Evaluating Websites for Credibility

     When we ask our students to research something online, we must prepare them with the how-to's of evaluating whether or not a website is credible. I would explain to my students that when they come to a webpage and they find a lot of really good information, they need to look for the five W's before believing everything on the site. Students need to look who wrote and designed the website; Was the creator of the site someone who might actually know what they are talking about? The students then need to look what the purpose of the site is and whether the information differs at another website (obviously your students should be using more than one website for a research assignment). Next, the students should consider where the information is coming from and whether other links or materials are cited on the site. Then students should look at when the site was created and last updated; Is the information still relevant? Lastly, the students need to consider why they feel that the website is credible and believable. After taking into account the five W's, students may still end up using websites that are not credible because it can sometimes be that hard to tell credibility; The important thing is that we caution ourselves against false truths and do our best to find credible sources online. I would also encourage students to make a simple judgement call on a website based on grammar. If the website has grammatical errors in every sentence, clearly it may not be the best source for quality information.
    
     It was rather interesting to look at these four clearly unreliable websites that are currently online. I found the "All About Explorers" website to be quite amusing. It was interesting to find out that the site was put together by teachers who wanted to demonstrate to students that just because a website looks nice and has a lot of information, doesn't mean that the information is accurate. On first coming to these four webpages, it was hard to immediately determine credibility, however, after clicking through a few parts of the site, you come to see that the information is not quite what you were looking for. Thus it is always a good idea to analyze the website you are using information from and make sure that it truly is reliable and credible.