There are millions of Web sites on the Internet. It boggles the mind to consider all the information that is at your fingertips once you are on the Web. In the Section 2: Effective Searching for Teachers, you learned how to locate potentially useful educational Web sites. In Section 4: Research Projects for Kids, you have activities that students can use to become effective in locating resources for their classroom research projects. Now you and your students have to critically evaluate these Web resources. Are they good resources - authoritative, current, and accurate?

     Anyone can place a Web page or site on the Internet, so it is important for you and your students to critically evaluate the content of a Web page or site before it is used.

     Here are some questions that will help you evaluate Web resources that you find:

• Who is the author of the site?
  
  
• Is the author affiliated with a company, non-profit organization, institute of higher education, or K-12 school?
  
  
• Is the author or the organization the authority on the topic of the page? What is their background to provide the information?
  
  
• Does the information appear biased?
  
  
• If the site provides data, how was it collected? What is the sample size? Does the author use the scientific method to collect the data?
  
  
• When was the page written? Is it current? Does it need to be current?
  
  
• Can you contact the author or the sponsoring organization if you have questions about the information?
  
  
• Is there an e-mail link to the author?
  
  
• Is the information easy to read? If you are going to use this with your students, is the information at an appropriate reading level?
  
  
• Does the Web page load quickly? If you are going to use this for presentation or in a class activity, you want it to load quickly.
  
  
• Are pictures and diagrams labelled?
  
  
• Does the page include helpful links to additional resources?

     Critically evaluate one of the Web sites that you found in Section 2: Effective Searching for Teachers. Is the site worth using? Why or why not?

     Students can use the same questions to evaluate the Web resources they locate on the Internet. Talk to them about how to review a Web resource - what makes it good and useful?

     Some Web Evaluation Resources:

• Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators: Critical Evaluation Information - Kathy Schrock is affiliated with Discovery Channel's School site and has a great Web site for evaluating Web resources.
  school.discovery.com/schrockguide/eval.html
  
  
• From Now On: Comparing and Evaluating Web Information Sources - Jamie McKenzie, editor of the educational electronic magazine From Now On, has a guide for evaluating Web resources too.
  www.fno.org/jun97/eval.html