website evalutaion

After learning about how to evaluate websites and evaluating some sites using the evaluation forms provided helped in checking the websites I visited. I felt that the evaluation form from the discovery education (http://school.discoveryeducation.com/schrockguide/evalelem.html) was the most useful becuase I liked that I was able to type in my answers right into the form. The others were okay but they were a hassle to try and type in the information because I had to save it as a word document to be able to write in them. Since they are evalutaing websites it makes sense that you should be able to fill out the form electronically and I felt like it took more effort than it was worth for the forms that were not easy to fill in.

I did not discover any hidden secrets about the websites from the forms and sometimes the forms were not effective for the types of sites I was visiting. I think that some of the questions on the web site evaluation form helped you realize what is important for web sites to have so there is some value in using a form.

I think if you are doing some research it would be good to have a formal evaluation form so you make sure the sources you are using are reliable. I wouldn't use a formal evaluation for visiting a school website because I feel that it is easy to tell if those sites are reliable and it is not necessary to go through the process of filling out a form.

I think that teaching students about how to find reliable sources is very important. Students need to realize that everything they find on the internet is not reliable. Letting them explore to find reliable and not so reliable websites would be helpful in letting them see the different types of sites that you can visit. Finding reliable sources is very important in citing sources.