When students are asked what Internet-related subjects they would like to learn about in school, the top choice for 68 per cent is "How to tell if information you find on the Net is true or not".
(Source: Young Canadians in a Wired World, Media Awareness Network, 2005) |
Before the Internet, anyone wishing to use several sources for a piece of research had to use a number of methods to find the needed information. The person would go to the library to consult published texts, or would phone or write the specialists and the organizations working in the field.
Now the Internet offers new possibilities for finding information quickly and for getting a number of points of view. However, everyone needs to be able to distinguish the true from the false.
Young people use the Internet daily, but many of them do not have the skills to do an effective Internet search and even fewer know how to evaluate online information.
For many of them, “if it’s on the Internet it’s true”! And if the site ends with a “.com” or a “.ca,” it’s all the same!
Librarians have an important role to play in teaching young people research skills and assisting them to develop the critical thinking skills needed in their online activities.
To do this, it is necessary to teach young people how to search effectively for the information relevant to their topic, to show them the various search engines available, and to teach them how to select their options by a quick analysis of the URL of the site. There is useful information for kids at the Toronto Public Library Web site and at Kid's Tools for Searching the Internet.
Finally, it is necessary to give young people strategies for evaluating and decoding the information they find, so that they can judge whether it is accurate and useful. The best way to introduce this subject is to teach them to use the six questions of cyberspace (see Knowing What’s What and What’s Not: The 5 W’s (and 1 H) of Cyberspace) and to look at the metadata to find out more about the Web site or the author behind the information (See the document Quick Tips for Authenticating Online Information.)
To learn more about the subject, look through all the resources available in Fact or Folly: Evaluating Online Information for Teachers and in The Internet for Parents, for which there are links on the right sidebar.
THE ISSUES
Internet Security
Cybermarketing and Personal Privacy on the Internet
Research and the Evaluation of Online Information
Internet Citizenship
BECOMING INVOLVED
Web Awareness for Parents
Web Awareness for Young People
