Website Credibility

When evaluating a website students should go through many different steps to check that it is a credible website. Our book gave us many different questions to evaluate the information provided. The students should first search on the website for the answers to these questions. For example they need to check if it is published by a credible organization. I was looking at the Tree Octopus website and the first thing that I saw was a picture of an octopus in a tree. More importantly I saw that the organization that was behind the website was called Greenpeas, now it sounds like a credible source like Greenpeace and I did look over it at first but then when I read it again and followed the link at the bottom of the page it gave me a error screen. I know from this bogus organization as well as prior knowledge that this website is not legitimate. Another question that students should ask themselves when reviewing a website for credibility is if there is a reference page where the bibliographies are credible. Just like when I was talking about the octopus website, I followed several of the links and it led me to an error screen again, it also had People for the Ethical treatment of Pumpkins, now that again could easily be looked over for something credible but the link did not bring me to a website. Another question that students should consider are if there are any gaps in logic, or is there missing information that is relevant to the subject. Something that I noticed when I was reading the Octopus page is the part about donating money. It says that you donate straight to the octopus. This is not logical and it tells me that this website is obviously not credible. I looked at the Dihydrogen Monoxide website and the first thing that I did was look at the bottom of the page to see when it was last updated and if they had a credible organization that supported their cause. There was a phrase that stated: “Note: content veracity not implied” which tells me that it is not truthful information. I also learned from the book to look for different signs that they are just using their website to advertise and get money. They have a ton of different advertisements everywhere on the screen. Another thing that makes me think that this website is not credible is that it says that it is not affiliated with EPA. It is also not credible because it is also another name for water and it is talking about all the “dangers.” Another thing that I found that was tricky and manipulative was the many common uses, all of those things are what water does and it was making them sound negative. So students should search for websites with credible sources as well as credible organizations.

This was a very interesting task because I would have thought a few of these websites were credible before looking at the criteria to evaluate the information within a website. It was comical to look at some of these different websites because they were so outlandish but I know how important this process is for students in my classroom. This will change how I teach in the future because it will make me aware of the credibility of websites. Some of these websites that are on the web are very tricky and you have to look very closely at websites in order to find the hoax behind them. I had to read the organizations on the Octopus website a couple of times before I realized it was not Greenpeace and instead was Greenpeas. I think that this will help me as well as my future students when working on the web.