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The
way in which the WWW is used in many classrooms throughout the world
is that learners are asked to find information about a topic. For
instance, learners may be learning about the Renaissance. These
learners will often spend a whole lesson trying out various search
engines. By the end of the lesson, they may have found thousands
of pages about the Renaissance but these may not contain any information
that is useful to them for their current purposes.
We
encourage you to approach this differently by first thinking about
why you find information. Before your learners search
for information, challenge them by asking questions that make them
think. Challenge them to ask questions themselves. Refer to another
module on Thinking
and Questioning Skills for more information about:
In this way learners will be searching for
information to answer questions they have posed for themselves
- information that will help them in their thinking.
(Remember
that when you have read about questioning you must close the module
on Questioning and Thinking skills to get back to this module)
Search
skills
Share
your search skills with your learners so that they are also able
to develop good skills that help them find the best information
in the shortest possible time.
You
may want to explore the other search engines at this stage, but
we would recommend that you look at how to evaluate information
first, so that you are able to judge the worth of the information
that you are finding.
Evaluation
of information
This
module focuses on evaluating information that you find on the World
Wide Web, but these skills apply to all information that you find
and use.
Information
evaluation skills are particularly important when using information
on the Worldwide Web because it is possible for anyone with Web
access to publish information - from a 6-year-old to a university
professor. As a result, there is a considerable amount of nonsense
on the Web, and this nonsense is as easy to find as the very reliable
information. There is even a
website that calls for more nonsense on the Internet. It takes
all types for the world to go around.
The
activities that follow will help you develop your information evaluation
skills. We encourage you to use these evaluation skills you learn
through the activities below and to develop them in your learners.
This will help you become information literate in this Information
Age.
As you evaluate information we hope
you will share the websites that have accurate and reliable
information with the community of learners. You can do this
by completing the web
site evaluation form. Links to this form are to be found
on most activities pages in this module.
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