Evaluating Websites

For our 1st practical work, we were asked to to choose a set of criteria and apply these criteria to evaluate two websites per group: one that can be used as a resource for the teacher as a materials designer and another one that presents digital resources that can be directly used in the classroom. I would like to give you some information about this topic.
I remember that when I was at secondary school we had to search information about certain topics and the first thing we did was to type the words in Google. The first result that came up was the one we chose. Sometimes, the site you choose is not the best or has incorrect information. It even happened to one of my friends once, that she included information in a practical work that was not true. Of course, she didn't know the information was fake. She didn't pass the practical work because of that.

Here are some useful criteria proposed by The University of Lesley on Evaluating Websites. Each of these criteria provides you with questions you can use to evaluate websites. 

• Purpose
• Authority
• Objectivity
• Appropriateness
• Currency
• Responsibility
• Clarity
• Accessibility

I think it is very important for us teachers to make students aware of the fact that some information posted on the internet is not reliable and that there are some sources more reliable than others. The most important thing we have to do is to check if the information we are giving to our students is true or not.  

Click on the picture to enlarge it.

Click on the picture to enlarge it.

Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants.

Welcome again! This post is about Digital Natives (DN) and Digital Immigrants (DI). If you don't know what these are, don't worry. You'll find out now.
We talked about DN and DI in one of our lessons after reading an article written by Marc Prensky. Digital natives are “native speakers” of the digital language of computers, videogames and the Internet. Those who were not born into the digital world but have, at some later point in their lives, become fascinated (or not) by and adopted (or tried to adopt) many or most aspects of the new technology are, and always will be compared to them, Digital Immigrants.

                                                                                             DN - Active Learners.

                                           

The two world-views that Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants represent are different. 
Here's a picture that can give you a better idea of what I'm talking about:

My brothers, sister and me are digital natives because since we were children, we grew up using computers, playing video games and then started to use cell phones or smartphones.This is not new to us and we know how to use them without needing any kind of explanation. My parents are digital immigrants. When they grew up, there were no cellphones, computers or internet. It was very difficult for them to learn to use cellphones and the computer, and they even refused to do so. Nevertheless, they learnt and adapted to this new aspects of technology, but they still are Immigrants. 

I realised that many of the aspects of my personal way of learning are mentioned in the video. My phone is with me all the time, also my laptop. I'm constantly logged on social networks, I get text messages constantly, even my e-mails on my phone. Now, we have apps to be in touch with our teachers! Isn't it great? 
I believe that it is important not to look at the fact that people use a lot the internet with suspicious eyes. Changes are healthy, most of the times. The fact that we are able to learn hundreds of kilometres away from each other is awesome. 
We don't have to keep on cutting off trees to make books if we use e-readers or PDFs. I could name many more of these advantages of using technology to learn. 

I hope people will start adapting to digital natives. These are our students now. We have many tools at hand to make the process of learning a lot more enjoyable. Let's use them.

If you are not acquainted with Marc Prensky's article on Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants, you can find it on PDF here.

Click to enlarge.

Thank you for reading! :)