Transcript Evaluating a Website

Evaluating Resources
Web Pages and Wikis
Introduction
Evaluating Web pages
Understanding wikis
Talk About It
Your Turn
Tech Tools in this presentation
• AltaVista
• Librarian’s Internet Index
• WayBackMachine
• Wikipedia
Introduction
How is evaluating Web resources like judging athletes at
the Olympics?
Introduction
Olympics judges have the difficult task of determining
medal winners from a group of highly trained, wellprepared athletes. To find the best of the best, they
evaluate the athletes’ performances based on a specific
set of criteria.
Introduction
When you look online for information to use in your
research project, you will be making judgments, too.
There are millions of sources of information to choose
from, and you want only the best of the best for your
work. When selecting online sources of information,
you’ll
needtotojudge
judge
carefully.
you’ll need
carefully.
Evaluating Web pages
Anyone can publish anything to the Internet. This means
that you must make wise choices about which online
sources are valuable and which aren’t.
Read and think critically as
you research your topic.
You need to question
everything.
Following are some
guidelines for deciding
whether you should use a
Web page as a source for
your research.
Evaluating Web pages
1. Check that the site’s author is an expert in that
subject area.
Look for credentials,
education, or experience
that would give a person
expertise in the area of your
research topic.
Sometimes this will be
stated plainly on a page.
Sometimes you can find
information by clicking a
link such as About,
Information, or FAQs.
Evaluating Web pages
2. Truncate the site’s URL.
Delete characters in the URL, backwards, stopping at
each backslash. This will take you back one level at a
time, eventually to the home page of the site your
information comes from. The homepage may offer
valuable information about the creator of the Web page.
For example:
http://www.cbc.ca/olympics/sports/figureskating
http://www.cbc.ca/olympics/sports/
http://www.cbc.ca/olympics/
http://www.cbc.ca/
Evaluating Web pages
3. Check the outgoing and incoming links.
Outgoing links: Does this site link to other reliable
sites? Click some of the links and see what you can tell
about the quality of those sites.
Evaluating Web pages
3. Check the outgoing and incoming links.
Incoming links: Use a
search engine to find the
sites that link to this page.
Do they seem reliable? Can
you validate the expertise
of the authors? What do
you find when you truncate
the addresses of those
sites?
Tech Tool: AltaVista
To check a site’s incoming links, use the search engine
AltaVista. In the search box, type “link:” and the
address you want to check, with no spaces in between.
The results will show
every site that links to
the site in question.
Reproduced with permission of Yahoo! Inc. ©2008 by Yahoo! and the Yahoo! logo are trademarks of Yahoo! Inc.
Tech Tool: Librarian’s Internet Index
Would you like to conduct your research using 20,000
sites proven to be reliable?
The Librarian’s Internet Index is a tool for finding
high-quality Web sites.
Enter a keyword in the search box, and the Librarian’s
Index will list sites that have been checked for quality
and accuracy. New sites are added each week, so the
content is always current.
Understanding wikis
Many people are now creating Web content in the form
of wikis.
A wiki (a Hawaiian word meaning quick) is an open Web
page that can be both viewed and edited by its users.
Wikis are popular
because they
make it easy to
create documents
collaboratively.
Everyone who has
access to the wiki
can add to and
revise its content.
Understanding wikis
Every wiki contains an Edit button. To add or change
something on the page, click the Edit button and make
your changes.
Click the Save button,
and your changes are
published to the
Internet! The wiki keeps
archives of all the
changes and makes
them available to users.
Tech Tool: Wikipedia
Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia created by its
users. Since its creation in 2001, over seventy-five
thousand contributors have created more than 5.2
million articles in over a hundred different languages.
With articles about
everything from
aardvark to azimuth
and zinc to zobo, there
is a good chance that
Wikipedia has
information on your
research topic.
Tech Tool: Wikipedia
To use Wikipedia wisely, you need to understand its
advantages and disadvantages.
Advantages
1. Wikipedia is always growing and
changing. The content is continually
revised and usually contains the most
current information on a topic. This is
especially helpful when your topic
relates to technology, media, or pop
culture.
Tech Tool: Wikipedia
Advantages
2. Wikipedia is a collective source of the knowledge
of many different people. In general, this helps
eliminate incorrect or biased information from any
one person or group.
3. Wikipedia is free! Print
encyclopedia sets can be
costly and are quickly
outdated, and other online
encyclopedias may charge
subscription fees.
Tech Tool: Wikipedia
Disadvantages
1. Wikipedia is not a scholarly source. This means
that anyone can add information without having to
prove that he or she is an expert. Credentials and
expertise are not required.
2. Incorrect or misleading information in an
article can exist for some time before it is
removed or corrected by other users. This is why you
shouldn’t use Wikipedia or any other wiki as your
only source of information on a topic.
Tech Tool: Wikipedia
Tips to remember
Wikipedia can be a great way to get background
knowledge on your topic. It can give you ideas for
narrowing your topic, help you find other online sources
of information, or help you locate experts on your topic.
As with all Web content, you
should carefully confirm what
you read in Wikipedia by
triple-checking information
against other sources.
Don’t use Wikipedia as a source in your research unless
you know your teacher accepts it.
Talk About It
Discuss these questions with your classmates.
1. Why should you confirm information you find online?
2. In the past, how did you select which online sources
to use? How will that process change after this
lesson?
3. If you were creating a Web site, how could you
convince others that your information is reliable?
4. Have you used Wikipedia or another wiki before?
What was your experience?
5. What are your teacher’s or school’s expectations for
using Wikipedia or other wikis for research?
The End