There is so much information available to students online - how do they know what's reliable and what's junk? The Vaughn Memorial Library has created a short tutorial for students that helps them to determine just that. Their evaluation tutorial explains to students to use common sense, look for bias, and ask the "5 Questions" - Who? What? When? How? Why?
This tutorial "walks" students through examining several websites, most of which are fiction (hoaxes). Hopefully, students can identify them as such!
While the tutorial was designed for college students to use in about 10 minutes, it is easy enough to understand and works well with middle or high school students. With middle school students, allow up to 30-35 minutes, since there's a lot of reading involved.
To help my middle school students stay on-track and monitor what they learned, I created a handout that accompanies the tutorial. I've included it below - feel free to use it in your own classroom!
While the tutorial was designed for college students to use in about 10 minutes, it is easy enough to understand and works well with middle or high school students. With middle school students, allow up to 30-35 minutes, since there's a lot of reading involved.
To help my middle school students stay on-track and monitor what they learned, I created a handout that accompanies the tutorial. I've included it below - feel free to use it in your own classroom!
credible_sources_handout.pdf |
Even if students have trouble with the tutorial on their own, teachers can use it to prompt good discussions about credible websites. Some of the examples from the tutorial include a website about the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus, and Dihydrogen Monoxide Research. (By the way - dihydrogen (h2) Monoxide (0) is really H20 -- water!) These sites would serve as excellent hoax sites which may look credible at first glance.
If you're working on a research project and want your students to understand the difference between a credible site and a not-s0-reliable one, give the tutorial a try!
If you're working on a research project and want your students to understand the difference between a credible site and a not-s0-reliable one, give the tutorial a try!