Evaluating Internet Resources

I was substitute teaching at an area middle school. One of my classes had a library media staff member give a presentation on research. She typed in google search octopus tree frog. A website http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus, it looked like a reliable website at first glance. I was suprised I had never heard of such a thing. I started questioning in my head, this can not be real. At the bottom of the page it says "this site is not associated with any school or educational organization,other than the Kelvinic University branch of the Wild Haggis Conservation Society." She typed in Kelvinic University branch of the Wild Haggis Conservation Society. It popped up as http://zapatopi.net/kelvin/ku, which clearly is the same http://zapztopi.net/. That was when the discussion started about how do you know if a website if reliable.

Now that I have been using websites and online resources for use in the classroom there are several things that I need to look for to ensure it is reliable.

As a future teacher it is important to check web resources that you will be using to teach your students. We must ensure that the information we are presenting is accurate, reliable, and credible. I use Kathy Schrock's five W's to evaluate a web site before utilizing in the classroom. The 5 W ’s to simply evaluate a Web site:

W h o wrote the pages and are they an expert in the field?

1. What does the author say is the purpose of the site?
2. When was the site created, updated, last worked on?
3. Where does the information come from?
4. Why is the information useful for my purpose?

This helps me ensure the websites that I chose are reliable and credible. While doing research for our webquests. The 5 W's was a great tool to reference.