Preservice Module #2: Accessing & Authenticating Online Resources.

Section 40 Supplement

Introduction

The Internet is a fast and efficient tool to gather resources and information on almost any subject. There are millions of web sites currently on-line. Web sites can be published by many different people and groups, often with a range of abilities and motives. While there are many web sites that offer valuable and trustworthy information, there are just as many web sites that contain false or misleading information. Amongst so many pages, it is difficult to find the few pages that relate to a specific topic of interest. However, there are tools to help sift through the seemingly infinite amount of information. These tools are commonly known as search engines.

It is necessary for both educators and students to carefully and critically evaluate web sites to determine the credibility of their content. Due to the number of sites currently available on-line, and their ease of access, it is important that we are constantly evaluating the information we are presented with on-line. Even the most professional looking website can in fact be a hoax, yet we can be tempted to believe it to be credible because of the manner in which the information is presented. As well, many discriminatory organizations use professional looking websites to express their viewpoints. So, it is important to remember that what we are viewing on-line may not always be truth, and many web sites have pages of inaccurate, obscene, unbalanced or malicious information layered within the pages of their site.

Task

At the completion of this module you should be able to answer the following questions:

  1. What is a search engine?
  2. How can I use a search engine to access the information I am looking for?
  3. What is a URL?
  4. How do I reference electronic sources?
  5. What are the criteria used to evaluate a website?
  6. What are some examples of good websites?
  7. What are some examples of poor websites?
  8. What are some websites that I can use to support a unit of teaching?
  9. How can I address issues of plagiarism and copyright?

Your task for this module is to begin to create a sample unit of study incorporating evaluated web-based resources.

Process

Part 1: Accessing Online Resources

Search engines are computer programs who's sole task is to gather information from web pages and then provide a means to search and find relevant information. Search engines are actual sites on the Internet and most of you have probably used one before. There are many different Search Engines and some are better for certain types of information than others.  Even with the power of a search engine it is possible to have trouble finding appropriate information. There are two possibilities when you can't find information on the Internet. One is that the information does not exist out there. That is an outside possibility, despite the vast sea of web pages. However, the more likely scenario is that the search engines are not being used properly. What we want to do in this module is to introduce you to a few basic search strategies that will facilitate finding information. As you become serious with your use of search engines you will discover effective strategies for finding important information - it almost becomes an art form and only time thinking through your searches carefully and experimenting will help fine tune these skills. Well, lets get started.

There are many search engines, here are a few of the popular ones (broken down into 4 main categories):

• General Search Engines - these are the common garden variety search engines that most of us are used to using:

• Kids Search Engines - these search engines are usually kid versions that try to focus the content on kid specific material. While most of them do check the content of their links, some of the sites are very commercial.

• Education Search Engines - these are search engines that have been created for specific topics (in this case Educational materials).

• Meta Search Engines - these search engines combine the results from a number of different search engines in one place. Many people find these types of search engines very effective.

For more detailed information on these and other sites, check out this link:

http://searchenginewatch.com/links/article.php/2156221


Now that you know where to go, the problem still is, how do you narrow or broaden searches? There are a couple of keys to effective searches. Most people go to a search engine and type in one or two keywords and then wonder why they get so many irrelevant hits (hits: is a term used to describe sites a search engine finds). Here are four simple but highly effective ways of enhancing your search:

1)    Define the problem.

• First define the topic as best you can. Make a note of the key terms and concepts. The search will go much better if you know what you are looking for. Put these terms into a "3M" list (Must, Might, Mustn't) - This site will explain the process:

Step Zero: What to Do Before Searching

2)    Use a larger number of keywords.

• Before going to a search engine, brainstorm alternative words that describe the subject you are looking for. Come up with as many as you can. Try putting them all into a search engine. Then try experimenting with different combinations of those keywords.

Case Study: I want to find information on a computer program called Hot Potatoe produced by a company called Halfbake. This is a software program for creating tests online. The first tendency of most people would be to search for the word "potatoe" or "hot potatoe". If I use the term Potatoe, Google comes back with 99,000 hits. Searching for the key words "hot" "potatoe" comes back with 28,000 hits. However, if combine the terms "hot" "potatoe" "test" "halfbake" (just type a space between the words without the quotes) then I get 1 hit, the company's home page - success!
 
• Note it is possible to delimit the search further by adding terms that you do not want as part of the search (put a minus sign or the command NOT in front of the keyword that you want to exclude - check the help section of the search engine to find out the conventions you need to follow).

3)    Use a unique phrase when applicable.

• Type in a unique phrase associated with the topic (surrounded by quotation marks). There are times when a key phrase approach works better than using key words.
 
Case Study: You are asked to create a presentation on Lev Vygotsky, he is a Russian who developed a learning theory on social cognition. In his theory you know that there is a term called, the "zone of proximal development" but you don't understand the textbook description and want a more thorough description and examples of the concept. If I use the keyword "Vygotsky", Google comes back with 125,000 hits. If I use "Vygotsky" and "development" the search engine returns 50,000 hits. However, if I can force the search engine to be more specific by entering the key phrase "zone of proximal development" it returns 15,000 hits and by further combining that with the keyword "Vygotsky" and another phrase "learning theory" I am now down to 1,8000 hits, adding the phrase "classroom examples" results in 7 hits. Once I browse the list of hits it may be appropriate to move back a step to a more general search or try an alternative keyword.

4)    Field Search.
 
• Another potentially powerful tool is field searching. For instance, you can specify that a phrase or keyword is in the title of the web page rather than just in the text.
 
Case Study: If I search for the phrase "zone of proximal development" Google returns 15,600 hits. However it is possible to specify that this phrase be in the title by using the convention below (type the word, title, followed by a colon then the keywords or phrase:
title: "zone of proximal development" Then it narrows the search results to 2,480. Then you could add other keywords to narrow it down further.
 
Helpful Tips

• Use nouns as keywords rather than articles (e.g. a, the), pronouns (she, it), conjunctions (and, or) or prepositions (to, from) in your queries
• Use 6 to 8 keywords per query - try to brainstorm alternative terms
• Where possible use phrases by using quotation marks, as in "learning theory"
• Spell carefully, and consider alternative spellings
• Avoid redundant terms
• Check the online tutorials of the search engine you're using, since they all have their own conventions
• Often searches take persistence and creativity
• Remember there is an estimated 200 to 800 million documents online so effective search strategies are imperative.

Deconstructing a URL

Understanding URL's can help you find materials you are looking for. For example here is a breakdown of the components of a typical URL:



If you do a search and you get the following URL:

http://members.shaw.ca/priscillatheroux/differentiating.html

You may try to go back a directory to see what kinds of materials are there. For example, delete the last part of the URL so that you go to:

http://members.shaw.ca/priscillatheroux/

Then try:

http://members.shaw.ca (what happens here?)

When I find good instructional materials I often go to the domain name to see if there are more links that I could use. :-) This is a good teaching technique to use with your students. Also, if you are asking students to find links on different sites it's important to note they need different domain names (not pages within the same site).

An aside: It should be noted that an e-mail address has similar structure to URL with slight differences, see the generic e-mail structure below:
 

Sometimes it is useful to know the institution or domain where an e-mail has originated.

Referencing Electronic Sources

In education the standard approach to referencing materials is a convention called APA formatting (American Psychological Association). This is a standard set of protocols for the referencing of material. In this course we will introduce you to this so you can reference your sources properly with special considerations for electronic sources. First the reference should start with the Authors name (last name first followed by a comma and the author's first name), then the year in round brackets - with a period, followed by the Title and then information about how to obtain that information.  In the case of books with two authors this is what it would look like:

Cornoldi, C., & McDaniel, M. A. (1991). Imagery and cognition Springer-Verlag, New York: NY.

Kristof, R., & Satran, A. (1995). Interactivity by design: Creating and communicating with new media. Mountain View, CA: Adobe Press.

 
For sources off the Internet the date you retrieved the information and the URL needs to be added as in the following examples:

Gillespie, J. (2002). Webpage design for designers. Retrieved June 19, 2005, from http://www.wpdfd.com/

Pea, R. D. (2002). Learning science through collaborative visualization over the Internet. Retrieved March 10, 2005, from http://www.nobel.se/nobel/nobel-foundation/symposia/interdisciplinary/ns120/lectures/pea.pdf

Internet sites can be tricky because some sites have no author nor dates on the site. In those cases you can use the name of the company or organization as the author of the site and put "n.d." to indicate no date when the site does not state a date. Here is an example:

Apple Computer. (n.d.). Digital kids: Who they are and how they learn. Retrieved Sep. 11, 2003, from http://www.apple.com/education/digitalkids/

As an aside, check out the movies on that link - do you think kids think differently now than they did in the past?

For more information and examples check out the site below or refer to the latest APA manual (5th edition).

APA Style - electronic references

Part 2: Authenticating Online Resources

One of the great things about the Internet is that anyone can create a web page and post it. One of the worst things about the Internet is that anyone can create a web page and post it. As you have discovered from your searches of the Internet, not all web sites are equally useful. Many of the sites that come back from a search engine can be dismissed on superficial inspection of the title or when you first access the site - it is obviously not relevant. However, in some cases, it may not be so obvious which sites have better information than others. What criteria should you and your students be using to determine if information that is authentic? Actually this is an issue not only with the Internet but any source of information you access. For instance, when you go to a library you deal with the same issue. However, in the case of a library, often there has been an initial screening process that filter out the resources of questionable authenticity. On the web, as pointed out above, the problem becomes more profound because anyone can publish and there is no obvious rating that suggests, one source is more credible than the next. This is why it is becoming more important that both you and your students learn to be discriminating about the information that you access on the Internet.

Knowing What’s What and What’s Not - The 5 W’s (and 1 “H”) of Cyberspace

One approach to the problem of authentication is to apply the 5 Ws to the site - Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How. This can be applied to help identify credible online information sources. Go through the guidelines at the site below:

Link to a tutorial on using the 5 Ws (Media Awareness Network)

Check out the following Web sites and apply the Five W’s to determine whether these provides credible information.

2Learn has put together a number of useful resources that help you and your students assess the value of a web site:

Evaluating a Site

At that same site there are useful evaluation forms for assessing the value of sties:

Evaluation form - grade 10 - 12

Evaluation form - grade 7-9

Evaluation form - grade 4-6

Evaluation form - grade K-3

Here are more specific verification strategies categorized by topic:

Credibility

Double-check the reliability of information - can you find the information at other sites?

Credentials - determine who is sponsoring the site, what are the author's credentials, is it an individual with an emotional involvement in the issue or is it a more objective/authorative source, like a well know news source?

Is there any evidence of quality control - for instance many journals require a peer review before an article is published?

Indicators of Lack of Credibility - sometimes the tone of the writing suggests the nature of the information, if the words are emotionally laden and not based on evidence.... one wonders about the source.

Accuracy

Is the information correct: up to date, factual, detailed, exact, and comprehensive?

If the source claims to be comprehensive, does it appear do that by providing a well rounded perspective on the issue? In today's information society, a comprehensive review may be difficult to achieve.

Common indicators of a lack of accuracy:

  • no date on the document
  • vague or sweeping generalizations
  • old date on information known to change rapidly
  • very one sided view that does not acknowledge opposing views or respond to them

Reasonableness

Check for fairness, objectivity, moderateness, and consistency in the information.

Timeliness - some work has a limited useful life so be careful to note when the information you find was created, and then decide whether it is still of value or much value.

Consider the audience and purpose - a web site designed for elementary students may not be a good source of information for a University research paper.

World views in some people can cause a distortion in their view of reality or to fabricate evidence or falsify the positions of others. For some writers, political agendas take precedence over truth.

Support

Is there meta-information on the site (at other locations), like evaluative or summative comments by others that might provide another opinion on the information?

What is the source and is there corroboration of the information. Much information, especially statistics and claims of fact, comes from other sources. Citing sources strengthens the credibility of the information.

If you are having trouble finding questionable sites, check out these:

http://www.biofact.com/gulf/

http://www.rense.com/

http://www.vegsource.com/harris/b_cancer.htm

http://www.smokingsection.com/swafr.htm

The point is, there are many people saying all kinds of things... we need to apply common sense and ask good questions to recognize the authentic information from the non-credible sources of information.

There are people out there purposefully out to deceive. Here is a "how to site" for making your own hoax (and many people do it).

http://vmyths.com/hoax.cfm

People creating false panic has also been a problem on the Internet. Here is a listing of some urban legends on the Internet.

http://urbanlegends.about.com/

More information about determining whether web sites are fact or folly, can be found at the following site:

http://www.media-awareness.ca/

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is the blatant copying of material with properly giving credit for the source, this problem has always been out there. For example, you might type the following into a search engine: “To Kill a Mockingbird” AND “free essays” “global warming” AND “free essays” “genetic engineering” AND “free essays” “tragedy in Hamlet” AND “free essays”. How easy is it copy and paste off the Internet? Too easy! Here is a link describing strategies for discouraging plagiarism in your assignments.

How to Discourage Plagiarism

Copyright

This is the law that protects artists and writers from having their works copied, in any form. This law also gives educators access to materials for critique and review. It is the interpretation of this law that is a contentious issue. Here is a document that attempts to address it from an educational and Canadian perspective.

Copyright Matters!

Activity

Examine some checklists and templates for evaluating websites. There are many excellent resources available for teachers and students to help with the evaluation of websites:

  1. Create your own website evaluation checklist using Microsoft Word. Save and print the evaluation scheme developed.
  2. Access the Evergreen curriculum. Select a unit of study. Create your own unit of study using Microsoft Word that includes the following sections: topic, foundational objective(s), learning objective(s) and suggested activity.
  3. Using the evaluation checklist that you have created, find and evaluate 3 online resources to support the unit. Websites that can be evaluated are listed below in the Resources section.
  4. Save and print the unit of study including the 3 website evaluations.

Resources

Making Connections: Online resources

There are many web sites on the Internet that are quite factual with reliable sources of information. However, there are many sites that are hoaxes, counterfeit or questionable. Take a look at the following sites and see for yourself how easy it is to be fooled and realize the necessity for teachers and students to critically evaluate the sites they use.

Examples and non-examples of appropriate web page content:

The Martin Luther King site, http://www.martinlutherking.org, can easily be accessed by students to complete research, and can easily be mistaken as credible information about this famous American civil rights leader. However, this site is actually written from a racist point of view. Is this the type of web site our students should be gathering information from?

It is all too easy on the Internet to stumble across inappropriate content on-line. Many pornographic websites often have URLs that are very similar to a real, informative site. By simply adding one or two characters to a URL, or changing the address domain, students can mistakenly stumble across inappropriate websites. The real web site for the White House in Washington, D.C. can be accessed at http://www.whitehouse.gov , however, by changing the domain address to .com, you would end up at a pornographic site.

There are many questionable web sites on the Internet that contain irrelevant and absurd information http://www.kevdo.com/lipbalm is a site that promotes a 12-step program for lip balm addicts. Although this site is harmless, it is difficult to tell whether it is true or not?! This is a good example of some of the inaccurate information that you can find on-line.

Counterfeit web sites are similar to counterfeit bills. It is quite easy to mistake a counterfeit $20 bill as real, especially nowadays with the hi-tech materials and machines that are used to produce them. On-line there are highly sophisticated counterfeit web sites that remarkably resemble the real website. For example, there is a counterfeit web site on the World Trade Organization (WTO) http://www.gatt.org. which provides anti-WTO information, however it is strikingly similar to the real WTO site found at http://www.wto.org. Take a close look at both websites and see if you can spot the differences. Hint: click on the button 'What is the WTO' found on the left-hand side. Browse through some of the articles and note the differences.

The Onion, found at http://www.onion.com is a satirical news site that can be mistaken as being legitimate because it resembles some of the common news sites we often look at, such as the Calgary Herald http://www.canada.com/calgary, the Toronto Star http://www.torontostar.com, or the Globe and Mail http://www.globeandmail.com.

While some sites are easy to discredit as hoaxes or misinformation, others are more difficult to analyze. For instance, at http://www.ufos-aliens.co.uk/cosmicapollo.html, the author sets forth his ideas that the Apollo Landings (the American moon-landing missions) were in fact staged in Hollywood. He believes (or tries to make the reader believe) that there have really been no human landings on the moon. A more difficult site to analyze come from a site which describes the "Great Aids Hoax" http://www.truthbeknown.com/aidslinks.htm. Here, several (seemingly) reputable and qualified individuals argue that AIDS and HIV are totally unrelated, and in fact, scientists are on the wrong track. Who or what are we to believe?

Critical Thinking:

Administrators of a school division decree the following:

"Due to the amount of inappropriate, pornographic, racist and inaccurate information on the Internet, no student should be permitted to conduct online research unless under the direct supervision of a teacher."

Respond to the decree. Does this seem reasonable from what you have learned in the previous module? Are there any other alternatives to this action?