Curriculum
Research and Information Fluency: Grades 6-8
Identifying High-Quality Sites
Download Student Sheet(s) for printout in PDF format.
Read a Letter to Educators about Internet research and information fluency from CyberSmart!
Overview
Students learn that, because anyone can publish on the Web, they must carefully evaluate the sites they use for research. They review evaluation criteria and use a checklist to "grade" informational sites.
Objectives
- Explain how the ease of publishing on the World Wide Web may affect the usefulness of some sites' content
- Interpret the criteria on a site evaluation checklist
- Apply the checklist to a site, evaluating its usefulness
National Educational Technology Standards for Students © 2007
Source: International Society for Technology in Education- Research and Information Fluency
- locate, organize, analyze, evaluate, synthesize, and ethically use information from a variety of sources and media.
- evaluate and select information sources and digital tools based on the appropriateness to specific tasks.
- process data and report results.
- Critical Thinking, Problem-Solving & Decision-Making
- collect and analyze data to identify solutions and/or make informed decisions.
Home Connection
Download the Home Connection sheet related to this lesson.
Site Preview
- Wikipedia: Year-round School
- We Waste Our Children's Time
- The National Association of Year Round Education
- Year Round Education: Pros and Cons
- Family Education: Year-Round Schooling
- Year-Round Education
- Year-Round Schooling
- Year-Round Discontent at Hollywood High
- Going to School Year-round
- Stop Year-Round School
Materials
- Activity sheets (3)
- Online computer access
Introduce (offline)
- Tell students that respected, award-winning books, magazines, and journals go through many stages of development, involving authors, editors, copyeditors, designers, proofreaders, and publishers. For this reason, students can be fairly sure that well-regarded print resources contain accurate, useful information.
- Ask: How is the way information that is published on the World Wide Web different from printed books, magazines, and journals? Students may know that anyone can author and publish a Web site, while traditional publishing has many layers of approval, including editing and fact checking.
Teach 1 (offline)
- Distribute Activity Sheet 1 for students to read.
- Have students brainstorm a list of research topics needed for school or personal use. Explain that a particular site might get a high score for one research need but not for another.
Teach 2 (offline)
- Distribute Activity Sheets 2 and 3.
- Discuss each criterion, making sure that students understand what the criteria mean and what to look for in a site to answer the questions.
Teach 3 (online)
- Take students to www.becybersmart.org or www.cybersmartcurriculum.org, click on Student Links, and then click on the diamond. Find the title of this lesson, and open its links. Assign individuals or groups to one of the selected informational sites.
- Have students use Activity Sheets 2 and 3 to evaluate the site, and encourage them to support their answers in the "Details" column.
- Have students compare the scores they gave for the various sites.
Assess (offline)
The following items assess student mastery of the lesson objectives.
- Ask: Why should you be careful to evaluate sites before using their information in research projects? (Anyone can publish material of any quality on the Web.)
- Ask: Which of the questions in the checklist do you think are most important? Why? Students should support their answers.
- Ask: How will using a checklist to evaluate sites make you a better researcher? (It may prevent them from using poor-quality sites and getting inaccurate information.)
Extend (online)
The following activity can be added for students who completed this lesson in a previous grade.
- Have students review this lesson, then choose and write an in-depth review of a site. Suggest that they use the checklist criteria to help organize their comments.
- For older students, initiate a discussion about the ease with which extremist points of view are disseminated on the Web, including the difficulty of detecting hate sites, which often look educational.
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