Judging Online Sources

This blog post will be a mini-lesson on how to validate online sources as credible! I will be targeting the lesson to an imaginary 11th grade class who is writing a research paper for the first time!

By the end of this lesson students should be able to find credible sources of information using the internet as well as "advocate and practice safe, legal, and

responsible use of information and technology," as per the ISTE student standards for digital citizenship. This lesson will also be centered around the common core standard of students being able to "integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in different media or formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively) as well as in words in order to address a question or solve a problem."

Now that the goals and standards are set lets get started!

The internet contains a nearly infinite and ever expanding selection of information. With that volume there lies an inherent problem of credibility. Anyone anywhere can put information on the internet. The ability for false to news to spread on the internet is dangerous and can have real world consequences. Lets watch a short video to find out more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSKGa_7XJkg

Now that we understand how easily false information can spread and how dangerous that can be it should be clear why being able to validate a source is so important.

How do we actually validate an online source? What are we looking for? What is the key information? Referencing this article from the Georgetown University Library (a long standing and accredited institution) will provide an answer to these questions!

In summary the key pieces of information to find in a source are information about the author and their background, being able to judge the purpose of the source in question, judging objectivity (or bias) of the source, the accuracy of the information presented, and the date which the source was published.

Lets do quick practice run on this article form the New York Times about climate change.

First off we know that the New York times is a fairly credible source by itself because of its long standing reputation in the journalistic world. Despite this we should still make sure of the credibility of this specific article. Lets start with the author, this is written by Somini Sengupta and this is clearly stated at the beginning of the article. If we click on her name we get a short biography about here and her history in the field of journalism, this all checks out. The article was published on January 16th 2019 so the information is up to date and relevant. Upon reading the article we can tell that the purpose is the inform the audience of an issue happening in the world. There is bias in the fact that author believes something should be done about this issue and that it is an issue in the first place. The author cites a paper written by Aaron Davis that is in an academic peer reviewed journal so it can be trusted. A quick google search of Aaron Davis clears up and skepticism that might remain.

So upon evaluating this source we can conclude that is a reliable and credible source of accurate information.

And finally just to make sure everything stuck here is a short quiz on how to judge a source!