Website Credibility

When having my students evaluate the credibility of websites, I plan on using one of the techniques that I found called the 5 W's of website evaluation. The first question that the students need to answer when evaluating a source on the Internet would be who wrote the information. They need to find out if this person is an expert by looking more into the author's information. Maybe the website includes a biography of the author showing their credibility. As for the Martin Luther King website, if you look at the bottom of the page, it is written by a white supremacy group, obviously making the information on the page biased. The next question that needs to be answered is what the site and information on the site is about. Is this the same information that is found on other websites? What is the purpose of the site? Is it fairly self explanatory and easy to use? Next, students need to evaluate when the information on the site was created and when it was last updated. More recent information is more relevant. Then the students need to discover where the information on the site came from, and if they can discover more about the sponsor of the website. Lastly, students need to ask themselves why. Why is this site better than the other sites? Why should they use the information on the page. I even have difficulties seeing whether or not some websites are credible sometimes, but I hope that these steps I found on kathyschrok.net will help students to start critically evaluating the websites they use for information. As for the wesites we looked at for class, with looking at these rules, it is easy to see that none of these sources are credible. Whether having authors that aren't credible, or information that is obviously false, readers are sure to find out that these sites should not be used for correct information.