DTL Reflection- Guidelines for Web Evaluation

For Evaluating Websites

Here are some guidelines for evaluating if websites are credible to use for research:

1. What type of web address is it?
• .gov, .edu, .org are more reliable than .com websites.
2. Does the website look well organized?
• Does it look cluttered?
• Are the pictures, articles and text on the page aligned?  
3. Are there any errors in grammar or spelling?
4. Did the author on the website cite their resources?
• Did they tell you what kind of research they have to back up their information?
• Did they reference other cites they got their information from?
5. Do links of the website work?
• If the links do not work, it may mean they were fake links or they have not updated their website recently.
6. Does the pictures support what the author is trying to convey?
• If the picture/s do not enhance what you are trying to learn about from their article, then it may be not be a credible resource.

Guidelines taken from 21ThingsforTeachers.net powerpoint at http://www.21things4teachers.net/downloads/search_strategies/bogus_websites_20140508_143242_26.pdf

DTL- Be Legal, Be Fair Copyright Reflection

Your students writing is copyrighted

   Before this module, I didn't think too much about copyright.  When I was in college, I often took a phrase or a quote out of a book that I was using for a report and changed a few of the words to make sure I wasn't plagiarizing but I have not realized that is not enough.  Doing this still can be plagiarism because it still may resemble what the original author posted too closely.  If I didn't understand something or didn't know how to put it in my own words, I should have done more research before finishing my report
   I often took pictures right off of websites and Google images.  I wasn't ever sure if it was okay, since I was a teacher, but now I understand the laws better.  I now know that there are MANY resources on the internet to get media to support what you would like to to do for free.  Since reading about copyright, I have went back into some of my previous blogs and removed pictures and added images I found through the Creative Commons website.
    Now when I post images to my blogs, I make sure I go to Creative Commons website to obtain pictures to use in my blog.  I don't want to infringe on anyones work.
    I am thinking about using plagiarism checkers with my students when we read informational text and do a writing prompt on what we read.  They often take words right out of the book or passage that we read when trying to write what they learned.  I will have to teach them what they are doing when they do they, show them how the authors writing compares to what they wrote, and why we should change it.  I think the plagiarism checker tools may be more useful for my students in 4th and 5th grade since they do more research projects in those grade levels and beyond