The World Wide Web is an amazing resource. Google the word "cloning" and you get 39,700,000 sites returned in .07 seconds. Great, right? Well, not necessarily. As you all know anyone can create a web site, and web sites can be filled with a lot of erroneous and biased information. For today's class activity, we're going to examine and discuss strategies for being effective Web researchers.
1) First, what should one look for when seeking to evaluate the validity and reliabity of a web site? Before looking at what experts suggest we do, let's first look at a site together:
http://www.martinlutherking.org
What do you make of this site? What questions should you ask of it, and what information do you need to know to evaluate this site?
2) Figuring out who owns the domain. All domain names are registered. If it isn't immediately clear on a site who owns the domain name, you can check. One site for checking is http://www.networksolutions.com . Click on the WHOIS link at the bottom. Type in martinlutherking.org in the search box to see who owns the site. (Note: if the domain owner comes back as a person, you can try to Google that person to see.)
3) Now that we've generated our own list of what to look for--here's a list provided by New Mexico State University's library services. (Note: Please do not look at this until you've generated your own list.) http://lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/evalcrit.html
4) Using this criteria, please evaluate with a partner the following sources. Which, if any of these, are real sites?
http://www.buydehydratedwater.com
http://www.brookview.karoo.net/Stick_Insects