Website's Credibility

1. Identify how you will teach young learners about evaluating websites for credibility (that is, what process/procedure will your students follow to ensure that they will determine that the sites listed below are not credible?)

As a future teacher I will inform my students about websites that are not credible. It is very important, whether you are a student at the elementary, middle school, or high school level, to understand and know how to validate a website. The procedures I would take in my future classroom to educate my students on incorrect websites would include multiple steps. The first step would involve me, as the teacher, relaying information about the Internet. I would indicate that the Internet contains a lot of inexact information. Many websites contain people’s thoughts, comments, or ideas because the Internet is open to everyone to do as they want. Relaying that information to my future students will allow the students to understand that not all things on the Internet are true and/or reliable.
     Next, the second step would indicate ways for the students to glance at a website and know whether or not it is a reliable website (i.e.: .org, .edu, .gov, etc...). This step would also include examples of beneficial and reliable websites. At this time I would use the November Learning Information Literacy Resources web page to help me guide my students through the correct understandings of URLs. Also within this step, I may provide a task sheet that would be a future reference for the students to refer to. The third step involves the students understanding the first and second step on their own; which would include the students looking up information and obtaining that information from multiple websites. For example, I could have them look up information about September 11, 2001 and find two websites that they know are reliable and two websites that may not be reliable and compare. This is an important step because this step helps students to manage their own understanding of credibility on websites.
     These steps I have indicated are steps I was taught or were guided through at a younger age. I have alternated them in hopes of bettering the understanding of websites and their credibility. I believe it is important for students to explore websites, so he or she is able to understand if the website is reliable or not. In the future, I will use the three steps listed above to ensure students will know how to determine if a website is credible or not.