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Evaluation of websites
How to analyze a website
Evaluation of websites
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The internet is a great resource but this paper takes a critical look at the DHMO.org website, in particular, and looks at categories during this assessment that addresses specific critical tools in evaluating this web page specifically. Using primarily the web page evaluation checklist published by UC Berkeley1 and concurrently S.P.I.D.E.R.2 which is the acronym for Source, Purpose, Information, Domain, Educational, and Reliability. It takes you through how the web page evaluation checklist helped in discerning the authenticity of the web page. I enjoyed reading as far back as I can remember. Books, magazines, newspapers - anything I could get my hands on, I would read. In the early 1990’s with the availability of the internet I could easily type in a few words of my choice and I would get a return of information. I took it for granted that the hits were information; but some of the websites were opinions and not necessarily facts. Today, use a few strategies to quickly scan a website for authenticity by using either a web page evaluation checklist published by UC Berkeley1 or S.P.I.D.E.R.2 which is the acronym for Source, Purpose, Information, Domain, Educational, and Reliability. I choose to evaluate the website http://www.dhmo.org/ with the web page evaluation checklist. It is broken into five categories; Look at the URL, Scan perimeter of page to answer specific questions, Look for quality indicators, What do others say? and Does it all add up? I go through the first process. I begin by clicking on the link and it takes me to a very colorful page organized in three columns. First column is headed Special Reports and there are links below. The second column is centered on the web page and is titled Welcome. The third c... ... middle of paper ... ... S.P.I.D.E.R. a strategy for evaluating websites.(technology connection) (source, purpose, information, domain, educational, and reliability). Worthington: Linworth Publishing Company. 3Jonassen, D., Kim, B., (2010). Arguing to learn and learning to argue: design justifications and guidelines. Educational Technology Research & Development. 58(4). 439-458. Resources Scott, S. (2009). Perceptions of students' learning critical thinking through debate in a technology classroom: A case study. Journal of Technology Studies. 34(1): 39-45. Angeli, E., Wagner, J., Lawrick, E., Moore, K., Anderson, M., Soderlund, L., & Brizee, A. (2010, May 5). General format. Retrieved from http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/ Engle, Michael (2012, September 19) Cornell Universtiy: http://olinuris.library.cornell.edu - Evaluating Web Sites: Criteria and Tools
Ramage, John D., John C. Bean, and June Johnson. Writing Arguments: A Rhetoric with Readings. 9th ed. Boston: Pearson Education, 2012. Print.
Metzger, M. J. (2010). Making sense of credibility on the web: Models for evaluating online information and recommendations for future research. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 58(13), 2078-2091. doi:10.1002/asi.20672
Students face “an ocean of information” today, much of it of poor quality, so a better approach would be to teach students how to “triangulate” a source like Wikipedia, so they could use other sources to tell whether a given entry could be trusted. “I think our goal should be to equip students with the critical thinking skills to judge.”
Rottenberg, Annette T., and Donna Haisty. Winchell. The Structure of Argument. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2009. Print.
Crusius, Timothy W., and Carolyn E. Channell. The Aims of Argument: A Text and Reader. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2003. Print.
.... For argument is not about who is right, but what is learned as a
Inch, Edward, Barbara Warnick. Critical Thinking and Communication: The use of Reason in Argument. 4th ed. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2002.
Muller, G.H. and Wiener, H.S. (2009). To the point: Reading and writing short arguments. New York: Pearson Education, Inc
PBS. 2004. The 'Secondary' of the 'Secondary' of the 'Secondary' of the 'Secondary' Web. The Web. The Web. 15 Oct. 2013.
* The Aims of Argument. 4th ed Ed.Timothy W. Crusius and Carolyn E. Channell. New York:McGraw Hill,2003, 352-355.
I used the search engines Google, Yahoo, and Hotbot to find these web pages. I also found many other web pages on other search engines pertaining to my essay subject, but only used the three pages shown above. I tried to use a wide variety of search engines to get a wide variety of search responses. I found that most search engines reproduce many of the same pages. Out of the search engines used, I found that Google was the easiest and had the most responses. Not all of these responses were valid, hence the reason for using more then one search engine. To determine the validity of the web pages used in my essay I researched the validity of the organization that posted the web page and the authors or journals the authors were writing for.
There are five different criteria that should always be met when it comes to evaluating a website. These criteria’s include accuracy, authority, objectivity, currency, and coverage (“Criteria Used in Evaluating Web Resources”, 2014). Accuracy is deciphering who is hosting the website, if the website has stated the purpose and audience, and if the information on the site is reliable. A good way to check if the information can be trusted is to compare the facts found on the website with other information and facts found from other internet or print sources. Authority is verifying that the author of the website is real, because if the author is real then the information can usually be trusted as well (“Criteria Used in Evaluating Web Resources”, 2014). To check the authority of a site, the page should be examined for information about the author, note if anyone else has contributed to the website, check for contact information, and see if the author has created other websites with factual information. It is a good sign if there is contact information for the author, because it means someone is taking credit for the information on the page (“Criteria Used in Evaluating Web Resources”, 2014). If someone is taking credit, there is a better chance that the information can be trusted because the author would not want a bad reputation and to be held accountable for sharing false information. The objectivity of a website is deciding if the website is trying to sway the reader’s opinion, and if it is biased. If the advertisements on the site are being supplied by the author of the site, then there is a good chance the page is biased. There should be no bias or opinion located on a site that is supposed to supply factual information (“Criter...
Now that we are living in an ever changing world, technology is viewed as the most resourceful tool in keeping up with the pace. Without the use of technology, communication would be limited to using mail for delivery and encyclopedias for research. Although technology has improved the way we communicate and find information for research, the information is not always valid. Unfortunately, for those of us who use the internet for shopping, research, or reading articles of personal interest the information is not treated the same as a your magazine or book. While such literature is reviewed by an editorial staff, internet literature or information can be published by anyone. In order to reap the full benefit of having the use of technology for any purpose, there are five basic criteria’s one must keep in mind as an evaluating tool for deciding whether or not the particular website is a reliable source for information.
The objective of this essay is to compare Internet research with other sources of information which include books, word of mouth and primary research. This paper will also look at ways of ascertaining the validity of research information for academic work.
This has been a very brief evaluation of the World Wide Web Consortium's web site. Other important things that need to be considered when evaluating a web site are: writing for the web, providing the information that people need, accessibility testing, and the services that are offered to users. This web site is probably the most useful site that I use on regular basis because of the information that it contains.