information, all your research could be wrong and you fail a grade.

You can incorporate the evaluation techniques into a classroom by many different technology lessons. One example could be having my kids use their computer time looking at a list of websites I have given them. They can look up the website and tell me why they think it is reliable and a good source of information or not. I can even give them a chart with the different techniques on it and they can choose some websites of their own, or ones I have picked out and they can fill in each spot on the chart to make sure the website has every one of the techniques and can answer questions like, who is the author, when was it last updated, what is the content about and the perspective of the writer, etc.

Evaluating websites is very critical to classroom use as well as research. If students as well as parents understand these techniques it will greatly improve the research and information they retain and find.