Genius Hour 20 Day Challenge - Day 3: Website Evaluation

Day 3: Website Evaluation

Work with your LMC teacher to have students evaluate websites. Our LMC teacher is absolutely PHENOMENAL, so I can't say that I had a huge role in planning the website evaluation lesson, however it was an important component to the process. Please note that this might take more than one day, depending on how much practice with web evaluation you want your students to do.

The main goals include:
Helping students understand that anyone can put anything on the internet (so they're not all reliable), and that not all websites are appropriate for us to use (for a variety of reasons).

I find this to be a great opportunity to show this commercial:

Have students evaluate by modeling how to find good, reliable components on a website. Then have students find the Who, When, Why, Where, What of websites:

Who...wrote the website?

• Discuss the difference between .com, .org, .gov, and .edu.
• Show students where to find the author(s) on the About Us, bottom of the page or FAQ page. 

When...was the website last updated?

• Discuss that sometimes the updated time is kind of irrelevant with a topic (like if you're researching historical topics), but often times the website needs to be updated regularly to stay accurate!
• Show students where this can be found on a website.

Why...was this website made? 

• What was the author's purpose? Note -- if the purpose is to convince someone of something, the information may be bias, thus, not necessarily reliable.

Where...do the links take you? 

• Are the links working on the website, and does the website work well? 

What...is on the website? 

• Can you read and understand what the website is saying? Does the information sound like it makes sense? 

Once you model evaluating websites -- both reliable and unreliable -- allow students to practice. Creating a handout with guiding questions can help students as well or you can use this one!

This website evaluation tool uses the CRAAP method (yes, that's what it's actually called). This test consists of a list of questions to help you evaluate the information you find. 

Make this a literacy center! The more consistent practice the students get with web evaluation, the more naturally they will do this, and the more reliable information they'll find online. 

Here's a very simple, quick version of web evaluation.