Web Site Evaluation for Basic Level High School Students Lucinda Corless, Newton County Schools, Covington,  Georgia

Overview:  Using information culled from GaETC presenters, I wrote and taught a lesson on web page evaluation for basic level high school language arts classes.

Background:
     Basic level tenth grade students were scheduled to visit the media center to gather information from books and the internet for their term projects.  The teacher had told me previously that her students tended to accept any Internet information as appropriate for research merely because it was published on the Internet. As a result, I taught a lesson on web site evaluation before students began their Internet research, hoping they would view Internet information with a more critical eye.  Specifically, I hoped students would be more aware of who put up a website and why after completing the activity.  They should also question the currency and content of  sites used for research.

Procedure:
Students were partnered and asked to complete an evaluation of one web site I selected.  Some sites were bogus sites while others were from different domains such as .mil, .org, .com, and .gov. The Essential Question for the activity was “How can I tell if a web site is good for research?”   I used information from various conference presenters to compile my Web Site Evaluation sheet and hands-on internet activity.  Presenters, their web sites, tips, and information I incorporated into my lesson are listed below.

From Patrick Crispen’s Google 70-20-10: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Everyone’s Favorite Search Engine:
http://www.acpcug.org/site3/present/google_201_042004.pdf

• Search by subject or search term and file type to find power point presentations and pdf’s.  For example, to find a power point presentation on web site evaluation, key in “web site evaluation” space bar ppt.  This was useful in finding which basic criteria most colleagues used to evaluate web sites.  While some evaluation criteria were too detailed and on a college level, these web sites gave me a good place to start.
• Be as specific as possible when searching Google.  Using more than three search terms yields the best results.  (Google has a 32 words search limit).
• Google automatically truncates (use an * after root search term), but not all search engines do.
• A tilda (~) before keywords will search for synonyms of search term and thus yields more hits.

From Gail Hendrix’s presentation Full T.I.L.T. (Teaching Information Literacy with Technology) Media Centers:  http://mabryonline.org/blogs/media/docs/Web%20Evaluation%20Rubric.doc

While I did not use Mrs. Hendrix’s method of assigning a numeric score to rate a web site, her “Web page Evaluation Rubric” proved a good checklist of criteria to use in evaluating a web page. I also made sure to include information from her handout “Internet Letters” in our discussion about domain names.  Other things I learned from Mrs. Hendrix’s presentation were that background information about a web site author is often available at http://www.easywhois.com if it is not given on the site. Also, a website’s history may also be available at http://www.archive.org.  Further, a tilda (~) or percent sign (%) usually indicates a personal webpage.
 
From Tammy Worcester’s The Incredible Internet: http://www.essdack.org/tips/maconhandouts/incredibleinternetmacon.pdf

 Ms. Worcester’s list of Internet resources for teachers and students is geared primarily for an elementary audience. However, her “Internet Strategies for Students” provided URLs for a few bogus and hoax web sites for my evaluation activity with our students.  “Browsing for Information” on Kathy Schrock’s Guide to Educators site http://school.discovery.com/schrockguide/ was also useful to get ideas from web site evaluations others have done.

My lesson plan and URLs used for the student web site evaluation activity is available on request from corlessc@newton.k12.ga.us.  

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