This information is adapted from a presentation made by library media specialists Ann B. O'Neill, Franklin High School, and Carrie Everhart, Randallstown High School, Baltimore County Public Schools, at the Maryland Educational Media Organization (MEMO) Fall 1997 Conference "School Libraries: Plugged In & Connected," October 23-24, 1997.
Once the most difficult and time-consuming part of research used to be the gathering of information. Today that can be the easiest part, thanks to technology.
The number of resources available via the Internet is immense. In the 1997 A Parents' Guide to the Internet, author Parry Aftab states "there are now 1.1 million separate websites, with millions more sub-pages within those websites" (there were only 130 sites in 1993).
Organizations, companies, educational institutions, government agencies, communities, and individual people all serve as information providers for the electronic Internet community. We can - you can - your students can. This technology allows anyone to publish anything at anytime - and it's easy to do.
Most of the information on the Internet is not reviewed or "filtered." In other words, unlike the most traditional information media (books, magazines, videos), no one has to approve the content before it is made public. Very seldom is there a reviewing process by peers or an authority, a checking by a publication or editor, or selection by a librarian during collection development. Anyone can say anything. Unfortunately, many people, especially students, often believe "if it's on the Internet, it must be true."
The staff at Bishops High School in Newfoundland, Canada began to question the validity of information included in recent student term papers. Students were accepting almost all Internet home pages as acurate regardless of content because they were "in print."
A project to address this concern was developed in an educational research course at Memorial University. The primary objective of the project is to have students critically evaluate any information they find on the Internet. They (and we) want students to react to information, not simply retrieve it. The evaluation of Internet resources is an excellent place where teachers and librarians can assist students in developing their higher-level critical thinking skills by having them question content and sources found on the Internet.
When using Internet resources, it is particularly important to perform a personal evaluation of the information. Traditional evaluation/selection criteria can be used but they need to be adapted to the uniqueness of this technology. In searching the literature for who's evaluating Internet resources and how, we found that all sorts of variations of evaluation criteria are being used. We feel these suit our purposes the best.
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Authority indicates whether or not an individual, an organization, or an agency is recognized as an expert in a field and if that body is knowledgeable,qualified, and reliable. An example of a reliable authority would be a university or a government agency. Authority is an extremely important criterion when evaluating Internet resources.
Is the author/information provider clearly identified?
Is data included about the author/information provider?
Is the author/information provider affiliated with a recognized institution/organization?
Examining the URL can give clues to the authority of a source. One part of the URL's domain is the host, a three-letter suffix indicating the type of domain:
| edu=higher education college or university | org=non-profit organization |
| gov=government agency or organization | int=international organization |
| com=commercial organization | mil=military |
| net=network provider |
In the example http://www.jhu.edu/~jsmith/sports.html, edu indicates the host is an educational institution, in this case Johns Hopkins University. While this sounds very reputable, the tilde (~) after the type of domain usually indicates a personal web page rather than part of the organization's official web site. The example indicates the site is a file about sports in the folder of someone named jsmith. Extra scrutiny should be applied to such sites.
Is the information verifiable?
Many websites do not have anyone overseeing their content. However, there are times when information has been reviewed prior to publishing on the Internet:
- Information presented on an official organizational web site
- Online journals that use peer review by editors or others
- Posting of information taken from books or journals that previously underwent a
quality control process
Here are some websites to check for various aspects of authority:
Holocaust Controversy
The Holocaust: An Historical Summary
HIV/AIDS Information Center
The True but Little Known Facts about Women and Aids
Some sites to evaluate for design and style:
KidsHealth at the AMA
Welcome to Disneyland
Salem-Teikyo University
Objectivity refers to the presence of factual data and the lack of personal prejudice in the information presented.
Here are some sites to examine for objectivity:
American Lung Association
R.J. Reynolds
Smoking from All Sides
With regard to how current information is, the Internet can have a definite advantage over traditional information resources. Its trechnology allows almost instantaneous updating of information. Students can follow the launch of a space shuttle or track a hurricane practically minute by minute.
Be aware that if a date is provided on a site, it may have various meanings. For example:
A site may be updated or revised without all of the information being revised. Do the dates of updates correspond to the information in the resource? Does the organization or person hosting the resource appear to have a commitment to ongoing maintenance and stability of the resource?
Look at the date(s) and decide what is important and relevant to you. As in printed sources, some work is timeless, like the classic novels or much of history. Other work has a limited useful life because of advances in the discipline (science, for example), and some work is outdated very quickly (like techonology news). You must therefore be careful to note when the information you find was created and then decide whether it is still of value.
Here are some websites to check for currency:
Navigation refers to how easy it is to move around a web site.
Here are some links to sites for evaluating navigation:
WebElements
onLINE: on Librarians' Network for Essential Curriculum
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The evaluation criteria discussed so far have referred to websites in general. It's important to remember that not all criteria can be applied to all Internet resources. Some criteria are more important than others depending on the needs of the searcher and on the type of site. Librarians Jan Alexander and Marsha Tate at Weidener University have identified five types of Internet pages. They provide excellent information about specific evaluation criteria and types of questions to ask about each kind of page.
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The Internet is only one source of information:
1. It can be very useful for researching certain topics.
2. It can be almost useless for other topics.
3. To research a topic thoroughly, use a variety of sources both Internet and non-Internet.
Internet evaluation techniques are just beginning to be developed. Technology is outpacing the ability to create standards and guidelines. Establishing evaluation procedures will be an ongoing, evolutionary process.
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A number of tools - rubrics, checklists, lesson plans - are available on the Internet to guide teachers and students in evaluating sites.
Indiana school teacher Tammy Payton has posted three evaluation rubrics for assessing content of websites for primary, intermediate, and secondary students.
Kathy Schrock, a technology department head for a Massachusetts school district, offers three levels of sample critical evaluation surveys for elementary (Spanish, French, German, and Portuguese versions are also available here), middle, and high school students. In addition, she provides a lesson plan for evaluating websites with fourth graders, although it is certainly adaptable to other levels.
A team of students from four county high schools in Knox County,Ohio, are working to create a county government Internet site for their community. Library media specialist Karen McLachlan developed guides to use with teachers and students to evaluate content and graphic design of web pages.
The American Association of School Librarians (AASL) provides its ICONnect site, "designed to get students, library media specialist, and teachers connected to learning using the Internet." One resource provided is an evaluation checklist developed to help librarians and their teachers and students think through the elements of a well-designed website.
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Alexander, Jan and Marsha Tate. "Evaluating Web Resources." Online. 2 Sept. 1997. Available: http//www.science. widener.edu/~withers/webeval.htm.
Beck, Susan E. "The Good, The Bad & The Ugly: or, Why It's a Good Idea to Evaluate Web Sources." Online. 21Oct. 1997. Available: http://lib.nmsu.edu/staff/susabeck/evalcrit.html.
Branham. Craig. "A Student's Guide to Research with the WWW." Online. Available: http://www.slu.edu/ departments/english/research/.
Caywood, Carolyn. "Library Selection Criteria for WWW Resources." Online. 3 Sept. 1997. Available: http://www6. pilot.infi.net/~carolyn/criteria.html.
"Comparing & Evluating Web Information Sources." FromNowOn.Org (9 June 1997): 4 p. Online. 10 July 1997.
"Evaluation Criteria Rating System for Web Sites." Online. 24 Sept. 1997. Available: http://www.ala.org/ ICONN/rating.html.
Grassian, Esther. "Thinking Critically about World Wide Web Resources." Online. 2 Sept. 1997. Available: http://www.library.ucla.edu/libraries/college/instruct/critical.htm.
Harris, Robert. "Evaluating Internet Research Sources." Online. 2 Sept. 1997. Available: http://www.sccu.edu/ faculty/R_Harris/eval8it.htm.
"Internet Source Validation Project." Online. 2 Oct. 1997. Available: http://www.stemnet.nf.ca/Curriculum/ Validate/purpose.html.
Henderson, John. ICYouSee A to Z: T is for Thinking." Online. 2 Sept. 1997. Available: http://www.ithaca.edu/ library/Training/hott.html.
Hinchliffe, Lisa Janicke. "Evaluation of Information." Online.
15 Oct. 1997. Available: http://alexia.lis.uiuc.edu/
~janicke/ Eval.html.
McKenzie, Jamieson. "Culling the Net: A Lesson on the Dark Side." FromNowOn.Org (1994): 7 p. 10 July 1997.
McLachlan, Karen. "CyberGuides." Online. 24 Sept. 1997. Available: http://www.cyberbee.com/guides.html.
Payton, Tammy. "Evaluation Rubrics for Websites." Online. 2 Sept. 1997. Available: http://www.siec.k12.in.us/ ~west/online/eval.htm.
Scholz, Ann. "Evaluating World Wide Web Information." Online.
24 Sept. 1997. Available: http://thorplus.lib.
purdue.edu/ research/classes/gs175/3gh175/evaluation.html.
Schrock, Kathy. "Critical Evaluation Surveys." Online. 2 Sept. 1997. Available: http://www.capecod.net/ schrockguide/eval.htm.
"Site Evaluation Criteria." Online. 24 Sept. 1997. Available: http://www.open.k12.or.us/jitt/jitscore.htm.
Smith, Alistair. "Criteria for Evaluation of Internet Information Resources." Online. 2 Sept.1997. Available: http://www.vuw.ac.nz/~agsmith/evaln/index.htm.
Tillman, Hope N. "Evaluating Quality on the Net." Online. 24 Sept. 1997. Available: http://www.tiac.net/ users/hope/findqual.html.
Dickinson, Gail K. Selection and Evaluation of Electronic Resources. Englewod, CO: Libraries Unlimited, 1994.
Harnack, Andrew and Egene Kleppinger. Online! A Reference Guide to Using Internet Sources. New York: St. Martin's, 1997.
Haynes, Elizabeth. "Using the Internet in the K-12 Environment." School Library Media Quarterly (Spring 1993): 187-9.
"Information Literacy and the Internet." Classroom Connect (Sept. 1996): 1+.
Schrock, Kathleen. Evaluating Internet Web Sites: An Educator's Guide. Manhattan, KS: MASTER Teacher, 1997.
Schrock, Kathleen. "It Must Be True: I Found It on the Internet." Technology Connection (Sept. 1996): 12-4.
"Teaching with the Net." Classroom Connect (Oct. 1996): 14.
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