Comments on: Digital Literacy 101: Website Evaluation

By: Dennis O'Connor

Dennis O'Connor — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 05:03:13 +0000

I’ve been working on these issues since the turn of the century. During that time I created a number of free online tutorials focused on searching, evaluation, and ethical use of digital materials.

Almost everything on our site is free for teachers and librarians. Take a look? http://21cif.com

Hope this helps!

Dennis O’Connor (25 years in k-12, online for the past 10 years.)

By: Alec Couros

Alec Couros — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 00:07:24 +0000

Katie, glad the comment was helpful. If you do record or reflect on such a discussion with your students, I’d love to hear how you handled it.

By: Katie Makatche

Katie Makatche — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 00:03:31 +0000

Alec just made concrete what I have been vaguely feeling when I teach website evaluation. I always found myself giving exceptions and explanations why a site can still be valuable and trustworthy even if no author is stated. I think a discussion on evaluating socially-created material will helpful for my students.

By: John TeftDeedoke

John TeftDeedoke — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 11:53:48 +0000

First of all congratulation for such a great site. I learned a lot reading article here today. I will make sure i visit this site once a day so i can learn more.

By: pwoessner

pwoessner — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 23:19:30 +0000

Alec–you raise an excellent point regarding authorship. We haven’t touched on that issue yet in Middle School but it’s one we need to consider. If you have any more insight/suggestions we’d sure appreciate hearing them!

Dennis–thanks for passing along that link; there are some great resources there!

By: Dennis OConnor

Dennis OConnor — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 23:54:05 +0000

Congratulations on addressing Information Fluency in your 7th grade curriculum. I’d like to invite you to visit the 21st Century Information Fluency Project website at: http://21cif.imsa.edu

We’ve got many online learning games you’ll be able to use to teach search & evaluation techniques.

We also have a new program called WSI: Web Site Investigator: An Introduction to Information Forensics. Here’s our new site dedicated to the ‘detective’ approach to evaluating a website: http://21cif.com/wsi/

All of our materials are free. Just link and go! (We also offer inexpensive online training classes, you’re free to use the materials without any charge.)

Dennis O’Connor
Information Fluency Partners

By: Alec Couros

Alec Couros — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 18:18:10 +0000

I’ve used some of these same criteria to evaluate web materials, but I am calling into question the piece on authorship. In many ways we have seen the death of the author, or at least, of the single author. What does it mean to evaluation scheme when we begin to accept socially-created pieces of work, and how they are “authored”? While we may refuse to let students cite Wikipedia for author reasons (as we would with another encyclopedia), how do we deal with its authorship on some pieces?

There are counterbalances in this evaluation scheme, but I am currently considering how I weigh authorship in content evaluation.

Just thought I’d share.
Cheers.