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Information is everywhere on the Internet, existing in large quantities
and continuously being created and revised. This information exists
in a large variety of kinds (facts, opinions, stories, interpretations,
statistics)and is created for many purposes (to inform, to persuade,
to sell, to present a viewpoint, and to create or change an attitude
or belief). For each of these various kinds and purposes, information
exists on many levels of quality or reliability. It ranges from
very good to very bad and includes every shade in between. Here you
will find the tools you need to effectively utilize technology
in your classroom.
Websites that are viewd by students should have some common elements:
- Correlate
to what is happening in the classroom.
- Meet District standards.
- Enhance student experience.
Getting Started Screening Information
- Pre-evaluation :The first stage of evaluating your sources takes
place before you do any searching. Take a minute to ask yourself
what exactly you are looking for. Do you want facts, opinions (authoritative
or just anyone's), reasoned arguments, statistics, narratives,
eyewitness reports, descriptions? Is the purpose of your research
to get new ideas, to find either factual or reasoned support for
a position, to survey opinion, or something else? Once you decide
on this, you will be able to screen sources much more quickly by
testing them against your research goal. If, for example, you are
writing a research paper, and if you are looking for both facts
and well-argued opinions to support or challenge a position, you
will know which sources can be quickly passed by and which deserve
a second look, simply by asking whether each source appears to
offer facts and well-argued opinions, or just unsupported claims.
- Select Sources Likely to be Reliable: Becoming proficient at
this will require experience, of course, but even a beginning
researcher
can take a few minutes to ask, "What source or what kind of
source would be the most credible for providing information in
this particular case?" Which sources are likely to be fair,
objective, lacking hidden motives, showing quality control? It
is important to keep these considerations in mind, so that you
will not simply take the opinion of the first source or two you
can locate. By thinking about these issues while searching, you
will be able to identify suspicious or questionable sources more
readily. With so many sources to choose from in a typical search,
there is no reason to settle for unreliable material.
Evaluating Internet Research Sources
Robert Harris

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