Day 10 Evaluating Web Sites and Standards

On the article Evaluating Information Found on the Internet I found very useful information about how to evaluate what we read on the Web. One of the most important things our students and ourselves have to consider is: Who wrote it? Most of the time, students, think that if someone has a web page is some body they can trust. They don't even have to question what that person is saying. Which is something else we have to consider: The publishing body. On my opinion, I believe this is one of the hardest things we have to teach our students because they have to be critical and analyze the information they are reading on their own. The article Tree Cow is a perfect example for this type of criteria.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
Some things that we can do as teachers to not overwhelm our students with assignments are:
- Provide the URL ahead of time so students don't have to go through the trouble of analyzing all the information given by their search.
- Plan ahead. Some we come across teachable moments but when using the Web we really need to make sure that the web site we are looking for still there or we have to be careful what we type and search because it can cause many problems.
- Don't take for granted that students know how to search. Most students have taught themselves how to use the Internet but that doesn't mean they know how to direct a meaningful search.

Implementing the Standards into Projects.
I know how excited it is to have our students participate in projects. We know that students learn better when they participate in hands on projects but first there are several things we have to consider:
- Look at the standards first. What are the standards that I'm covering with the project?
- What is the main goal of the project?
- What am I trying to teach with this project?

It is very important that we are familiar with the standards that we need to cover in our curriculum. This is something that I take very serious. Every new school year I print the State Standards and I put them in a binder by category and I use them every time I do my lesson plans.
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