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Evaluate Websites
- - Validity
- - Accuracy
- - Appropriate

Sources

Mr. C's Tech Site

View the Evaluating Websites Video Tutorial. (The video will take a while to load.)

The internet is a wonderful resource, with a great deal of information at your fingertips. Unfortunately, the information you are viewing may not always be trustworthy. How do you know if what you are viewing is authentic, accurate, valid, and appropriate? Learning to evaluate a website is a key component to your use of the internet, especially as a classroom teacher.

Evaluating a website is a tough task, but probably easier than you might first think. The first part of evaluating a website is asking the right questions:

• Who wrote the information?
• When was the page last updated? Does it have a date?
• What are the credentials of the author related to this topic?
• Are sources where information was obtained documented ?
• Are there links to other resources for this topic?
• Why was this page put onto the internet?
• Does there appear to be a bias or point-of-view?

These are some basic questions you can ask, and typically find the answers pretty quickly. The more often you evaluate websites, the quicker and easier it becomes.

Click on the links at the left to find more information on evaluating websites for specific criteria.