Teaching Students to Evaluate Internet Information Critically
Bridget Dalton
Dana L. Grisham
“I find the Internet most useful when I need help for school. In today’s world you can just go home and get into the Internet and type in your search term. The results are endless. There is so much information that you have to ignore a lot of it.”
15-year-old boy, "The Internet and Education"
[Creating Web pages] made me realize not everything on the net is valid...just thinking that even regular people like me can actually put something inside the net made me understand why everyone should be more careful in picking information...[there's] plenty of room to abuse the power of the Internet and as users we should be careful.
Preservice teacher, "To See One Another More Clearly"
When was the last time your students completed a research project that did not involve use of the Internet? For many students, the Internet is a far more familiar place than the library. They use it to e-mail, to chat online, to listen to music, to surf for entertainment, to post their own Web pages, and to find information they need for school projects. Many, teens in particular, rely heavily on the Internet to support their school work. In a recent survey of U.S. teens with Internet access, 94 percent reported using it for school research and 71 percent said it was a major source of information for their latest school project (Lenhart, Simon, & Graziano, 2001, online document).
Finding and using information on the Internet is a relatively new literacy skill, one that requires students to know how to evaluate information "critically and competently” (American Association of School Librarians, 1998, online excerpt) in a far more complex and demanding environment than that of print-based books (Leu, 2000, online document; Leu, in press).
Knowing what to ignore, and what to pay attention to, is perhaps the most challenging task for students carrying out Internet searches. The sheer volume of information is overwhelming, and it continues to expand at a dizzying rate. Productive searching is strategic and fast (see Bernie Dodge’s "Seven Steps Toward Better Searching"). Separating the wheat from the chaff takes skill and knowledge. And, as the preservice teacher quoted above points out, anyone can publish on the Web. This democratization is liberating in the sense that it opens the door for multiple perspectives and makes possible a more inclusive society, to the potential betterment of us all. It also means that it is more important than ever that we teach students how to evaluate critically the sites and information they find on the Internet, since there is no guarantee of quality and site creators are sometimes not explicit in their motives for publishing.
As professional educators, we have learned (and continue to learn, as we spend more time on the Internet) how to evaluate the sites we visit for their veracity, utility, and reason for being. We have favorite sites and portals that we know and trust, and we apply an array of search strategies to obtain the quality information we need as quickly as possible. We are like the student quoted at the beginning of this editorial, in that we have learned to ignore information and to be on the alert for bias and other misuses of the Web.
Teaching students how to evaluate websites for quality and relevance, and what to do if they encounter information that makes them uncomfortable, should be addressed within a larger school and curriculum plan for Internet use (Dillner, 2000, online document; Kinzer, 2000, online document). Many schools require students or their guardians to sign a student-use contract and some screen content for appropriateness by using filtering software and search engines designed for children (e.g., Yahooligans or Ask Jeeves for Kids) and directing students to websites that teachers have bookmarked.
These Internet safety measures are important, but they do not prepare students for a future where success will depend on their ability to find, evaluate, and use quality information in an efficient manner. To do that, students need to learn the skills and strategies that enable them to become knowledgeable and critical users of the Web. Below, we describe four sites that we think are particularly helpful as teaching resources.
Kathy Schrock’s Guide for Educators
Kathy Schrock, a well-known expert in technology and education, offers a wealth of resources for teachers. She introduces her website by saying that it is important for students to evaluate sites for “authenticity, applicability, authorship, and usability.” The Teacher Helpers section offers Critical Evaluation Information, surveys designed for elementary, middle school, and high school students to use when they evaluate websites.
For example, in the critical evaluation of a website for middle school students, the survey first addresses the level of access to technology, and the URL and name of the site. In Part One, students are asked to look at the page and evaluate its usefulness. Questions include
At the end of Part One, students are asked to summarize what they found, with a recommendation as to whether the site would be a good one to recommend to a friend and why. Part Two of the survey addresses what is on the page and who put it there through another series of questions:
Students are again asked to summarize and synthesize by looking at the data they collected and composing a note to the author of the site, offering their opinions and explaining how they might use the website in a project.
Another section of the site contains links for teachers. There’s a list of articles like Separating the Wheat from the Chaff: How to Tell the Good Sites From the Bad, and The ABCs of Web Site Evaluation, for example. In Critical Evaluation by Others, there is a voluminous list of places to visit that provide more information about how to evaluate websites.
The Kathy Schrock site is easy to navigate and provides useful resources for teachers, including student worksheets and WebQuests for helping students critically evaluate the sites they visit.
QUICK (The Quality Information Checklist)
The QUICK website uses interesting health-related content, humorous graphics, examples, puzzles, and quizzes to help young children learn how to evaluate information on the Internet. The activities address eight key questions:
A WebQuest About Evaluating Web Sites
Created by Joyce Valenza for high school students (although it could also be adapted for middle school), this WebQuest is an informative, engaging tool that helps students understand the purpose of website evaluation, while teaching them skills and strategies to help them through the process.
Evaluating Web Pages: Questions to Ask and Strategies for Getting the Answers, University of California-Berkeley Teaching Library Internet Workshops
You don’t need to be a student at Berkeley to take advantage of this tutorial on evaluating Web pages. Web-savvy teens may also find this guide helpful, particularly the section on citing electronic resources in research papers. The contents include four sections: What to Look for, Getting to the Source, More About Evaluating Web Sources, and Citing Electronic Resources in Research Papers.
And finally, we recommend you become familiar with the nine information literacy standards published by the American Library Association. The nine standards address the need for students to become effective and critical users of information, independent learners that strive for excellence in both information seeking and knowledge generation, and socially responsible citizens who contribute to a more literate society. We think these are laudable and critical goals for all of us.
If you know of other websites for evaluating Internet information, we’d like to hear about them. Go to our Online Communities listserv, and join in a discussion.
References
American Association of School Librarians. (1998). Information literacy standards for student learning. In Information power: Building partnerships for learning. Chicago, IL: American Library Association and Association for Educational Communications and Technology.
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Dillner, M. (2000, January). Internet safety and ethics for the classroom. Reading Online. Available: http://www.readingonline.org/editorial/edit_index.asp?HREF=/editorial/ethics.html
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Kinzer, C. (2000/2001, December/January). Addressing issues of Internet safety [an Electronic Classroom Web watch]. Reading Online, 4(6). Available: http://www.readingonline.org/electronic/elec_index.asp?HREF=/electronic/webwatch/safety/index.html
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Lenhart, A., Simon, M., & Graziano, M. (2001, September). The Internet and education: Findings of the Pew Internet & American life project. Washington, DC: Pew Internet & American Life Project. Available: www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=39
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Leu, D.J., Jr. (2000). Our children's future: Changing the focus of literacy and literacy instruction. The Reading Teacher, 53, 424-431. Available: http://www.readingonline.org/electronic/elec_index.asp?HREF=/electronic/RT/focus/index.html
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Leu, D.J., Jr. (in press). The new literacies: Research on reading instruction with the Internet and other digital technologies. In S.J. Samuels & A.E. Farstrup (Eds.), What research has to say about reading instruction (3rd ed.). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
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Citation: Dalton, B., & Grisham, D.L. (2001, December/January). Teaching students to evaluate Internet information critically. Reading Online, 5(5). Available: http://www.readingonline.org/editorial/edit_index.asp?HREF=/editorial/december2001/index.html
Reading Online, www.readingonline.org
Posted December 2001
© 2001 International Reading Association, Inc. ISSN 1096-1232