TheWWWDOTApproach to Improving Students’ Critical Evaluation of Websites

Abstract

This article presents a framework for increasing students' awareness of the need to and skill in critically evaluating websites as sources of information. P eter (all names are pseudonyms), a fourth grader, was assigned to write a report on the respiratory system. He did a quick search through Google and identified two websites to read. One was a three-page website with many color drawings by a child for a class project, and the other was a comprehensive website by the American Lung Association. After spending half an hour reading the one with many drawings and a few minutes browsing the comprehensive one, he started to write the report.

‘It Goes Around the World’ – Children’s Understandingof the Internet

“…Children's everyday experiences also serve as a good starting point for discussing the trustworthiness of information on the Internet in classrooms. Teachers can take advantages of students' views when building more strategic knowledge on how to evaluate the quality of online information (Zhang, Duke, & Jimenéz, 2011). Furthermore, since the available instruments for examining the Internet-specific epistemic beliefs are targeted at adults (e.g.…”

Understanding the Connection Between Epistemic Beliefs and Internet Searching

“…Most simply, learners evaluate URLs, the identity of authors, and the recentness of web information (Eagleton & Dobler, 2007). More advanced strategies involve learners' evaluation of the content per se, with regard to such things as (a) writing quality; (b) providing evidence in the form of references; (c) data triangulation; and (d) the quality of evidence, the flow of arguments, and logical reasoning (Zhang, Duke, & Jime´nez, 2011). -Engaged in inquiry.…”

Defining and seeking to identify critical Internet literacy: a discourse analysis of fifth‐graders' Internet search and evaluation activity

“…Such an approach is entirely congruent with Mercer's definition of inter‐thinking, for which his Thinking Together website (Mercer, ) offers teachers a wide range of teaching and publication resources. The Zhang et al, () study of fourth and fifth graders who were given detailed instruction in the http://www.dot technique produced only modest outcomes, and perhaps this was at least partly because the research outcome measure was based on a website judgement task that was carried out by each student independently. Coiro et al, (), in their work on personal digital inquiry, make the point that giving students clear roles and responsibilities and training in group collaboration is only part of the job; in their view, if we want our students to engage in purposeful, critical Internet inquiry, it is increasingly important for teachers to offer students opportunities to select their own questions on which to focus their efforts, to maximise motivation and engagement and also to accept a range of multimedia outcomes.…”

“…More recent studies (for example Castek and Coiro, ; Dodge et al, ; Leu et al, ; Zhang et al, ) have looked in close detail at the real‐time Internet search activity of school students, and have argued in the light of their findings for the need for more teaching of online strategies such as locating and synthesising information, but also for the explicit teaching of critical evaluation of online information. In Ireland, Dwyer's study of an approach to scaffolding Internet reading among children in a disadvantaged school community (Dwyer, , ) made similar recommendations, but also developed a pedagogy based on triads of elementary school students, each of whom was allocated a specific role (Navigator, Questioner and Summariser).…”